What's In Europe's LARGEST WWI Museum??? History Traveler Episode 319

The description of the items (weapons, etc...) are only in french?

As for the chauchat, the modified American version of if was garbage. THe french version worked as it was designed. It was a cheap, easily manufactured, automatic gun for rapide mass production. The soldier were trained to be careful with the magazine.

Meaux = mo. Simple.

Hello, i'm french and live near Paris. i went to this museum a few weeks ago, ignoring it was purposely the biggest of its kind in Europe. Very nice collection of uniforms and diverse artifacts, some nicely rehabilitated vehicles. The little problem is that's its mainly focused on german / french front with only a few mentions or exemples from other fronts (turquey / Dardanelles, Eastfront, or arabian front). Anyway it's a nice spot if you're going to Paris for a few moment and if you've got time... and are found of WWI history of course. Good alternative to a visit of the landbattles, much farther. Notice that the museum is almost at the maximum point of advance of the german army in 1914. Thanks for this very good video (and yes, you pronounce just "MO" but with an "O" in the french style !).

I am not French but I am pretty sure you pronounce it as Mo

Nice tour.... thanks.

You prononced the name of the city right ;) (i'm living there)..
Just think of Simpson's bar owner Moe if you don't want to be confused, it's sounding exactly the same

I lived inMeaux. in the Marne valley district outside of Paris . East. We were there building Euro Disney. I even met Roy Disney. That was 1992. That museum must be new.

British troops pronounced Ypres as "Wipers" my granddad was in Mons before WWI began and was one of only four survivors of his regiment at Ypres he was back in Mons on the last day of WWI

You should visit Overloon (Holland) sometime. You also have Milletracks for German vehicles in Mai and one for allied vehicles in June around the museum.

Meaux pronounced: "Mo"

Just an anecdote. Lieutnant Patton learned to drive a tank on a Renault FT17 and created the first US Tank Group in Langres, near to the US HQ in Chaumont (East of Troyes).
When he came back to the USA, he met Captain Eisenhower who was a tank regiment commander too - also on FT17s.
Another famous Captain kind of trained its future logistics skills in France: Marshall.
Not telling all glorious US stories, sorry, too long for here...

Very nice vidéo, Meaux is pronounced Mo like the character from the Simpsons.

Hey JD, when you showed that "French 75" I was kind of surprised that you did not expand on it. It was perhaps the most successful artillery piece of the war and set the standard for modern field guns. It was the first to use a hydraulic-pneumatic piston recoil buffer and did not move hardly at all during repeated firing, unlike those big Krupp guns that would "roll recoil" back 10 yards every shot. It also has full "counter-recoil" mechanism to place the gun back into firing position after every shot. It also had the "Nordenfeldt" type breech mechanism, which uses a rotating block with a notch cut into one side. When rotated, the notch exposes the chamber so a round could be inserted, then the block was rotated back and closed. All these features made these amazing guns super quick and accurate to fire and a good crew could get 25-30 rounds per minute from these 3 inch cannons! Pretty amazing for a cannon designed in 1897! During development, the French military kept these guns a highly guarded secret especially how the recoil system worked. The French Army loaned several hundred of them to the USMC when they entered the battle on the Allied side late in the war. The USMC also loved their "French 75's". I think you could possibly do an episode covering these guns all by themselves! Jerry

pigeon wrangler 🤠

As a German when you look back into history, you have to hate France. This country is the cause for all the fucked up things which happened. The audacity of France is astonishing, pushing west further and further, annexing more and more German land over the centuries, starting a war against German countries every generation and having the audacity to be revanchised after losing ethnically German land after a war they started. Which they annexed first, we just took it back.
And then being pissed because the Germans united, became more powerfull, a united entity and the French couldn’t bully small little German states.

But then it’s okay when Germany loses 20% of its territory with a majority of ethnical Germans inside. Denying the self determination of Germans to unite after the first WW in Austria and sudentenland and Poland.

And even today, they always vote against German politics for the disadvantage of Germany. When it comes to military cooperation, Germany paid for research, testing, but factories, workers and economy should have been in France.

Fuck France.

If it makes you feel better, I couldn’t speak French to save my life either

I visited this museum a couple of times whilst living in France, I am so happy to see it again here. I highly recommend going to all those who can

Don't they have a replica of the Flame Throwers used in the trenches?

Maybe go to soesterberg in the netherlands, nationaal militair museum.

A very moving progression towards war, and depressing. In the comparison of uniforms and alliances, I’m quite certain that the Italians sided solidly with France, Russia, and the UK. The Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Turks were the Triple Entente. We can be thankful that the Germans were saddled with two obsolete Empires-that of the Austrian-Hungarians and the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire’s.
An excellent Museum is the Austrian Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna.

thanks you for the cool tour. i would love to visit it myself!

You did an amazing job about Verdun and I really enjoyed you presenting some of the less knows aspects of this era. Thank you, and your videos should be presented to kids. Funny to think that I would not be here if my grandpa did not survive Verdun. He never talked about it... My great uncle died in 1914 near Germany though. I do not know if you went to the "Butte de Vauquois". I think this is the worse illustration of men trying to create hell on earth.

I visited the ww1 museum in Meaux a few years back and was disappointed about the lack of British and British commonwealth displays on show (just a few uniforms) and not much mention of the British/ British empire of the time (India,Canada,Australia, New Zealand, Africa, only to mention a few) involvement, but they managed a whole display for the American army.

No History is in there for a start. ALL Wars are Fake.

C'est JF Coppé qui est à l'origine de ce musée, car une énorme collection privé menaçais d'être dispersé et donc la ville de Meaux à solutionné ce soucis en créant ce superbe musée que je recommande à tous.

Although the Chauchat wasn’t perfect it was far from being junk. The US version really didn’t help with the reputation of the gun. The .30 US just was too powerful a round for a gun that was designed for a round that was initially a black powder round. The French built these guns pretty much hand fitting each part, so you just couldn’t replace worn or broken parts in the field. The odd semi-circular magazine is a product of the odd shaped 8mm Lebel round.
If you get a chance, read “Honor Bound” . It is the history of the Chauchat. There were many awards given to the French Chauchat MG teams that cleared many a German trench. After WWI the Chauchat was adopted by quite a few European countries all the way to WWII.

Germany as a nation did not exists before the Franco Prussian war, it was as a result of this war that Bismark was able to put pressure on other Germanic states to join Prussia in becoming a true country. Bismark is one of the worst people in European history, with all three of the wars (Franco Prussian, Great/1st war and the second world war) being directly as a result of his political stance

No doubt someone else mentioned this, but your camera's "anti- flicker" will be set for North America's 60Hz electricity frequency. In much of the rest of the world, you need to select 50Hz in the menus...

A terrible conflict that did not solve anything and led to the next world war

Jonathan Ferguson is better

The french will fight without someone backing them?!?!?

Thanks for sharing your video

America fought only one major campaign in WW!, 4 years after the war began, & claimed victory..😁

A vulgarian, always a good bet in the US.

Quick note: This museum came to life basically be cause of a single man. He had spent his entire life building up the largest private collection of WWI uniforms and trench art. When he died, he gave his entire collection to the city of Meaux which ended up with an entire warehouse full of his collection. And they decided to build a museum to display this collection, and then added more stuffs and it became the museum you see today.
One of the best I've seen on WWI.

Italy fought against Germany duh

This museum is amazing- I've been to the French Army museum and the Tomb of Napoleon, which is fantastic but It has nowhere near as much WW I artifacts. Thanks very much for that- I'll be seeing this museum on my return to France.

Went to a great one at verdun

One thing we found out reenacting the First World War about the French "sky blue" uniforms the trousers and overcoats was that they at night especially moonlit nights it was very difficult "to see" the French soldiers/reenactors during any night time raid or attack so it was like a night time camouflage for the French side

I've been to this museum so many times, if anyone has a doubt about it being worth visiting: JUST DO IT

I don't really want to put down the words "My Favorite War" because you know, wars can and do come at a tremendous cost of human life, but if I really did have to name my favorite war, it would be WW1. It is the conflict that fascinates me the most. Thanks for sharing T.H.U.!!

Seeds of France-Germany rivalry can be said to have started in the Napoleonic Wars.

The German states were subjected to French invasion, conquest, and humiliating occupation and reparations payments.

Franco-Prussian War, WWI, and WW2 were the culmination—and in the case of WW2–the denouement of a centuries long back-and-forth struggle.

Thanks very much for this excellent video. You paid tribute to the ones who fought during WW I. My grandfather did on the Austro-Hungarian side, then moved to Mexico and here I am. Greetings from Mexico City.

No David Stars you’ll notice..

Never again Hun!!

At 7’15  it is worth mentioning that Italy remained neutral at first, before declaring war on Austria in may 1915.

Such a great video you did there ! Thank you