The disparity in the number of nations arrayed against the Central Powers was a common motif, and was updated as the numbers on each side increased. Italy's entry into the war on May 23, 1915 changed the numbers again.Central Powers (top) Sultan Mohammed V of Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Allies (center and bottom rows) Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of the United Kingdom, President Raymond Poincaré of France, King Nikola of Montenegro, King Peter of Serbia, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, King Albert I of Belgium, Emperor Taishō of Japan.In the center, a poem: Drei gegen Acht, Three against Eight.
Image text: Drei gegen Acht.Gebt Acht, Ihr “Acht”, es blitzt und krachtund schlägt manch’ schwere Lücke.Jung-Siegfrieds Schwert schlug unversehrtDen Ambosz einst in Stücke.Und Treue, Mut und EinigkeitGeb’ uns zum Siege das Geleit.- Richard OttThree against eightTake heed, your "night" flashes and crashesAnd suggests some serious gap.Young Siegfried's sword split the anvilYet stayed intact.And loyalty, courage and unityWill lead us to victory.Reverse:Postmarked Frankfurt, July 21, 1915
French infantry charging 'à la baionnette'. The soldiers were sometimes ordered to remove their ammunition to ensure they fought and killed with the bayonet.
Image text: Guerre 1914 - 1915 Infanterie française 'Charge a la baionnette'.A 'Charge à la baïonnette' of the French infantery. - LL.
'December snow.' Hand-painted watercolor calendar for December 1917 by Schima Martos. Particulates from a smoking kerosene lamp overspread the days of December, and are labeled 'December höra,' 'December snow.' The first five days or nights of the month show a couple at, sitting down to, or rising from a lamp-lit table. The rest of the month the nights are dark, other than four in which the quarter of the moon shows through a window, or Christmas, when the couple stands in the light of a Christmas tree.
Image text: December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
Map of the North and Baltic Seas (labeledNord-See and Ostsee) from a folding postcard of five battlefronts: the Western and Eastern Fronts; North and Baltic Seas, Mediterranean and Black Seas; and the Serbian-Montenegro Front.
Image text: Karten sämtl. KriegsschauplätzeÖsterreichisch-serbisch-montenegrinisher Kriegsschauplatz.Deutsch - österreichisch - russischer Kriegsschauplatz.Deutsch - belgisch - französ. Kriegsschauplatz.Deutsch-englisch-russisch. Seekriegsschauplatz.Österreichisch - französisch-englischer Seekriegsschauplatz.Preis 20 HellerBei Änderungen der Kriegsschauplätze erscheint Nachtrag. Nachdruck verboten.Verlag Schöler, Wien-DöblingMaps all of theaters of warAustrian-Serbian-Montenegrin theater of war.German - Austrian - Russian theater of war.German - Belgian - French theater of war.English-German Russian - Sea theater of war.Austro - French-English - Sea theater of war.Price 20 HellerFor changes in the battle fronts, an addendum is shown. Reprinting prohibited.Publisher Schöler, Vienna-Döbling
Map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Image text:
"As daylight broke over another wet and cold autumn day King Albert departed from Nieuport-Bains at 09:00, this time for the County Town of Furnes. The queen also left the Crombez Mansion but an hour later. This time the small household staff had been able to arrange for the royal couple to stay at the Villa Maskens, which was some 10km further west. In her diary the queen wrote on 15 October: 'We are always the cuckoos that go in someone else's nest.'Soon after her departure the queen's motorcar ran into a traffic jam near the locks in Nieuport. Refugees with handcarts and wheelbarrows, and hundreds of despondent soldiers once belonging to the Garrison Army crowded the roads. This miserable procession did not end on the road to La Panne. Every poor soul seemed heading for France." ((1), more)
". . . former Minister of War . . . has taken a special interest in the consumptive soldier, but cannot manage to get him out of the army, where the poor fellow does nothing but spit up his lungs.— It appears that three months are necessary to restore the morale of the troops and to reorganise the formations for a fresh attack.— Shootings are frequent. Have I remarked that they had to set up a kind of appeal board, including a doctor, to check the extreme facility with which the courts martial were handing out death sentences?" ((2), more)
"Theodor Wolff, editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, also noted the mounting misery. In October 1916, 371 smugglers and profiteers including 126 fruit and vegetable sellers were arrested in Berlin. Special 'profiteering courts' (Wuchergerichte) handled up to 4000 cases per month." ((3), more)
"During the night of 14–15 October [1917], the Pripyat assisted by three motorboats laid a field of mines in Kassar Wick north of Cape Pawasterort. According to one account, the Pripyat's mutinous crew had been replaced by more reliable men drawn from the destroyers and torpedo boats. When the German flotillas returned to the inlet the next day, the destroyer B.98 had her bow blown off and had to be towed back to Libau. The destroyer B.112, in seeking a path around the new minefield, grounded and was put out of action. Nevertheless, the heavy fighting in the waters around the north of Ösel was really over." ((4), more)
"On October 15th the Franco-American armies between the Oise and the Argonne, headed towards Mézières, had come into contact with a strong German position (Hunding Stellung and Brunehilde Stellung) established along the general line La Fère—Crécy-sur-Serre—Sissone—Château-Porcien—Vouziers—Grandpré.North of the Oise, the British armies, marching on Mons and Avesnes, reached that same day the front Wassigny—Le Câteau—Solesmes—Douai. They had thus, from the south, turned the region of Lille, which was likewise threatened from the north by the Flanders Group of Armies between the Lys and the sea.. . . the Flanders Group of Armies continued uninterruptedly its movement towards Thourout, Courtrai, and Menin, gaining ground rapidly. On the 14th, it got possession of Hooglede, Roules, and Moorseele, on the 15th it marched beyond Cortemarck, reached the gates of Courtrai, and entered Menin and Werwicq." ((5), more)
(1) King Albert commanded what remained of the Belgian Army in the corner of his country that German forces had not conquered. He and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, had been falling back with the army, lodging where they could as the army retreated. Having been driven across Belgium since early August, having lost the fortified cities of Liège and Antwerp and the capital of Brussels, his troops were defeated and demoralized. Albert looked for a haven to let his troops rest and rebuild even as French Commander Joffre urged him to join an Allied offensive. On October 15, 1914, the Belgians held a line south of the Yser Canal, with the North Sea on their left. To close a gap with the British positioning on their right, they were thinly stretched. Albert (and Joffre) requested the support of British ships to act as a naval artillery battery covering their left wing, shelling the German right. German forces were preparing an assault in greater numbers than the Allies anticipated.
In Flanders Flooded Fields: Before Ypres there Was Yser by Paul van Pul, pp. 79, 80, copyright © Paul A.A. van Pul, 2006, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2006
(2) Extract from the entry for October 15, 1915 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government. French Commander Joffre's great offensive in Champagne and Artois for autumn 1915, had come to a halt with heavy losses. Among other reasons, soldiers were executed for refusing to fight and for self-mutilation. After the initial assault, some units refused to leave their trenches; some officers refused to order continued attacks.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 113, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(3) Food shortages were an increasing problem in Germany and Austria-Hungary as 1916 went on, and ration cards were required. Holger Herwig, author of today's quotation, notes that cheese had disappeared in November, 1915. In the summer of 1916 a weekly ration included two eggs, two pounds of bread, and 1/16th of a pound of butter.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 291, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(4) In the spring of 1917, German forces on the Russian front waited to see what would come of the Russian Revolution, and whether Russia wound continue to fight. The July Kerensky Offensive provided one answer, and the collapse of the Russian army in its aftermath a fuller one. German forces advanced in late summer, taking the Russian Baltic Sea port of Riga on September 3. The German fleet simultaneously advanced, threatening to enter the Gulf of Finland leading to Petrograd. The island of Ösel is, in 2017, Saaremaa, Estonia.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, pp. 216–217, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(5) Allied Commander-in-Chef Ferdinand Foch writing of the advances of October 15, 1918 along the Western Front. The Franco-American Meuse-Argonne Offensive advanced slowly. The Flanders Group of Armies included the Belgian Army and French and British units. On the 14th, Belgian airmen were the first to see the German forces retreating eastward across Belgium.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 428–429, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
