4 October 1917: The Battle of Broodseinde—A British & A.N.Z.A.C. attack benefited from three years' hard-won combined-arms expertise: infantry aimed for limited, achievable objectives, supported by suppressing fire from artillery & machine guns & accompanied by tanks; the Entente's best day of Passchendaele demoralized the Germans, who began preparations for a strategic withdrawal.
Lest we forget.
Commentary: It is a source of considerable irritation to your humble narrator that this study of the Great War of 1914-1918 can be nothing more than a partial survey, even with the effective abandonment of the policy of devoting one episode of "The Explorers' Club" per month to a subject other than the Weltkrieg. Even if three new episodes was devoted to the war every week, we'd still only be scratching the surface of what was truly a worldwide & total war. There was so much happening as the war entered its final year, unbeknownst to its belligerents, that we just cannot cover the Battle of Passchendaele in the detail we might like, & yet even in covering Passchendaele in the scant detail we are there remain other happenings that we simply have neither the time nor the resources to address in adequate detail—elsewhere on the Western Front, the Russian Revolution, the war on the high seas, the cat-&-mouse game of intelligence & counterintelligence, the Arab Revolt, the Salonika Front, massive social changes being wrought at home due to the upheaval of the war, & so much more! The whole world was at war, & we're barely scratching the surface. We once ran an "Explorers' Club Special" to highlight some kitschy images found relating to Bulgaria's late entrance into the war as the fourth member of the Central Powers, making it the Vierbund (Wayback Machine). Inspired by that special episode & fueled by the aforementioned irritation, we've decided, circumstances demanding & time permitting, to publish more than one episode per week.
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