Map showing the territorial gains (darker shades) of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, primarily at the expense of Turkey, agreed in the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War. Despite its gains, Bulgaria also lost territory to both Romania and Turkey.
Image text: The Balkan States According to the Treaty of Bucharest; Acquisitions of New Territory shown by darker shades
La Domenica del Corriere of August 22–29, 1915, an illustrated weekly supplement to Corriere della Sera, published in Milan, Italy. The front and back covers are full-page illustrations by the great Italian illustrator Achille Beltrame. This back cover is an illustration of Italian author, pilot, soldier, and self-promoter Gabriele d'Annunzio dropping streamers in the colors of the Italian flag and bearing patriotic massages over Trieste, Austria-Hungary, a city with a large ethnic Italian population.
Image text: Il volo di d'Annunzio su Trieste. Il Poeta lancia patriottici messaggi ai nostri fratelli: 'La fine del vostro martirio è prossima!'The flight of d'Annunzio over Trieste. The Poet launches patriotic messages to our brothers: 'The end of your martyrdom is near!'(Disegno de A. Beltrame).
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.
A crazed Great Britain urges a broken Russia, a nose-picking, dozing Italy, and a sullen France to continued offensives in a German postcard imagining the November 6, 1917 Entente Ally Conference of Rapallo after the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The Battle, also known as the Battle of Caporetto, was a disastrous defeat for Italy and the first Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Isonzo Front. The Austrians had significant German support.
Image text: Entente Konferenz der XII. IsonzoschlachtEntente Conference of the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo
". . . on 3 December the Serbian 1st Army launched a surprise counterattack from its position west of Gornji Milanovac, and before that General Živojin Mišić had shortened the front line, allowed the soldiers some rest, received and distributed the artillery ammunition that had finally arrived and decided on a counterattack, whereupon the other two armies also received orders to attack. The Austro-Hungarian front faltered, crumpled, and then collapsed." ((1), more)
"Never as in the deathly silence, when the trench is sleeping and 10 metres beyond lies an ambush of darkness and foliage, does one feel the presence of war. War is not in the explosion of grenades or a fusillade nor in hand-to-hand combat. War is not in what, from far off, one believes to be its terrible reality and which, close at hand, turns out to be a poor thing and makes little impression; it is — as Tolstoy realized — to be found in that curious space beyond one's trench, where there is silence and calm and where the corn is ripening to no purpose. It is that sense of certain death which lies 'beyond', there where the sun still shines on the age-old roads and the peasants' houses." ((2), more)
"Early on 3 December [1916], the Orthodox Sunday, the mass of maneuver prepared to resume its offensive as Prezan had ordered. Officers visited their troops in the early dawn, encouraging them for the attack. They were all unaware that the Bavarian 11th ID, approaching from the north, was virtually upon them. The Romanian 2nd CD and 7th ID (in reserve), charged with covering the rear, remained inexplicably inactive. About midmorning, the 2nd/5th ID was suddenly attacked on three sides by the Bavarians, the Turks, Goltz's cavalry, and the regrouped 217th. The Romanians held their ground until about 1:00 P.M. Then they fell victim to the exhaustion and demoralization resulting from a week of constant marching and fighting that had reduced their ranks by almost half." ((3), more)
"— Painlevé is complaining of unfair comment. People forget, he urges, that it was he who brought about the abdication of King Constantine of Greece; the Rapallo Conference, resulting in the Single Command for which he had been working so long; the Franco-British agreements ensuring our food supplies; the selection of Pétain; the wise moderation in suppressing the mutinies; the arrest of Duval and Bolo; the prompt dispatch of French troops to Italy, etc., etc." ((4), more)
(1) Austro-Hungarian General Oskar Potiorek had been destroying his army in his third and largest invasion of Serbia in 1914. He had neither dressed nor supplied his troops for mountain or winter combat, and had driven them to overstretch their supplies lines. They were running out of food and munitions, even as soldiers discarded the latter in their advance. At the end of November, confident of victory, Potiorek had finally granted his men four days rest while he tried to take the Serbian capital of Belgrade.Under Field Marshall Putnik, the Serbian Army retreated, falling back on its own limited supplies. Serbia had repeatedly requested aid from their Entente Allies. France had finally delivered artillery shells.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, page 71, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
(2) Excerpt by Scipio Slataper, an Austro-Hungarian writer from Trieste and Italian nationalist. His mother was Italian, his father Slavic. He and his wife were living in Hamburg, Germany when war broke out in 1914. They returned to Italy where, by the end of the year, Slataper was writing in favor of Italy's entry into the war. After Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary he joined the Sardinian Grenadiers using, because he was Austro-Hungarian, an assumed name. He was shot and killed on December 3, 1915 on Mount Podgora as the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo was drawing to a close.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 320, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(3) Four infantry divisions — two Bulgarian, one German, and one Turkish — and one cavalry division, nearly 100,000 men in total, crossed the Danube River from Bulgaria into Romania between November 22 and 26, 1916, putting them 130 kilometers southwest of the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Romanian General Constantin Prezan collected a 'mass of maneuver' to drive the invaders back into the Danube. One indication of the quality of his troops is 'the 2nd/5th ID', that is, an infantry division composed of the exhausted remnants of the 2nd and the 5th infantry divisions.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 144–145, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(4) Entry between December 2 and 6, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Paul Painlevé was appointed French War Minister in March 1917, and was also Prime Minister from September 12 to November 16, 1917, replaced by Georges Clemenceau. The French forced King Constantine I of Greece to abdicate on June 11, 1917. Allied commanders met at Rapallo, Italy on November 6, 1917 after the disastrous Italian defeat in the Battle of Caporetto. At the Conference, both the French and British agreed to dispatch troops to support the Italians, who had already stabilized their line on the Piave River. After the failure of the Nivelle offensive in the spring, large parts of the French army mutinied in May and June. Robert Nivelle was replaced by Henri Pétain who rebuilt the army and demonstrated his commitment to not squandering soldiers' lives with well-prepared, limited offensives.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 298, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
