Austro-Hungarian trench art pencil drawing on pink paper of a soldier in a ragged, many-times-patched uniform, labeled 'Bilder ohne Worte' (No Comment, or Picture without Words). Kaiser Karl who succeeded Emperor Franz Joseph is on reverse. The printed text on the reverse is in Hungarian and German.
Bilder ohne WorteNo Comment
"The Austro-Hungarians had never really recovered from the devastating losses in Galicia and Serbia in the first year of the war. Since the beginning of the war, of the 8,420,000 men enrolled in the services, more than 4,000,000 had been lost, of whom 780,000 were dead, 500,000 were wounded and disabled, and over 1,600,000 were prisoners. In addition, industrial development within the empire had been limited and the economy was still predominantly agrarian. To make matters worse, the blockade enforced by the Western Allies was creating desperate shortages of raw materials and food."
Summary of Austria-Hungary's situation at the end of 1917. Austria-Hungary's three 1914 invasions of Serbia failed at great cost. In four battles against Russia the same year, Austria-Hungary lost its northeastern province of Galicia, much of the Empire's rolling stock, and 350,000 men.
Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign: The Italian Front 1915–1918 by John MacDonald with Željko Cimprić, page 176, copyright © John MacDonald, 2011, 2015, publisher: Pen and Sword Books, publication date: 2011
Austria-Hungary, 1917-12-29, 1917, December,
