[Music] I think one really clear way of understanding the shift in world war one in terms of technology is that soldiers rode in on horses and they left in airplanes at the beginning of World War one warfare is almost in the 19th century style the French sincerely believed that going at the troops with determination at enemy troops is the way to go but they don't understand is the collision of technologies General Pershing didn't believe in the trench warfare he grew up on the plains fighting an Indian warfare where was an open concentration so he trained his troops to fight in the open warfare the British and French generals thought he was crazy they criticized it for this it's impossible to cross that deadly beaten zone the deadly zone between the two lines the most determined line of soldiers cannot oppose a machine gun which fires hundreds of rounds a minute [Music] World War one wasn't just the first industrial war it was also the first scientific war it was the first time that societies had taken all of their resources of science and intelligence and said how do we do this better how do we fight better how do we develop technologies a lot of the armaments you see in World War one had been used before submarines trench warfare Gatling guns machine guns what happens during World War one is that these become mature and these become even more destructive during the war the governments of all the different warring powers put enormous amounts of time and effort into scientific and technical development so that the advancements which would have happened anyway happen at a much more rapid pace and they happen according to the priorities of the warring powers something happened in trench warfare that changed the course of the war and changed the way we understand warfare today and that is chemical warfare the first gas attack it was at place called Vimy Ridge and it was mostly Canadian soldiers were being attacked and the Canadian soldiers who were in the trenches saw this cloud of bees coming towards them they had no gas masks they had no equipment to protect them chlorine gas causes your lungs to fill with liquid and so essentially you drown from the inside out it was really the first war in which all of the technologies and science and industry of the 19th century were put to the sole purpose of killing people [Music]