richard denardo, and can trina, senior lecturer of history in the united kingdom. >> let's talk abouthow it begun. did anybody contemplate the possibility of destruction that was emerging in the summer of 1914? >> i don't think so. i think if you could have fast forwarded four or five years and shown the leaders of 1914, the war they were creating, i don't think any of them would have made the decision to go to war. the war they had in their minds was shorter conflict that could be resolved in a matter of months, and hopefully put theyer theitheir country in a better situation. the destruction of the monarchs, and the end of the similar that hathat--the end of the system that had been seen for centuries, no one saw that. >> they started with weapons and ended with 21st century tools. >> the prussian war was over quickly. the no one had imagined the kind of scale in which it would be fought. and so very quickly everyone realized that they found themselves in the 20th century war. in 1915 the germans had done a study, and they found out that in the first five months of combat in the wes