I am Indy Neidell, host and author of The Great War YouTube channel retelling the story of World War 1, AMA!

Bring it on!

How much preparation goes into each segment? And what kind of research is done to prepare?

I think we answer that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XThr2B242LY

Hey Indy, being basic here but I absolutely love the show! Wish I discovered it earlier because it took me 2 weeks to catch up earlier this year. Anyway, I have 2 questions, one unrelated and one a bit in advance. First: What happened to the 'it's history' channel? I really liked the videos, is it the lack of subscriptions or was it just something personal? Is there a way to revive it? Second: I'm really curious of how the treaty of Versailles was recieved, we all know the famous quote by Foch about the armestice for 20 years, but rather how the French and English public recieved it... Oh and little sidenote, you know the story of Maurice Ravel and Paul Wittgenstein? Really interesting story! Anyway, my message is getting too long! Cheers from The Netherlands!

About It's History: It was mainly a money issue. TGW is not even making profit (though we are very close) and It's History was basically not sustainable for us and we rather focused on one thing to make it right.

Not completely ruling out doing something similar ever again, but we'd rather secure funding first.

If you are loosing money making the channel, how are you able to go on? Is someone covering your losses? Do you trhink you will make back the money later, ie by selling tv rights or the like?

We are working full time on this project and are actually paid doing so. The company behind the channel is Mediakraft Network, a German MCN and they put up the money for it until we cover the costs and make a profit.

The idea for a project like this is to have a lasting effect. People discovering our channel now are watching the videos from two years ago and they will still be valid when the show has ended.

As history is written by the winners, how do you choose the frame and nuance of your story? For example, the western view of the Russian war is different from Russian accounts. How do you decide the direction and viewpoint?

That's of course a very important topic, we of course consult different sources, the team next to Indy is German, so we usually get different angles already and we have a very dedicated community, they already write to us about certain things that are important to them and how they perceive them before we get to the events. That's really helpful.

Love your show guys keep up the great work but my question is could you possibly do an episode on the blue putees ( dunno how to spell it ) or the newfoundland regiment?

Sorry, that probably an unsatisfactory answer:

We have to focus on some of the big players at the moment, because that's important for the teachers using our show in class and if we have time after that, we might be able to make an episode about Newfoundland.

We will of course talk about them more during the show.

Howcome all the maps you use in the episodes show countries' borders as they were before the war? Wouldn't it be useful to show who held which territory during the week in question (with fuzzy colors for ambiguous control) ?

Yes, that would be really useful. Thing is we are operating on a shoestring budget and at the moment we don't have the budget to pay our motion designer more and things like Jutland, Brusilov Offensive and the Somme are really pushing us to the limit here.

But it's definitely something on our list to add.

Ahh, thanks for answering. I've been doing a monthly donation for a while now. Hope more people join in, and you can use that money for maps like that! It would really help follow along on the weekly episodes!

It definitely helps, just compare our early animations with the ones from Jutland last week.

How's your nephew Macklemore doing?

Isn't he on tour with some other dude?

Do you guys have any metrics on how many subscribers you guys got due to the Battlefield 1 announcement?

we got around 30,000 or so by this point from that.

*at least

Battlefield 1 was announced on May 6th. In the last month they've gained about 40 thousand subscribers, compared to the previous month of about 17 thousand. Views is more drastic, about 4 million this past month and 2.6 million from the month before.

Source: http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/TheGreatWar

And the great thing so far is, that people seem to stay and didn't just come for Battlefield 1 videos.

Hi Indy and crew! I came in late and have just devoured all of your videos. Just love you channel!

As it looks like you will make the 10k mark on Patreon. What sort of content are you thinking about doing when visiting places of The Great War?

Too add to Indy's answer, we will probably see what scars WW1 left and what you can still see of that.

Love everything you do! After the great war is over will you continue with the second world war?

This is our official elaborate maybe: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGreatWarChannel/comments/4ksvy2/will_you_guys_ever_do_a_ww2_channel_our_official/

Woah! Hold on a second! '''.../u/IndyNeidell: hmm... historian, actor, writer, ex-rock star- Texan Indy Neidell...'' Ex-rock star??? Indy is there something I have to know about? Please could you enlighten me about this phase of your life!

Used to play with Swedish act Moneybrother. Grammys, gold records, huge tours. Biggest show I ever played was Roskilde 2004- 22,000 people.

Suddenly the whole Eurovision Cameo makes sense.

He is also a professional voice actor, did gigs for MTV Nordic for example.

What tactics worked best when assaulting the trenches? I know of the creeping barrage, but I would like to have far more knowledge on the subject.

I recommend two videos about the topic from our show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKUd8bvQfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsSxBSYdlsA

If you want to read more about it, go for Erwin Rommel's Infantry Attacks.

Paraphrasing Remarque here: Melee weapons, a lot of hand grenades, constant movement and the element of surprise were key.

Thanks! As one final thing, I hope you have a great day!

Thanks, you too. Beautiful summer evening here in Berlin.

Any sexual/bondage things going on in the war?

All fun aside, your channel is super important. In many cases the first world war gets entirely skipped in schools. Thank you for taking the time to properly research the subjects and explain them in a well produced manner. Ever thought in creating DVDs for schools?

Apparently (and that's something we are investigating at the moment) there might have been some homosexual kinks going on in the trenches. It's a big topic and goes way into the perceived role of sexuality and sexes in society before the war. So, before we make an episode about it or anything, we really want to make sure we know what we are talking about.

Would you rather hunt 100 duck-sized horses with Franz Ferdinand or hunt one horse-sized duck?

Indy says: 100 duck sized horses because it would be cute at least until the point where Franz pulls out his machine gun which he used for hunting.

When 2039 comes around would you guys be interested in doing a World War II series in the same manner as your Great War series?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGreatWarChannel/comments/4ksvy2/will_you_guys_ever_do_a_ww2_channel_our_official/

What are your thoughts on the upcoming BF1 game? A potential media where it could get people interested in the lesser known campaigns/fronts of the Great War? Or could it have potentially the Dan Carlin/Enemy at the Gates effect, where everything in it is taken as fact?

We are pretty excited about it because it brings a lot of interest to our show and this subject which deserves more attention. More over, we actually learned some things from the community too that were in the trailer and are hoping it will have the same effect for other people.

What're your thoughts on Dan Carlin's retrospective of World War I?

Good overview about the different characters and locations.

Even though we have 2 more years to go, are there any plans on what to do after WWI has been covered? Will you be making a new series on a different war, a generic history channel perhaps?

EDIT: nvm, saw that you covered this on a different question already. Thanks!

Thanks for all the hard work, I love watching your videos every week!

Glad you like the show and that you read comments from other people.

By the way how can we get this amazing Foch You Posters? Is there a store? :D

there is: shop.thegreatwar.tv

And yes, we are working on improving the shipping costs.

I love your content! What will you do when you are done with the first world war?

Right now we are really not sure and are focussing on finishing the project which is still 2 1/2 years. But we have some ideas, among them WW2 and the inter wars period. But you never know what comes around.

For Indy and the rest of the crew: how long before the launch of the channel in August-ish of 2014 were you guys preparing for the series? When did the idea initially come to frutition?

Indy was preparing for it for about 3 months, I came aboard 2 weeks before the first video launched. We made a lot of overtime back then.

Have you ever played Verdun? It's a WW1 game on Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/thegreatwarchannel

Why did you guys choose to do WW1 and not WW2 or 3?

The Centennial came up and we had access to a lot of WW1 videos from the archive from British Pathé.

Bonus: We were all always interested in WW1 and it deserves more attention.

Can i ask here a question for "out of trenches" ?

It will probably get lost here, it's pretty busy. You can ask it in our subreddit though /r/TheGreatWarChannel

Hi Indy & Co, great to see you here! Are you gonna do a "Who did what" on some of the generals on the Macedonian front?

Yes, we will. A Bulgarian fan helped us with a research about a Bulgarian general who served there. Pretty famous from what I remember.

Could the tanks of World War 1 be equipped with anti-mine plows that could plow over and bury alive soldiers that were in the trenches?

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4mhx4r/til_that_during_the_gulf_war_when_american_forces/

AFAIR they were equipped with devices against obstacles. And these probably didn't care much about enemy soldiers. But that's something we would need to look up again.

Hey Indy, love the show. Can you and the team share your ideas about how the Central Powers could have won WW1?

You will see in upcoming weeks on our show that they were pretty close in 1916 and 1915 and the big problem was usually coordination between them. If Conrad and Falkenhayn would have been as close at the propaganda claimed, they could have achieved much more and in 1915 and 1916 including winning the war.

If you could travel back in time, would you prevent (or atleast try to) ww1 ?

The question is: If we prevent WW1 as we know it, wouldn't they come up with another excuse for war a few months later.

Why isn't there a go fund me link?

Because there is one for Patreon? http://patreon.com/thegreatwar