Small Hands in a Big War

- Season 1

(2014)

1914, the European cascade of war declarations is welcomed by young patriots hoping for glory. Although under legal age to join the army, French schoolboy Lucien Bonnet braves father's desperate attempts to talk some survival sense into his romantic nationalist head. Under a fake identity, the nave passes recruitment, pretending to seek revenge for his 'family' being bombarded in German-occupied Belfort. Only when a real family friend, who played along, falls under German fire before his eyes, he resolves to dump his uniform and return home. He is however caught by ...

Life in occupied countries, like nearly all of Belgium since the German invasion, was hard for those civilians who hadn't fled, due to requisitioning, rationing, all kinds of regulations and hefty fines. Some were deported as forced laborers, some caught smuggling or electocuted at the Duch border. In the story, a girl's family is blackmailed to pay a huge ransom to avoid child deportation, driving them to smuggling, with tragic results, also for the German troops.

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In a Scottish town near Edinburg, most young men volunteer spontaneously for imaginary soldiering glory, especially in 'friends battalions' based on sports teams and so on, soon finding the trenches are a hellish bid for seemingly senseless death. Only Alistair, who prepares for university, wants to stay and mind his blind aunt, but badgered by rascals and the dreaded white chicken feather, ends up joining and filling the ever-growing list of French/Belgian front casualties. Villagers are confronted with corpses closer to home due to the germen zeppelin attacks.

Although Italy was Austria-Hungary's sworn ally before the war, it soon switched to the Allied side, hoping it could quickly steal grab part of the Alpine border lands, notably Souther Tyrol, while the Hapsburg troops were occupied fighting Russians and Serbians. But the 'civilian' locals put up a stern defense, making best use of superior knowledge of the merciless mountains. The Italians get pinned down and are forced to destroy the villages they wanted to annex. Austrian boy Tobias Klein is seized with his beloved donkey, forced at gunpoint to guide Italian ...

Supplies by sea were vital for the warring parties, so they try to sink each-others ships, notably by German submarines, causing tragic shortages of strategic and ordinary goods, even food and fertilizer. Neutral countries could trade with both sides, but as the war progressed, Germany resorted to a total blockade of the British island. The story shows an Aericna family returning home from the Netherlands over England by Dutch ship. Aboard, German deserter stowaway Joachim Herz is found, hiding him proves too dangerous.

After the Austrian troops wrecked his home and killed his family, orphan Misha Pterowski happily volunteers in the czar's army, a common practice. the war goes terribly, yet he can't understand that adult soldiers applaud the republican revolution and peace with the axis powers. He gets caught in conflicting loyalties with most terrible consequences after the Bolshevik second revolution overturns the social and military order.

Although an armistice ends fighting on the front, millions of (notably German) POWs remain captive during the peace negotiations, some even afterwards, as part of the 'war reparations' converted in kind. Thus Peter Fuchs is assigned to the war widow Bonnet's farm, where the orphaned kids initially bitterly resent even feeding the hardworking young man they associate with father's killer, yet will end up as a near-father figure by before his release.