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The new Dreibund, or Triple Alliance, of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey. The original Triple Alliance included Italy rather than Turkey, but Italy declared neutrality on August 3, 1914, then war on Austria-Hungary on May 24, 1915. The Austro-Hungarian soldier on the left is holding the Hapsburg flag. Illustration by HR.
Zeppelin Kommt! Children play a Zeppelin raid on London. Holding his bomb in the gondola is a doll of the airship's inventor, Count Zeppelin. The other children, playing the English, cower, and the British fleet — folded paper boats — remains in port. Prewar postcards celebrated the imposing airships and the excitement they generated with the same expression, 'Zeppelin Kommt!'. Postcard by P.O. Engelhard (P.O.E.). The message on the reverse is dated May 28, 1915.
Photograph of the Russian monk Grigory Rasputin from The War of the Nations Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings Compiled from the Mid-Week Pictorial. Tsar Nicholas of Russia and his wife were introduced to Rasputin in 1907. According to Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, Rasputin, 'wheedled them, dazzled them, dominated them.'
General Karl Freiherr von Pflanzer-Baltin in the snowy field.
A hold-to-light postcard of the German and Austro-Hungarian victory (shortlived) over the Russians in the Uzroker Pass in the Carpathians on January 28, 1915. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, launched an offensive with three armies on January 23, including the new Austro-Hungarian Seventh Army under General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin.
"The fighting in and about Sarikamish lasted in all nearly a fortnight, but the various and varying accounts of its later phases convey a somewhat blurred impression rather than provide a consecutive narrative. That impression is mainly of great masses of Turks, brave to the last but famished and half-frozen, being mown down by guns and maxims and rifle-fire on the main road, in the passes, and on the lower slopes of the mountains; or of their fierce attacks repulsed and Russian counter-attacks driven home, the cold steel finishing what was left undone by shell and bullet — the whole against a background of snow, in an atmosphere so arctic that the wounded succumbed to the cold where they fell." ((1), more)
"The first raid by Zeppelins in which bombs were dropped on British soil occurred on the night of January 19-20, 1915, when two airships bombed Sheringham, Snettisham, King's Lynn, and Yarmouth. Four people were killed and sixteen injured, and during the next six months only six small raids were recorded. These did little damage. Then in the summer of that year three raids were made on London, and considerable damage was inflicted." ((2), more)
"Yesterday Rasputin was run over on the Nevsky Prospekt by a troika going at full speed. He was picked up with a slight wound on the head.After the incident to Madame Vyrubova five days ago, this fresh warning from Heaven is only too eloquent! The war is displeasing God more than ever!" ((3), more)
"'The most puzzling thing about this war,' a Russian officer wrote to his mother on January 21 [1915], 'is that we don't come to hate the enemy . . . I think it's because we're united by a common bond; we've all been forced to do the thing most alien to human nature: kill our fellow man." ((4), more)
"Gen. Pflanzer's Austrian Army moving eastward, retook the Kirlibaba Pass on January 22nd [1915], sweeping on through Bukowina to Czernowitz, the capital, which he occupied on February 18th. Only a single Russian column, 30,000 men at most, opposed the advance of his great army." ((5), more)
(1) A grim summary by Robert Machray of the Turkish offensive that ended in disaster in the mountains, snow, and bitter weather of the Caucasus in the Battle of Sarikamish. The incompetent War Minister Enver Pasha aimed to seize the frontier rail terminus at Sarikamish before advancing on Russia's fortress at Kars. He instead destroyed a Turkish Army, and left as many as 70,000 of him men dead.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, pp. 46, 47, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Zeppelins had been used in the sieges of the Belgian fortresses of Liège in August 1914 and Antwerp in October, and against French cities near the Franco-German border. To forestall an attack on Britain, the British had struck the Zeppelin sheds at Cuxhaven on December 25, 1914, causing little damage.
The Zeppelin Fighters by Arch Whitehouse, page 67, copyright © 1966 by Arch Whitehouse, publisher: New English Library, publication date: 1978
(3) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Wednesday, January 20, 1915.Tsar Nicholas and his German-born wife Tsaritsa Alexandra were introduced to the monk Rasputin in 1907, and Paléologue earlier (September 28, 1914) reported that 'Rasputin obtained an extraordinary ascendancy over the Tsar and Tsaritsa,' in part because the empress believed the monk could heal her son of the hemophilia he shared with many on his mother's side. Anna Viroubova, lady-in-waiting, friend, and confidant to Alexandra, spent many evenings alone with the royal family, which isolated itself. Viroubova was seriously injured in a railway accident on January 2, 1915. Many in Petrograd blamed her, Rasputin, and the Tsaritsa for the Tsar's isolation. Viroubova was imprisoned during the first Russian Revolution in 1917.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 260, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(4)
A Mad Catastrophe by Geoffrey Wawro, page 351, copyright © 2014 by Geoffrey Wawro, publisher: Basic Books
(5) Although the Russian drive on Cracow and into Silesia had been driven back by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, the Russians had besieged the great Austro-Hungarian fortress city of Przemyśl on the San River, and still threatened to break through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains, putting them in a position to attack Budapest, the Hungarian capital. The Austro-Hungarians were particularly concerned about the loss of Bukovina out of concern that Russia would offer it to neutral Romania in exchange for their entry into the war on the side of the Entente Allies. General Pflanzer-Baltin was brought out of retirement after the defeat and dismissal of a number of Austro-Hungarian generals in 1914.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, pp. 144, 145, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
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