Leaders of the first six Allies: King Peter of Serbia, King George V of Great Britain, President Poincaré of France, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King Albert of Belgium, and Nicholas of Montenegro.
Image text: 1914 Conflit Europeen 1914S. M. Pierre I, Roi de Serbie; S. M. George V, Roi d'Angleterre; M. Poincaré, President de la République Français; S. M. Nicolas, Roi de Montenegro; S. M. Nicholas II, Empereur de Russie, S. M. Albert I, Roi des BelgesE. LE Delev, Imp. Edit. 127, Boul. de Sebastopol, ParisLogo: ELDHis Majesty Peter I, King of Serbia; His Majesty George V, King of England; Monsieur Poincaré, President of the French Republic; His Majesty Nicolas, King of Montenegro; His Majesty Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, His Majesty Albert I, King of the Belgians
Turkish Interior Minister Talaat Pasha from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales.
Image text: The Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha
The bunk of NCO Otto Riecke in Janovka, July 14, 1916. Riecke served with 2nd battalion, 5th company, reserve infantry regiment 227. There are two Janovkas in the current Czech Republic, one north of Prague, the other south. Both would have been well behind the front in July, 1916. Note the stick grenades under the fire step in the right foreground.
Image text: Mein Schlafraum!My bunk room O.R. Jul 14 1916 Janovka. Signed: O. Riecke
German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
Image text: Der KanalStraße von CalaisThe English Channel and the Strait of CalaisReverse:Panorama des westlichen Kriegsschauplatzes 1914/15 Von Arras bis Ostende.Die Panorama-Postkartenreihe umfaßt mit ihren 9 Abschnitten Nr. 400 bis 408 den gesamten westlichen Kriegsschauplatz von der Schweizer Grenze bis zur Nordseeküste.Panorama of the western theater of operations 1914/15 from Arras to Ostend. The panoramic postcard series includes nine sections, with their No. 400-408 the entire western battlefield from the Swiss border to the North Sea coast.Nr. 408Wenau-Postkarte Patentamtl. gesch.
United States Navy Masters-at-Arms (shore patrolmen), R. Rapp on the left, pose in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy. The two stand on the steps of the rightmost of three flagpoles in front of the cathedral. The main entry and arch would be immediately to the left, outside of the photograph. The Master-at-Arms is the equivalent of the Army's Military Police.
Image text: R. Rapp.
"'With a little good will this Serbian business is easy to settle. But it can just as easily become acute. Serbia has some very warm friends in the Russian people. And Russia has an ally, France. There are plenty of complications to be feared!' Then he thanked the Ambassador for his call. Szápáry bowed and went out without a word.When we three were alone again Poincaré said:'I'm not satisfied with this conversation. The ambassador had obviously been instructed to say nothing. . . . Austria has a coup de théatre in store us. Sazonov must be firm and we must back him up.'" ((1), more)
"The documents leave no doubt that Talât Paşa was the overall coordinator of the deportations and massacres. . . . In one coded cable sent on 21 July 1915 to the governors-general and lieutenant governors of Diyarbakir, Mamüretülaziz, Urfa, and Der Zor, Talât Paşa writes that 'the dead on the roads should be buried, not thrown in lakes, wells or rivers, and their belongings are to be burned.' . . . The German consul to Jerusalem sent a telegram to the embassy in Istanbul on 9 September, in which he reports Cemal Paşa's claim to only carry out the plans while '—Talât Bey decides the dimensions of the expulsions.'" ((2), more)
"The kite-balloon, too, on the hill, began to sway huge and bulbous—upward—another was seen far off against the rosy east. All night the distant waves of gunfire had crashed and rumbled, soft and terrific with broad flashes, like waves of some immense tumult of waters, rolling along the horizon. As dawn broke, and I came down the hill again, I heard the clear skirl of the Second Gordons piping into their bivouac—a brave note, shrill as the lark, but the Jocks were a weary crowd as they hobbled in. Before dawn a horse neighed twice, high and shrill and scared. . . ." ((3), more)
"Haig and his staff devised a three-stage offensive; the first attack would strike south of Ypres near Wytschaete; the second would advance between Dixmuiden and Ypres; and the third would crash against Passchendaele. Haig, who sought nothing less than to 'smash up the whole of the Bosche [sic] Army', blithely ignored Foch's warning not to undertake a 'duck's march through the inundations to Ostend and Zeebrugge', which Foch considered to be 'futile, fantastic, and dangerous'. . . .On 21 July more than 2300 British guns subjected General Friedrich Sixt von Arnim's Fourth Army, part of Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht, to a 10-day artillery bombardment that claimed 30 000 casualties, including 9000 missing." ((4), more)
"July 21 [1918].Dear Folks—:I supposed Brummy has written you all about my getting bunged up. So there isnt anything for me to say. I hope that the cable didnt worry you very much but Capt. Bates thought it was best that you hear from me first rather than the newspapers. You see I'm the first American wounded in Italy and I suppose the papers say something about it.There is a peach of a hospital here and there are about 18 American nurses to take care of 4 patients. Everything is fine and I'm very comfortable and one of the best surgeons in Milan is looking after my wounds. There are a couple of pieces still in." ((5), more)
(1) The speaker is French President Poincaré who was in Russia on a state visit on July 21, 1914. He was hosting a reception for members of the Diplomatic Corps at the Winter Palace when he had an exchange with Austrian Ambassador Szápáry. Earlier in their exchange Poincaré had asked if the Ambassador had news of Serbia, to which Szápáry replied, 'The judicial inquiry is proceeding.' Szápáry found the French president's attitude 'threatening.'Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to St. Petersburg, was one of the two who were left alone with Poincaré.
The Origins of the War of 1914, Volume Two: The Crisis of July 1914 from the Sarajevo outrage to the Austro-Hungarian general mobilization by Luigi Albertini, 193, 194, publisher: Oxford University Press, publication date: 1952
(2) Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat Pasha, with War Minister Ismail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, ruled Turkey during World War I. Both contemporaries — including the German consul quoted about and Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador at Constantinople from 1913 to 1916 — and later historians including Turkish historian Taner Akçam quoted here, lay primary responsibility for the Armenian Genocide on Talaat.
A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taner Akçam, pp. 168, 169, copyright © 2006 by Taner Akçam, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 2006
(3) Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, author and infantryman in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, writing on the morning of July 21, 1916, as soldiers returned from the front line of the Battle of the Somme.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, pp. 97–98, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(4) The French army mutinies of May, June, and July, 1917, that followed the failure of French Commander Robert Nivelle's spring offensive, the Second Battle of the Aisne, left Douglas Haig, commander of British forces in France, free to pursue his own offensive independent of the French. As our author makes clear, Haig's primary aim was victory and an end to the war. A secondary aim was ending that part of the threat of Germany's submarine warfare based in the occupied Belgian ports. The inundations that French general Ferdinand Foch referred to were the floods unleashed on their own land by the Belgians at the end of the Battles of the Yser in 1914. Haig's bombardment began the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele. Rupprecht was Crown Prince of Bavaria. Foch was correct in his assessment of Haig's plan.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, pp. 330–331, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(5) Ernest Hemingway writing to his parents on July 21, 1918. An ambulance driver, Hemingway wrote one of the great novels of the war, A Farewell to Arms, in which an American ambulance driver is wounded on the Italian front, and falls in love with an English nurse at the hospital where he recovers. The driver is later caught up in the Italian retreat of the Battle of Caporetto. After the Caporetto disaster, the Italians held on the Piave River, defeating the Austro-Hungarians in the latter's last offensive of the war, the Battle of the Piave. Later in his letter, Heminway writes, 'It was a great victory and showed the world what wonderful fighters the Italians.'
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 504, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
