Germany and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria squeeze pincers on Serbia at the city of Nisch. Germany and Austria-Hungary began their joint invasion across Serbia's norther border on October 6, 1915. Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers on October 14, and invaded Serbia from the east. Nisch fell to the invaders on November 5.The Serbia capital of Belgrade on the Danube and the city of Monastir on the Greek border are marked with initials.Handmade postcard map dated November 12, 1915.
Image text: Serbien Kopot, Kapot, Kaput (?)[Serbian King] Peter bankraft, bankratt (?)Marked are the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary.Deliblat (?)Reverse:Unsern tapferen Truppen im Felde gewidmet von der Tintenfabrik Eduard Beyer, Chemnitz i/s - Teplitz i/s.Dedicated to our courageous forces in the field from the ink factory Edward Beyer, Chemnitz i/s - Teplitz i/s
A Swiss postcard of 'The European War' in 1914. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary face enemies to the east, west, and south. Germany is fighting the war it tried to avoid, battling Russia to the east and France to the west. Germany had also hoped to avoid fighting England which came to the aid of neutral (and prostrate) Belgium, and straddles the Channel. Austria-Hungary also fights on two fronts, against Russia to the east and Serbia and Montenegro to the south. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared neutrality, and looks on. Other neutral nations include Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Japan enters from the east to battle Germany. The German Fleet stays close to port in the North and Baltic Seas while a German Zeppelin targets England. The Austro-Hungarian Fleet keeps watch in the Adriatic. Turkey is not represented, and entered the war at the end of October, 1914; Italy in late May, 1915.
Image text: Der Europäische KriegThe European WarReverse:Kriegskarte No. 61. Verlag K. Essig, BaselKunstanstalt (Art Institute) Frobenius A.G. Basel
Women workers in a German munitions factory. The man on the right is holding a cigarette.
Image text:
Western Ottoman Empire showing the travels of Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War, from his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent.
Image text: Legend for the author's travels for the years 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918.
"The government is sure that it will retain the trust of the National Assembly as long as it works for great causes, the Serbian state and the Serb-Croat and Slovene peoples. . . . it considers its most important and, at this fateful time, its sole task as being to secure a successful end to that great war which, at the moment of its inception, also became a struggle for the liberation and unification of all our brother Serbs, Croats and Slovenes who are not free." ((1), more)
". . . the operations in the Dardanelles were drawing to a close. On the 3rd November the newly constituted War Committee of the Cabinet met for the first time. It was opposed, as General Joffre found, to the Balkan operations, and the following day Lord Kitchener himself proceeded to the Gallipoli peninsula. The Cabinet on the 7th December agreed to the evacuation of Anzac and Suvla, and this was completed on the 20th of that month. On the 27th the abandonment of the peninsula was agreed to and the evacuation of Helles was completed on the 8th January 1916." ((2), more)
"A Wandsworth jury yesterday returned a verdict that a girl of 16, a worker in an explosives factory, died from T.N.T. poisoning. A Government contractor said that he had 2,000 employees, practically all girls, and this was the only death. no one under 18 or over 45 was engaged. The girl had said she was 18. They now had a new type of machinery, so that T.N.T. would be very little handled by the workers. The work would be done under glass screens, excluding dust. Dr. Legge said only a small class were susceptible to T.N.T. poisoning. This class were those under 18 and the Ministry of Munitions is taking steps to prevent the employment of anyone under 18. The jury suggested that girls should be required to provide their birth certificates." ((3), more)
"The date for the attack on Jerusalem was fixed as December 8th. Welsh troops, with a cavalry regiment attached, had advanced from their positions north of Beersheba up the Hebron-Jerusalem road on the 4th. No opposition was met, and by the evening of the 6th the head of this column was ten miles north of Hebron. The infantry was directed to reach the Bethlehem-Beit Jala area by the 7th, and the line Surbahir-Sherafat (about three miles south of Jerusalem) by dawn on the 8th, and no troops were to enter Jerusalem during this operation. . . .On the 7th the weather broke, and for three days rain was almost continuous. The hills were covered with mist at frequent intervals, rendering observation from the air and visual signaling impossible. A more serious effect of the rain was to jeopardize the supply arrangement by rendering the roads almost impassable—quite impassable, indeed, for mechanical transport and camels in many places." ((4), more)
(1) Excerpt from a statement by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić to the Serbian National Assembly convened in Niš (Nisch) on December 7, 1914. The government had fled Belgrade for the relative safety of Niš. The Niš Declaration summarized Serbia's war aims: not only the expansion of Serbia to include areas largely populated by Serbs, but a unified nation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the union of south Slavs, that Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Franz Ferdinand, sought.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, pp. 95, 96, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
(2) The operations in the Dardanelles, both naval operations and the Gallipoli invasion, had failed to meet their objectives. In a failed attempt to aid Serbia which was unable to withstand an invasion by the combined forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, French and British forces had landed at Salonika in Greece. Although driven by the Bulgarians, some in France, including Commander-in-Chief Joffre, saw value in keeping an active front in the Balkans. British War Minister Kitchener visited both Greece and Gallipoli to take stock of the situation. He recommended evacuating Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove, two of the three positions held by the Allies, the third being Cape Helles.
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915, Vol. II, Battles of Aubers Ridge, Festubert, and Loos by J. E. Edmonds, pp. 406, 407, copyright © asserted, publisher: Macmillan and Co., Limited, publication date: 1928
(3) Excerpt from The Star, December 7, 1916. The Bulletin of the United Kingdom's National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies dated December 12 reported that 41 munitions workers died of T.N.T. poisoning in the six months ending October 31, 1916. Both publications were published immediately after the Barnslow Munitions Factory explosion of December 5 which killed 38, 35 of them women. Wandsworth is a borough in southwest London.
The Virago Book of Women and the Great War by Joyce Marlow, Editor, page 171, copyright © Joyce Marlow 1998, publisher: Virago Press, publication date: 1999
(4) Excerpt from the account by British General Edmund Allenby of the advance through Palestine on Jerusalem in December, 1917. The British advance from Egypt had been halted at Gaza, where the Turks were twice victorious early in the year, but the Turks lost the city and the Third Battle of Gaza on November 6.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. V, 1917, pp. 406–407, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
