Video transcript

In the last video, we talked about how the Serbians were able to hold back the Austro-Hungarians at the beginning of World War I. But eventually they had to give in. They couldn't hold up against the combined forces of the Bulgarians, the Austro-Hungarians, and the Germans. And they were able to roll through in 1915. And then we wait until 1918 for the Allies to essentially recapture Serbia. Now what is noteworthy-- there's many noteworthy things in World War I and obviously we can't cover all of them-- is just what a huge loss World War I was to the Serbian people. Just as a little bit of context, very small country-- we're talking 4.5 million people as we enter into World War I-- with a reasonably, I guess relative to the size of the country, it was a decent-sized army. But with an army we're talking on the order of 400,000 soldiers. And this was pretty much everyone in the country who could be in the army was essentially in the army. Over the course of the Serbian campaign and the Macedonian front, you essentially have the Serbian army getting decimated. You have 60% of the Serbian army dies. Roughly 60% of the Serbian army is killed. And even from a population point of view, the Serbian population is reduced by 16%. 16% of the Serbian population, civilian and military, is dead by the end of World War I. So a lot of countries suffered horribly during World War I. There's many notable ones, France, the Russian Empire. We could go on and on and on. But it would be hard to argue that any country suffered more than what the Serbians did. 60% of their military dead, 16% of their population.