Long Shadow

- Season 1

(2014)

Reynolds confronts the stereotypical view of the Great War as a futile slaughter, mired in mud and trenches, poets and poppies. To counteract this misperception, he returns to the immediate aftermath in Britain and Germany and then traces how opinions changed during the Second World War and beyond.

David Reynolds examines the intriguing paradox of the Great War - that it was not caused by profound political or ideological divisions, but created them in its wake.

Nowhere was the legacy of the Great War more profound than in the unleashing of nationalist fervor across Europe. David Reynolds argues that the war made national identity a stark either-or issue, a matter of 'us' versus 'them.'