In mid-January 1915, the Germans launched an offensive north of Soissons, France.
Image text: Westl. Kriegschauplatz, Angriffe bei Crouy und CuffiesWestern Front, assaults on Crouy and CuffiesSeries 38/3Reverse:Ausgabe des Kriegsfürsorgeamtes Wien IX.Zum Gloria-Viktoria AlbumSammel. u. Nachschlagewerk des VölkerkriegesWar Office Assistance Edition, Vienna IXFor Gloria Victoria albumCollection and reference book of international war
With Bulgaria joining the Central Powers in October 1915 assuring the defeat of Serbia by the end of November, the Balkanzug — the Balkan Railway, shown in red — connected Berlin and Constantinople. By the second week of November, Turkey received ammunition and weapons from its allies.
Image text: Vierbund-TreubundQuadruple Alliance-True AllianceReverse:Message dated February 28, 1916, and postmarked the next day.Logo: ErikaNr. 5448
Portrait of British soldier Harry Mulvaney, son of Edith (Hughes) and Peter Mulvaney, who was killed in France aged about 19 years in the 1914-18 war.
Image text: Reverse:Harry Mulvaney, son of Edith (née Hughes) and Peter Mulvaney, who was killed in France aged about 19 years in the 1914-18 war. Grandson of Virginia & Wm. Henry Hughes.
A mass of German troops bear an enormous egg striped in the black, white, and red of the german flag. Atop the egg, a cannon is fired by troops with a Hungarian flag. The target, diminutive in the distance, is Paris, Eiffel Tower gray against the brown city.The watercolor is labeled,Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso.The card is a Feldpostkarte, a field postcard, from Asbach Uralt, old German cognac. Above the brand name, two German soldiers wheel a field stove past a crate containing a bottle of the brandy under the title Gute Verpflegung, Good Food. Above the addressee is written Einschreiben, enroll, and Nach Ungarn, to Hungary. The card is addressed to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Hamburg, 1918-03-30. A Hamburg stamp also decorates the card.A hand-painted postcard by Schima Martos. , Germany on registered fieldpost card, 1918, message: Red Egg for Paris, Easter, 1918.The German advance in Operation Michael in the March, 1918 nearly broke the Allied line, and threatened Paris, putting it once again in range of a new German supergun capable of hitting the city from 70 miles away.
Image text: Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso
"Just as the course of the war hitherto had given every soldier new conceptions of human powers of endurance, so it had established totally new standards for the requirements of matériel and its efficiency. Only those who held responsible posts in the German G.H.Q. in the winter of 1914-15, during which almost every single shot had to be counted in the Western Army, and the failure of one single ammunition train, the breaking of a rail or any other stupid accident, threatened to render whole sections of the front defenceless, can form any estimate of the difficulties that had to be overcome at that time." (1)
"January 17, 1916, stands out as one of the big dates of the war. There was great rejoicing in Constantinople, for the first Balkan express — or, as the Germans called it, the Balkanzug — was due to arrive that afternoon! The railroad station was decorated with flags and flowers, and the whole German and Austrian population of Constantinople, including the Embassy staffs, assembled to welcome the incoming train. As it finally rolled into the station, thousands of 'hochs' went up from as many raucous throats.Since that January 17, 1916, the Balkanzug has run regularly from Berlin to Constantinople." (2)
"A draft of a hundred and fifty 'proceeded' to France to-night. Most of them half-tight, except those who had been in the guard-room to stop them bolting (again), and the Parson's speech went off, to the usual asides and witticisms. He ended: 'And God go with you. I shall go as far as the station with you.' Then the C.O. stuttered a few inept and ungracious remarks. 'You are going out to the Big Push which will end the war' etc (groans). And away they marched to beat of drums—a pathetic scene of humbug and cant. How much more impressive if they went in silence, with no foolishness of 'God Speed'—like Hardy's 'men who march away . . . To hazards whence no tears can win us.'" (3)
"By January 17, about 200,000 wageworkers had downed their tools in Vienna alone, though the walkout was less widespread in the Czech provinces. Greatly alarmed, the Emperor that day wired Czernin, 'The fate of the Monarchy and of the dynasty depends on how soon you will be able to arrange peace in Brest-Litovsk. . . . If peace is not concluded a revolution will break out here.'" (4)
(1) No army had been prepared for the enormous quantities of munitions that were expended in the opening months. By early 1915 all nations were under-supplied, and did not have the weapons to mount major offensives. The shell shortage was particularly acute in Russia, which purchased weapons from Japan and the United States, and Britain, were the issue precipitated a political crisis.
General Headquarters and its Critical Decisions, 1914-1916 by Erich von Falkenhayn, pp. 47, 48, copyright © 1920 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publication date: 1920
(2) Excerpt from the memoir of Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916. With the defeat of Serbia, trains could run from Berlin to Constantinople. In his memoir, Morgenthau writes that the Turkish government's 'destruction of the Armenians had made Turkey for me a place of horror,' and he soon took the train to Berlin.
Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau, page 273, copyright © 1918, by Doubleday, Page & Company, publisher: Doubleday, Page & Company, publication date: 1918
(3) January 17, 1917 entry from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action, then on convalescent leave in Britain. 'The Big Push' was used to describe the 1915 Battle of Loos and 1916's Battle of the Somme, neither of which ended the war, as the Big Pushes of 1917 would not. Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Men Who March Away' was published in The Times of London September 9, 1914, four days after Hardy wrote it with both Hardy and the paper foregoing copyright. The lines (line 5, repeated as line 33) Sassoon quotes, 'To hazards whence no tears can win us' is from the original. Hardy later changed it to, 'Leaving all that here can win us.' The first stanza from Hardy's Complete Poems, page 538:What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 120, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(4) Austro-Hungarian Kaiser Karl's telegram of January 17, 1918 was to the Empire's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ottokar Czernin, who was in Brest-Litovsk, Russia, leading the Austro-Hungarian delegation in the Central Power peace negotiations with Russia. Czernin was increasingly a powerless bystander in the debate between the German and Russian delegates even as food riots and strikes broke out in Vienna and other cities. Leon Trotsky led the Russian delegation, and he and Vladimir Lenin fully expected that the example of the Bolshevik Revolution would spread across Europe. A peace settlement offered the hope of supplies from Russia and Romania.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, Vol. 2, p. 656, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
