The First Battle of the Marne

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the First Battle of the Marne, one of the most
important battles of World War One and one of the most important events of the twentieth century. Before I go into the actual events it is important to understand the scale of the battle.

Over two and half million soldiers were involved in the battle and it resulted in over 500,000 casualties. Though later battles would have higher overall casualties, the loss of life was staggering because the battle was so short. When dealing with casualty statistics it can be easy to lose sight of the scale. To illustrate the devastation of the First Battle of the Marne, imagine that you started writing down the names of all those who were killed, wounded or went missing during the battle. Now imagine that you could write down a name every two second and you worked non-stop, twenty-four hours a day, until you had written down the name of every casualty. It would take you eleven and a half days to write down all the names. The First Battle of the Marne lasted for only eight days. That means at the First Battle of the Marne soldiers were dying, being maimed or disappearing faster than you could write down their names.

This battle and its immense loss of loss of life was to change the course of the war and change the course of world history.

For this post I did something a little different. I have included two videos explaining the battle and why it was important. The first video explains the context of the war and the events leading up to the battle, and the second video explains the battle itself.

Video One: The Events leading up to The First Battle of the Marne

Video Two: Description of The First Battle of the Marne