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
A command post near Perthes, likely Perthes-Lès-Hurlus, in Champagne between Reims and Verdun, now a destroyed village.
Image text: 1. La Grande Guerre 1914-15Région de Perthes. - Le Poste de commandement du RavinA.R.visa 11. The Great War 1914-1915Near Perthes. - The Command Post RavineA.R.visa 1Reverse:Message dated August 3, 1915Impr. EDIA VersaillesPrinted by EDIA, Versailles
Postwar postcard map of the Balkans including Albania, newly-created Yugoslavia, expanded Romania, and diminished former Central Powers Bulgaria and Turkey. The first acquisitions of Greece in its war against Turkey are seen in Europe where it advanced almost to Constantinople, in the Aegean Islands from Samos to Rhodes, and on the Turkish mainland from its base in Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish war was fought from May 1919 to 1922. The positions shown held from the war's beginning to the summer of 1920 when Greece advanced eastward. Newly independent Hungary and Ukraine appear in the northwest and northeast.
Image text: Péninsule des BalkansÉchelle 1:12.000.000Petit Atlas de Poche Universel25 Édition Jeheber GenèveReverse:No. 20 Édition Jeheber, Genève (Suisse)BalkansRoumanie(Royaume.)Superficie . . . 290 000 sq. km.Population . . . 16 000 000 hab. (50 par sq. km.Capitale: Bucarest . . . 338 000 hab.Bulgarie(Royaume.)Superficie . . . 100 000 sq. km.Population . . . 4 000 000 hab. (40 par sq. km.)Capitale: Sofia . . . 103 000 hab.Grèce(Royaume. Capitale: Athènes.)En Europe (y compris la Crète et les iles) 200 000 sq. km. 6 000 000 hab. 30 p. sq. km.En Asie mineure . . . 30 000 sq. km 1 300 000 hab. 43 p. sq. km.Total 230 000 sq. km. 7 300 000 hab. 32 p. sq. km.Ville de plus de 50 000 habitants:Smyrne (Asie) . . . 350 000 hab.Athènes . . . 175 000 hab.Salonique . . . 150 000Andrinople . . . 70 000 hab.Pirée . . . 70 000 hab.Turquie d'Europe(Empire Ottoman.)Superficie . . . 2 000 sq. km.Population . . . 1 100 000 550 par sq. km.Capitale: Constantinople 1 000 000 hab.AlbanieSuperficie . . . 30 000 sq. km.Population . . . 800 000 hab. (27 par sq. km.)Villes: Scutari . . . 30 000 hab.Durazzo . . . 5 000 hab.YougoslavieVoir le tableau des statisques de ce pays, ainsi que la carte de la partie occidentale de la Yougoslavie, sur la carte d'Italie.Inst. Géog. Kummerly & Frey, Berne.Balkan PeninsulaScale 1: 12,000,000Little Univeral Pocket AtlasRoyaume - KingdomSuperficie - AreaEn Europe (y compris la Crète et les iles) - In Europe (including Crete and the islands)En Asie mineure - In Asia MinorYugoslaviaSee the table of statistics of this country, as well as the map of the western part of Yugoslavia, on the map of Italy.
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.
Image text:
Bulgarian Soldiers, many of them wounded, on the Salonica Front. Bandages on hands, arms, heads, eye, a number with canes, one with crutches.
"On September 21, [1914] Conrad ordered a further retreat — to the Dunajec River, a tributary of the Vistula. The Second, Third, and Fourth Armies would dig in there. . . . A worsening shell shortage was on everyone's mind; so much ammo had been fired off or surrendered, and there were no stockpiles in the rear. Even with German assistance, Austrian defeat seemed inevitable. [Austro-Hungarian General] Auffenberg had abandoned so many guns and supply wagons in his retreat that the derelict vehicles would be visible from the air for months." ((1), more)
"Confident of success, Joffre asked that the size of the coming attack be explained to all soldiers. The explanatory note said: 'Three-quarters of all French forces will participate in the battle. They will be supported by 2,000 heavy [artillery] pieces and 3,000 field pieces for which the provision of munitions surpasses greatly those at the beginning of the war. Every chance of success exists, particularly if one remembers that our recent attack near Arras was made by fifteen divisions and 300 heavy pieces.'" ((2), more)
"As announced in the communiqués of September 20th and 21st, the battle now came to a standstill. . . .The results of Mackensen's victorious progress up to this point were important. Eight Rumanian divisions had been taken prisoner or terribly shattered; the Russian forces sent to aid Rumania had been so often defeated that their fighting power was badly shaken; and positions on the lower Danube flanking Wallachia and the national capital had been won. In addition, any invasion of the southern Dobrudja by the enemy had been rendered impossible, and his main army on the Transylvanian front had been weakened by the withdrawal of troops which it could ill spare. These were now shut up behind Trajan's wall. The Rumanians were compelled to wage war upon three fronts." ((3), more)
". . . Osman-Chefket Bey was in great fear lest I make revelations to the Diplomatic Corps that would involve him and ultimately bring his head to the block, politically speaking, for his part in the atrocities. . . .Just before my departure, as was natural, I went to take leave of Enver. He received me with the same affectionate cordiality as of old. Accompanying me to the door of his study when I left, he told me he had already written a personal letter about me to Fesi Pasha of the Second Army commending me to him. I did my best to look pleased, though—from my ever useful friend, before mentioned—I already knew at least one sentence of that letter: 'De Nogales Bey must never return from that region.' This was the customary formula of the Young Turks when they desired to get rid of anyone on the quiet! All this took place about the end of September, 1917." ((4), more)
"It was the airmen who first let Milne know what was happening. Two De Havilland 9s of 47 Squadron, R.A.F., reconnoitered the Vardar and Strumica valleys on the morning of September 21. At 10:40 one of their observers noted: 'The defile west of Rabrovo on the Stumica-Rabrovo road was packed with transport, and round Rabrovo were anything up to 500 lorries and H[orse] T[ransport] wagons waiting to go up the road.' The significance of the report could not be missed: Rabrovo was two miles north of Nerezov's headquarters at Dedeli. And it was the same on every road leading back into Old Bulgaria. The enemy was in full flight. . . .The long columns of lorries and horse-drawn vehicles moving slowly along the impossible roads were mercilessly bombed and machine-gunned by the R.A.F. Not a German plane was to be seen, and the Bulgarians themselves offered little resistance. . . . Todorov and his German allies had envisaged an 'orderly retreat.' They had no notion of the havoc created by air attacks on a slow-moving column caught in the confines of a rocky valley. An army ceased to exist." ((5), more)
(1) The Russians defeated Austro-Hungarian Commander Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf and his generals in the Battles of Gnila Lipa and Rava Russka, the conquest of the fortress at Lemberg, and the siege of that at Przemyśl, and turned his retreat across Galicia into a rout that was still in progress on September 21, 1914.
A Mad Catastrophe by Geoffrey Wawro, pp. 249, 250, copyright © 2014 by Geoffrey Wawro, publisher: Basic Books
(2) Note of September 21, 1915 from French Commander Joffre prior to his great autumn offensive. The 'recent attack near Arras' was the Second Battle of Artois Jofre had undertaken in May. The September battle was to be the Third. The French preliminary barrage was already underway, although field guns did little damage to entrenchments or entrenched troops. On September 14, in a note to 'the General Officers Commanding Army Groups,' Joffre had pointed out that the number of machine guns had more than doubled, that guns, particularly heavy guns, had large munitions stocks, that motor transport for troops had been expanded, that Kitchener's Army had just disembarked in France, and that British troops would take part 'in large numbers.' The bracketed text is Doughty's emendation.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 190, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
(3) Excerpt from an account by German General Wollman of the campaign against Romania which had entered the war on August 27, 1916 by invading Transylvania, an Austro-Hungarian region with a large ethnic-Romanian population, with three of its four armies. German General August von Mackensen led an allied German, Bulgarian, Turkish army on the south side of the Danube River facing Wallachia (southern Romania), and threatening the capital of Bucharest. The region of Dobrudja in eastern Romania had no natural protection to the south. Roman emperor Trajan had constructed earthen barriers there two millennia ago.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. IV, 1916, pp. 351–352, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(4) Rafael de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army who had taken part in the Turkish attack on the Armenian rebellion in the city of Van, part of the Turkish government's genocidal attacks on its Armenian citizens. With Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat Pasha and Naval Minister Ahmed Djemal Pasha, War Minister Ismail Enver Pasha ruled Turkey during World War I. Both contemporaries — including the German consul and Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador at Constantinople from 1913 to 1916 — and later historians including Turkish historian Taner Akçam, lay primary responsibility for the Armenian Genocide on Talaat. The Young Turks, including Enver, had seized power in 1908.
Four Years Beneath the Crescent by Rafael De Nogales, pp. 390–391, copyright © 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1926
(5) On September 15, 1918 French General Franchet d'Esperey, commander of Allied forces — French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and British — on the Balkan Front, opened a successful offensive through the mountains between Greece and Serbia. The British, with Greek support, held the sector around Lake Doiran to the east of the initial advance and opened their phase of the offensive on September 18 against Bulgarians who had held and strengthened their position for two years. The British offensive, like their previous assaults at Lake Doiran, was failing when the Bulgarians retreated. General Georgi Todorov, who had replaced the ailing Nicola Zhekov as Commander-in-Chief of the Bulgarian Army ten days earlier, agreed with the Germans that the Allies' supply problems would only increase as they advanced, and that the best action was an orderly retreat. General Stefan Nerezov was commander of the Bulgarian First Army holding the Lake Doiran sector.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 215, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
