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
Map of Syria, Palestine, Turkey, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus.
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German postcard map of the Romanian theater of war, with map labels in Bulgarian added in red. From north to south the labels are Russia, the Austro-Hungarian regions of Galicia and Bukovina, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and, along the Black Sea, the Romania region of Dobruja. Romania's primary war aim was the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian region of Transylvania, with its large ethnic Romanian population.
Image text: Vogelschaukarte des rumänischen Kriegschauplatzes.German map labels:Vogelschaukarte des rumänischen Kriegschauplatzes.RuslandGalizienBukowinaUngarnRumaniaBulgariaDobrudschaBulgarian overprint in red:на румънския театър на войнатаБърд око на картата на румънския театър на войната.Лтичи погдедъъ Бърд око на картата на румънския войната театърРусияГалисияБуковинаУнгарияРумънияБългарияДобруджаA 498 E.P. & Co. A.-G. L.
British soldiers pushing an ambulance through the mud. A mounted horseman is on the road ahead.
Image text: Helping an ambulance through the mud.Official PhotographDaily Mail War PicturesReverse:Passed by CensorHeavy rains have often made the British front a quagmire, and our 'Tommies' have had to put their shoulders to the wheels of ambulance and other wagons.Official War PhotographsCrown Copyright Reserved.Series 6 No. 45
Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Image text: Commanders of the Allies in 1918 and their autographs.Pétain Haig Foch Pershing
"My corps has been fighting now for five out of the past six days, and for the last three days without a break. I have lost my best officers, and several thousand men. The corps is weakening and is no longer fit for offensive action. I have no cavalry, so I cannot reconnoiter and must operate in the dark. Artillery ammunition is running low and no new supplies are being brought up. Our incessant attacks are not helping the army as a whole to win the battle but are in fact only making its situation more difficult. We must withdraw, and at once." ((1), more)
"During those black days of August 1915, when the Armenians of Asia Minor—the toddlers, the elderly, the virgins, the brides, and the grandmothers—were being massacred under the guise of 'deportation' or 'exile,' and when the fate of those exiled to Chankiri and Ayash had already been settled, the eighteen to twenty of us who remained in Chankiri were awaiting ours. The Ottoman Parliament members Krikor Zohrab and Vartkes Serengulian had been arrested in Constantinople during this time, and after being held in prison briefly, they had been put on a train to Diyarbekir on the pretext of being tried before the court-martial there." ((2), more)
"On August 27, 1916, on the basis of the agreement reached with the Entente Powers, Romania entered the war against Austria-Hungary. At the Crown Council held the same day, Prime-Minister Ion. I. C. Brătianu explained the reasons underlying that decision of historic importance: 'In a vortex like that of the present war, in which the world map is remade, a country like ours, a country with national aspirations, cannot remain neutral to the end without definitively compromising its future. Therefore, it is imperative to renounce neutrality. On the other hand, national unity being our ideal, we are obliged to pursue its achievement, because nobody knows whether there will be another favourable moment in the centuries to come [. . .]. Even if we were to be defeated, by the fact that four of the greatest powers of the world have recognized the justness of our national claims, and have sanctioned through a solemn act the ethnic borders of the Romanians beyond the Carpathians, the Romanian cause will make a greater and more important step forward than any time so far.'" ((3), more)
"August 27th.—A wet night and day, but quiet. The Division is coming out. We go to the Second Army, Plumer's, to be put in, as usual, where it's sticky—and it's been sticky as blood beyond Ypres." ((4), more)
"What do you think of the news? Peace seems impossible before Autumn 1919 at any rate; but it is best to hope that Fritz will see reason.An officer-friend turned up here and took me to London where we had a little music and chocolate together and lemonade at St Albans — spirit and matter mixed. But it was delightful to see him; with talk of the Old Batt: and the changes in the Staff; gossip of the Front etc. He says his Brigadier has a great admiration for the French Staff and a contempt for ours — All daily orders are issued from Foch, and he believes that a vast improvement in all ways has come since the General took command. It was good to hear intelligent shop-talk again, and words like Merville, Lestrem etc floating on the air." ((5), more)
(1) Russian General Martos to his commanding officer, General Samsanov on August 27 (14 Old Style), 1914 during the Battle of Tannenberg in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel of the battle August 1914. The right wing of Samsanov's Second Army had been driven back. Martos had been holding off the German attack on the left wing, but was increasingly unable to against a ferocious artillery bombardment by German General von François's troops. François would soon begin his encirclement of the Russian army.
August 1914 by Alexander Solzhenitzyn, page 354, copyright © 1971 by Alexandre Soljénitsyne; English translation 1972 by Michael Glenny, publisher: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, publication date: 1972
(2) Excerpt from the memoir of Grigoris Balakian, a priest of the Armenian Church, and one of the Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople imprisoned on the night of April 24, 1915 and moved to Chankiri and Ayash. Most of the others were already dead. The two Parliament members Krikor Zohrab and Vartkes Serengulian found supporters who offered to help them escape, but they believed the court-martial would exonerate them. In Aleppo, the two came briefly under the protection of governor Jelal, who petitioned Turkish Interior Minister Talaat Pasha to keep them in the city. Talaat, one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide, instead replaced the governor. Under the guard of mounted police, the two Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament were seized by or delivered to bandits who tortured and killed them.
Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918 by Grigoris Balakian, page 103, copyright © Introduction and Translation 2009 by Peter Balakian, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2009-00-00
(3) Prime Minister Gheorghe Brătianu had finally negotiated Romania's entry into the war, thinking the moment, one of Austro-Hungarian distress on its Russian and Italian fronts, opportune, in great part because of the success of Russia's Brusilov Offensive and Italy's Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, both of which had come to a standstill at the end of August. The 'national claims' the Prime Minister referenced were the large ethnic Romanian population in Austria-Hungary's Transylvania, across the southern Carpathian Mountains from Romania. The 'four great powers' were the Triple Entente of France, Russia, Great Britain, joined by Italy.
Romania in World War I, a Synopsis of Military History by Vasile Alexandrescu, pp. 16–17, copyright © 1985, publisher: Military Publishing House, publication date: 1985
(4) Entry for August 27, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. British commander in chief General Douglas Haig had assigned General Herbert Plumer, already commanding the British Second Army, to take command of the II Division from General Hubert Gough who had been unsuccessful in the Third Battle of Ypres, started on July 31.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 379, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(5) Ivor Gurney, English poet, composer, and private in the Gloucestershire Regiment, writing to the composer Marion Margaret Scott, on August 28, 1918 from Middlesex War Hospital, Napsbury. He had been sent back to the United Kingdom after being gassed in September, 1917, then suffered a mental collapse in March, 1918.
War Letters, Ivor Gurney, a selection edited by R.K.R. Thornton by Ivor Gurney, page 257, copyright © J. R. Haines, the Trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate 1983, publisher: The Hogarth Press, publication date: 1984
