Our review of Sam Mendes’ 1917
More than a century removed from Versailles, where that armistice for twenty years was signed, we in the English-speaking Atlantic world tend to think of World War I as a static conflict. This is because we are mostly presented with the Western Front in fiction, where endless rows of trenches are bombarded with tear gas and brave men and foolhardy officers who go over the top are flayed by…
All Quiet on the Western Front: Review of the 1979 film adaptation
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) is widely acclaimed as perhaps the finest antiwar novel of all time. It is a book that exudes the despair and hopelessness that we commonly associate with the Great War (if any war can be “great”). It has codified how we think of the War to End All Wars (if any war can end war). It is little wonder, then, that it was adapted to film…
Review of Gallipoli: The story of a country that received its baptism by fire on the cliffs of Turkey
Germany has the Thirty Years’ War. Britain has the Somme. America has Vietnam. Israel has Lebanon. Many countries have their battles or wars that forever imprint within the minds of their populations that armed conflict is a putrid slaughterhouse where nothing is gained but a pile of bones.
Australia has Gallipoli, that peninsula on the north of the Dardanelles, guarding the way to Istanbul (or…
Many a what-if has been written about a German victory in World War II. Alternate histories of a German victory in World War I are less popular, but they exist. Indeed, people started thinking about the consequences of a German victory during the war itself and feared it might give way to a German empire spanning nearly the whole of Europe.
Here is a look at some of the maps that have been…
Zack Snyder’s 2011 movie Sucker Punch is a bit of a mess (read our review here), but it has a very cool steampunk World War I scene in it, full of biplanes, zeppelins and undead German soldiers. You can watch parts of it on YouTube.
Jerad S. Marantz was one of the concept artists who helped design the German soldiers. More at his blog.
The Aaron Sims Company provided artwork for the same scene. Here you can see the airships hovering over the trenches. More at Concept Art World.
Countries that almost existed: The Republic of Pontus
1917 map of a proposed Republic of Pontus (Wikimedia Commons) After the end of World War I, American president Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that all the nationalities of the Turkish Empire had a right to autonomous development. This prompted the Pontic Greeks to call for independence. Ethnic Greeks had lived on the southern coast of the Black Sea for centuries, first under Byzantine, then under…
Battlefield 1 is a 2016 video game that takes place in a somewhat steampunk’ed World War I. There are battlecruisers, the first tanks, biplanes and zeppelins — all pretty historically accurate, from the looks of it, although these technologies were super modern at the time and not used as spectacularly as in the game.
Still, great pictures to look at. Enjoy!
Battlefield 1: Alternate First World War Concept Art Battlefield 1 is a 2016 video game that takes place in a somewhat steampunk'ed World War I.
steampunkd