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
The Russo-Turkish frontier from Cram's 1896 Railway Map of the Turkish Empire. The Black Sea is in the northwest, Persia to the southeast. The area had a large Armenian and Christian population, and was a principal site of the Armenian Genocide and of Russian military successes.
Image text:
Pen and ink sketch of the Ypres Cloth Hall dated 1916 by N. Faeror? Faeroir? On November 22, 1914, German forces shelled the Hall and St. Peter's Cathedral with incendiary shells. In his memoirs, French General Ferdinand Foch, wrote that they did so to compensate themselves for their defeat in the Battle of Flanders.
Image text: Ypressigned: N. Faeror? Faeroir? 1916
A shower is so refreshing! A French couple enjoy the Hour of the Tub, the soldier perhaps home on leave.
Image text: L'Heure du TubRien de tel qu'une bonne douche,On est plus frais . . . quand on se couche!Nothing beats a good shower,One is fresher . . . when we go to bed!La Favorite 2520Reverse:Artige & Cie - Paris
"According to the Gregorian Calendar the year 1915 begins to-day. At two o'clock under a wan sun and pearl-grey sky which here and there cast silvery shadows on the snow the Diplomatic Corps called at Tsarkoïe-Selo to wish the Emperor a Happy New Year.. . . I added that in its recent declarations to the Chambers the Government of the [French] Republic had solemnly affirmed its determination to continue the war to the bitter end and that that determination is a guarantee of final victory. The Emperor answered :'I have read that pronouncement of your Government and my whole heart goes with it. My own determination is no less. I shall continue this war as long as is necessary to secure a complete victory. You know I have just been visiting my army ; I found it animated by splendid ardour and enthusiasm. All it asks is to be allowed to fight. It is confident of victory. Unfortunately our operations are held up by a lack of munitions." ((1), more)
"On January 14 [1916] an unexpected Russian offensive began against the center of the [Turkish] Third Army. The attack began on the dominating heights of the Aras River, followed by further attacks in the sections adjoining on the south. For some reason the commander, Mahmud Kiamil Pasha, happened to be in Constantinople just then and the German chief of staff was absent in Germany to recover from a case of typhus. Abdul Kerim Pasha let the army.The Russians broke the center of the Third Army." ((2), more)
"As intelligence officer, I, too, was many times out in No Man's Land here. It may be well to say more, since those times and tortures are now almost forgotten. The wirers were out already, clanking and whispering with what seemed a desperate energy, straining to screw their pickets into the granite. The men lying at each listening-post were freezing stiff, and would take half an hour's buffeting and rubbing on return to avoid becoming casualties. Moonlight, steely and steady, flooded the flat space between us and the Germans. I sent my name along, 'Patrol going out,' and, followed by my batman, blundered over the parapet, down the borrow-pit, and through our meagre but mazy wire. Come, once again.The snow is hardened and crunches with a sort of music. Only me, Worley. He lays a gloved hand on my sleeve, puts his head close, and says, 'God bless you, sir—don't stay out too long.' Then we stoop along his wire to a row of willows, crop-headed, nine in a row, pointing to the German line. . . ." ((3), more)
"I pass over the joy of spending time once again in the midst of my loved ones, and the sadness of returning to duty. I was completely discouraged, broken in body and spirit, when I found myself once again at Les Islettes station, the morning of January 14 [1918].Sad and alone, under a gray sky in which a few snowflakes swirled, I made my way to the trenches.At the village of [Le] Neufour, where the company sergeant-majors were encamped, I hoisted my pack, my weapons, and all the gear with which a poilu was loaded down, and I headed off briskly because I had a dozen kilometers to cover, through the woods, along bad roads unknown to me, as the regiment had now taken up front-line positions near Vauquois." ((4), more)
(1) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Thursday, January 14, 1915. Tsarkoïe-Selo was Tsar Nicholas II's palace south of Petrograd, the Russian capital, where rumors circulated that the Tsar's German-born wife was secretly corresponding with Germany to end the war, and that she undermined the Tsar's determination to fight on. None of the combatants had entered the war with supplies of munitions adequate to meet demand, and struggled to increase production. Russia's shortfall was particularly acute.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 253, 254, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(2) Excerpt from the summary of events in 1916 on the Russo-Turkish front in the Caucasus Mountains by German General Liman von Sanders. With the failure of the Allied Gallipoli Campaign, Turkey was in a position to redeploy its troops to other fronts. Russia struck before the redeployment could complete. Sanders was chief of the German military mission to Turkey, and had commanded Turkish forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula prior to the Allied evacuation in January.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 124, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(3) Edmund Blunden, English writer, recipient of the Military Cross, second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, writing of going on a patrol into No Man's land, one moonlit night in January, 1917. He was then stationed near Ypres, Belgium. 'The granite' is frozen ground.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, page 160, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
(4) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas. He had been in the 296th Regiment which had been implicated in the army mutinies of the spring and early summer. The regiment had been dissolved and its men assigned to other units, Barthas to a regiment from Breton. On December 23, 1917 they went into two weeks of rest, Barthas's sixth leave.Vauquois is 30 km west of Verdun in the Argonne; both Les Islettes and Le Neufour about 20 km from Vauquois. Barthas was from the south of France. Brackets in source.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 351–352, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
