Postcard of the ships of the German South Seas Squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral Graf von Spee: S.M.S. Nürnberg, Leipzig, Scharnhorst, Dresden, and Gneisenau.
Das Deutsche Südsee-Geschwader.Graf v. Spee, Vice-Admiral.S.M.S. NürnbergS.M.S. LeipzigS.M.S. ScharnhorstS.M.S. DresdenS.M.S. GneisenauThe German South Sea Squadron.[S.M.S. - Seiner Majestäts Schiff - His Majesty's Ship]A 142
Black and white postcard with an embossed floral border, and a calendar for 1914. Two girls play at a water trough fashioned from a log, ribbons in their hair, and toy boats floating. On the trough, a poem:"This little card I send, and prayThat round about your path each dayThe light of love may shine alway."E. Hutchinson806J Copyright. Beagles' Postcards © Beagles' Postcards
Calendar from the French magazine Le Petit Journal with scenes including (clockwise from top left) the capture of a German battle flag by Zouaves and Chasseurs à pied, a French artillery crew manning a 75mm. field gun, a dragoon moving into position, a heavier gun firing, entrenched troops, and marines advancing. The calendar includes Roman Catholic holy days, saints days, fête nationale (Bastille Day), and the time of sunrise and sunset. Illustration by L. Bomblec (?).
Children dressed as Allied soldiers run to bring the New Year, 1916. France carries the 1, the United Kingdom (in a kilt) and Belgium — his national roundel on his hat — the 9, Serbia and Russia the 1 of the decade, and Italy the 6. Japan, bearing a flag, hurries to catch up. A folding calendar card for 1916 by G. Bertrand.Reverse: the calendar for 1916Inside:With best wishes for a happy Christmas with love from Wallis
1917 Wedgwood Calendar Tile with the United States Navy Yard in Boston on the face, and the 1917 calendar on the reverse.
1918 YMCA folding calendar card of two child French and American soldiers dancing beneath a ball of mistletoe and the words "With much Love", by Ray or R.A.Y.
"At 7 o'clock the sun set, and Spee, having now every advantage of light, opened fire at 12,000 yards. The Good Hope in reply made a hit or two, but her forward 9.2 gun was soon knocked out, and the ship was on fire. The Monmouth was also burning within three minutes. The Glasgow was engaged by both the Leipzig and the Dresden, but was saved by the German smoke which drifted towards her. With the sunset glow behind them, our ships were a fair target, while the British gunners could no longer see anything but the flash of the enemy's guns. Both the Good Hope and the Monmouth were continually on fire, and at 7.45 the flagship blew up with an explosion which sent up flames 200 feet high. By 8 o'clock the Monmouth too was silenced and sinking in the heavy sea; as the moon rose the German ships could just be seen closing on her." *
" — During the last few years a prominent manufacturer in the Rue d'Avron has been loudly complaining of German competition declaring that it could not last, that we must have a war without delay. He had four sons. The war broke out. Three sons were killed, the fourth was carefully posted ten miles behind the line. But even there a shell reached him and killed him. His father and mother have committed suicide. — An echo of the attack of the 25th September. A colonel received the order to attack. He noticed that the artillery had not made adequate preparations, that his regiment would simply be massacred. He telephoned to H.Q., which replied : 'It is not your business to argue about your orders, but to carry them out.' The colonel went over the top alone and was killed." *
"At nine in the morning on November 1, the order was given to go forth from the trenches. There was a moment of hesitation, but on our left the 125th Regiment went out with élan and swept right over the first German line.Seeing that they were being outflanked by the 125th Regiment, the Germans came out of their holes with arms raised, calling out 'Comrades! Comrades!' This word is now known in all languages.Their obliging machine gunners carried their murderous machines across their shoulders." *
"[Hauptman Rudolph] Kleine launched his first incendiary raid on the evening of 31 October [1917] with twenty-two Gothas. They were loaded with over six tons of bombs, nearly half of them incendiaries. A departure schedule was worked out to stagger the take-off over a period of almost three hours. The attack plan called for a stream of bombers to reach the south-east coast at Deal. From there, they were to fly across Kent and approach London from the south, thereby avoiding the heavy defences to the east. Because of rising winds over the Channel and low clouds over Kent, this route proved to be a mistake." *
"[Admiral Hipper's] tragic hesitation at the moment of greatest danger is apparent in his inept handling of the men and his total misjudgment of the situation. Although by November 1 it was obvious that the men were out of control, Hipper informed Scheer at the Seekriegsleitung that he saw no reason why the situation should be viewed pessimistically. Aghast at this calm amidst the disaster that was overtaking the fleet, the Seekriegsleitung curtly replied, 'We cannot concur with this view. It has been established that a military operation has been ruined by the illegal will of [certain] elements within the crews.' . . .Totally lacking in defensive measures, Kiel lay at the mercy of the rebellious sailors and stokers of the Third Squadron who, from the moment they landed in the city, were determined not to allow their recently arrested comrades to be martyred. . . . At a meeting on November 1 at the Trade Union Hall attended by 250 men from the Third Squadron, it was decided to form a committee to negotiate the prisoners' immediate release. At the same time it was agreed to convene another meeting for the following day in the event that those demands were not met." *
* Quotation contexts and sources
During the four and half years of the Great War from the summer of 1914 to November 11, 1918, over eight million combatants and six million civilians died. In battle, they were killed by new and increasingly powerful weapons, 70% by artillery fire, and in higher percentages than in Europe's wars of the previous century. Civilians died from starvation, from being shelled and bombed, and from genocidal operations against ethnic minorities.
In the war and its aftermath, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were destroyed, and new nations were born and reborn.
New technologies were invented and young ones advanced rapidly - the airplane, poison gas, the machine gun, the tank, flame-throwers, submarines. Industrial production of the technologies, of shells, of bullets, of barbed wire, grew to unprecedented levels.
Societies changed. Women entered the wage labor market to free men up for combat and to meet the production demands of the war. Passports, identity cards, and increased border controls became increasingly common.
When the war itself ended, related wars continued: in Russia, Civil War between the new Bolshevik government and its enemies, both foreign and domestic; in Turkey, war by Greece to seize islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of the mainland of Turkey itself; in Ireland, war for independence from Great Britain.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary, a team of seven conspirators with grenades, pistols and cyanide capsules/tablets, joined the crowds that had turned out to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg. A failed assassination attempt - a grenade that slightly wounded spectators and two in the royal couple's entourage - altered some plans and led to other events. A planned visit to City Hall went ahead, but a decision to visit the victims in hospital necessitating a changed route, a failure to inform the drivers of the change, the lead driver's attempt to back to correct the mistake - put the Archduke's stopped car in front of the most determined of the assassins, the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He stepped forward, averted his eyes, and fired twice, shooting the Archduke through the throat and his wife through the groin. The couple was dead within an hour. The gun, the bombs, the cyanide Princip took, and some of the conspirators would be traced to Serbia.
The Archduke was not popular in Austria-Hungary, and the reaction to his death was muted. But Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, polyglot nation with populations that wanted to leave the empire. Princip had acted to advance his vision of a union of South Slavs that included Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Vienna, the capital, government officials feared the rise of Serbia, which had been victorious and doubled its size in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.
Initial concerns in other European capitals of an Austro-Hungarian response to the assassination lessened as July passed. In Petersburg, the Russian capital, government officials felt they must support Serbia if Austria-Hungary acted. The French and Russian governments communicated their support of their alliance and mutual commitment to aid the other in the event of war. The government of Great Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente with Russia and France, heard little that alarmed it. In Berlin, capital of the German Empire, which was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, there was support for a quick and limited military action by Austria-Hungary.
Defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and humiliated in 1908 when it failed its Balkan ally Serbia, and did not prevent Austria-Hungary's incorporation of Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina, many government officials in Russia felt the country must act in the next crisis when it inevitably arose. Many in the French government wanted to restore the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but feared a Germany that had a population half again as large as that of France, and worked to strengthen its ties with Russia, in part by financing its ally's rapid recovery from the 1905 war. Having seen the creation and rise of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, that had all wrested land and nationhood from the Ottoman Empire, and had come close to eliminating Turkey in Europe, Austria-Hungary feared losing its peoples and territories to these nations and to nations that did not yet exist. Great Britain, with the most powerful fleet in the world, and rule over one quarter of the world's population, but with a small army that was not structured for a European land war, was troubled by Germany's expansion and strengthening of its fleet. Many in the German military thought that war with Russia was inevitable, and that, with the recovery of Russia from the war and revolution of 1915, it should come sooner rather than when Russia had become even stronger. The military also feared a two-front war, facing France to the west, and Russia to the east. The military plan to address this, the Schlieffen Plan, aimed for a rapid defeat of France so that troops could be transported by rail across Germany to face the slowly-mobilizing Russians.
When Austria-Hungary's response to evidence that Serbia had played a role in the assassination came, there was little time for governments to react. Austria-Hungary submitted demands of Serbia that included unconditional acceptance within 24 hours. As European governments learned of the response, and hurried to react, Serbia accepted all by one of Austria-Hungary's demands, that which most impinged upon its sovereignty. The ambassador receiving the response left immediately for Vienna. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the next day bombarded Belgrade, its capital.
Russia mobilized its army in support of Serbia, but with a mobilization plan that activated troops facing not only Austria-Hungary but also Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg to begin its assault on France. France ordered general mobilization effective August 2, and began executing its plan to attack Germany along their border, through Alsace and Lorraine. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and requested passage of its troops through Belgium to attack France along its northern border. Belgium, defending the neutrality that France, Germany, and Great Britain had pledged to support, refused. On August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. In Great Britain, where there was significant opposition to the war, the invasion of Belgium shifted the opinion of the public and the government. Britain declared war on Germany.
Across Europe, millions of men were in motion, on trains, horseback, and on foot. France and Britain were bringing troops and laborers from its colonies and the British Commonwealth, France from Algeria, Senegal, and Dahomey, Britain from Egypt and India. Generals had not assembled armies this large before, and had not put them into motion, nor led them into battle. Most generals, most soldiers, most civilians thought the war would end in months, that their their army would be in Berlin, in Paris, in Petersburg, by Christmas, before 1915. Only a few saw this war would be different, and would not end for years.
