Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Chinese laborers working under the direction of German supervisors on a hill above the city of Tsingtau, China. The card was sent from Earl's Court in London, January 6, 1905, and cancelled in Teichel, Germany two days later. From a painting by K. Hei...
The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara, Mesopotamia, where a British Indian army was surrounded and besieged by Turkish forces from the end of 1915 until the British surrender on April 29, 1915. Photograph from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
Cover and first page from 'British Advance on the Somme,' Série 18 (2nd Part), a stapled booklet with cover of nineteen detachable postcards, most separated by tissue paper, showing some of the destruction wrought by German troops in Operation Alberich, the strategic retreat of 1917, including in Péronne, Nesle, Ham, Biaches, Feuillères, Combles, Hébuterne, Estrées, Fay, Assevillers, Frise, and Flaucourt.
1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, the Finland Train Station, east of the Fortress, where Lenin made his triumphal return, the Tauride (Taurisches) Palace, which housed the Duma and later the Petrograd Soviet.
Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies. The date on Wilson's desk calendar is October 8, 1916, a day on which German submarine U-53 sank five vessels — three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian — off Nantucket, Massachusetts. One of the British ships was a passenger liner traveling between New York and Newfoundland.
"On February 24 [1917] a French liner, the Athos, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean.Among those drowned on the Athos were 543 Chinese labourers, recruited in China to work as part of a large labour force on the Western Front. When the news of the sinking reached China it acted as a deterrent to recruiting, but by the end of the war almost 100,000 Chinese were employed on menial tasks throughout the zone of the armies." ((1), more)
"The Turkish triumph over British arms in Mesopotamia, culminating in the surrender of Gen. Townshend's besieged army at Kut-el-Amara in April, 1916, had stirred the British nation into taking steps to retrieve their disgrace. A large British Army, composed principally of Indian troops, and commanded by Lieut.-Gen. Frederick Stanley Maude, moved up the Tigris Valley in January, 1917, pushing the Turks before them. Advancing on Kut-el-Amara, the British found a strong Turkish force occupying both banks of the Tigris and the peninsula in the center created by a 'hairpin loop' of the river. The expulsion of the Turks from their entrenched and fortified position occupied the British a full month. On February 25th, after a terrific artillery battle, the Turks evacuated the stronghold, retreating in the direction of Bagdad, 110 miles away." ((2), more)
"— The stale bread epoch began on the 25th [February, 1917]. Mild grumbles. People say they have to eat more of it than they used to eat of new.— The 26th. Every day brings its unexpected incident. To-day we have the German retreat before the British as far as the out-skirts of Bapaume. It is a novel and puzzling feature." ((3), more)
"'What [Kerensky] had to say on 14 February as the Duma reconvened was a stirring example of playing to the Soviet gallery.'The country now realizes that the Ministers are but fleeting shadows. The country can clearly see who sends them here. To prevent a catastrophe the Tsar himself must be removed, by force if there is no other way . . . If you will not listen to warning now you will find yourself face to face with the facts, not warning. Look up at the distant flashes that are lighting the skies of Russia.'Even as Kerensky was delivering his broadside, outside a massive demonstration of over 90,000 striking workers stormed along the Nevsky bearing aloft anti-war and anti-government banners. In the windows of the bakeries in Petrograd and Moscow the handwritten, whitewashed signs were becoming painfully familiar: 'No Bread Today — And None Expected'. At the Tsar's palace in Tsarskoe-Seloe, Alexandra, incandescent at Kerensky's oratory, called for his arrest and execution. But no one was listening." ((4), more)
"On February 27 the Duma was due to reassemble, and from all sides there were plans to mark the day with an attack upon the government. Leaflets appeared in the industrial districts urging the workers to rise against the government, and although the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks tried to sabotage one another's plans a demonstration did take place. Inside the Duma Kerensky made a violent speech in which he declared that Russia was exhausted, and that the moment had come for 'liquidating' the war." ((5), more)
(1) Germany resumed its campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917, with the Mediterranean Sea as a primary hunting ground.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 311, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(2) The British army that surrendered to the Turks at Kut-al-Amara on April 29, 1916 was the largest surrender by a British army since the Battle of Yorktown that ended the American Revolution. After advancing quickly, in a premature attempt to seize Baghdad, that army had fallen back to Kut, and was invested by a Turkish army that defeated all relief attempts. General Maude, commanding the British and Indian army in Mesopotamia, was more methodical in his advance on Baghdad.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 357, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(3) Entries from February 25 and 26, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. On January 10 the French government had decreed that bread could only be sold 12 hours after baking in an attempt to cut consumption. Operation Alberich, the German strategic retreat of 1917 to a shorter, well-entrenched defensive system, began on February 24, but was only slowly recognized by the Allies. The 'Hindenburg Line' was the German 'Siegfried Zone' of four trench lines.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 233, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(4) The Russian Duma reconvened on February 27 (New Style, the 14th Old Style). Alexander Kerensky was a leading Socialist and member of the Petrograd Soviet. The bitterly cold weeks before Kerensky spoke led to a failure of the transport system and deliveries of food including to Petrograd and Moscow. Bolsheviks and others were active in the military and factories. Nobles and business people privately discussed the removal of Tsar Nicholas, but Kerensky's public call was a new step, one that infuriated Empress Alexandra.
1917: Russia's Year of Revolution by Roy Bainton, page 62, copyright © Roy Bainton 2005, publisher: Carroll and Graf Publishers, publication date: 2005
(5) KerenskyDumaBolsheviksPetrograd
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 135, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
1 2 Next
