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Beneath 'a shining vision' of a crowned Italy, an officer reads the news to his men.
A Russian Cossack riding among refugees fleeing before a Central Power advance. The Russians adopted a scorched-earth policy in the months-long retreat before the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive of the spring, summer, and fall 1915, with Cossacks accused of burning homes and crops to deny them to the advancing enemy, and to prevent civilians from remaining behind and providing intelligence to the invader.
Photograph of a village on Lake Van, an area of Turkey populated largely by ethnic Armenians. The area was one of the first targeted on a large scale when Turkey turned on its Armenian citizens. Photo from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916.
Map of the Trentino, part of "Italia Irredenta," unredeemed Italy: Venezia Tridentina (Trentino and Alto Adige)
German and Austro-Hungarian forces under the command of generals von Hindenburg and Archduke Friedrich besieged Warsaw, and took it during the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. Austrians von Hötzendorf, Friedrich, and Pflanzer-Baltin form the bottom of the ring; the others are German. The flag and shield of Germany are on the bottom left; those of Austria and Hungary the bottom right.
". . . Finally, on the morning of the 1st we make our way down. We have to walk slowly in single file along a dangerous ridge under enemy fire. I'll never forget this for as long as I live. It's about 10 p.m. when it gets to my turn to go. The path takes almost an hour. I'm on top of the ridge and I go on step by step ducking the shrapnel fire. Nothing. I continue. After two paces I'm still unscathed. At the third, Zani from Vicenza, ten metres in front of me, is hit in the head. He screams and falls down the precipice. The poor wretch's head smashed on the mountainside. I see his body tumbling down. He was a good lad. I keep going, constantly asking myself when my turn will come. Someone behind me is hurt, screams, but keeps going. At one point the bullets are coming thicker and faster. The ridge is interrupted by a crevasse. I throw myself in. Fandella, the corporal of the 15th is already down there. We're lying on the corpse of a poor Alpine soldier. The firing is constant. A rock above our heads is hit and covers us in rubble. Fandella's lip is cut. I'm still unscathed. We get to Spleca at about 5 p.m.I'm shattered." ((1), more)
". . . A peasant woman, old and wrinkled as a fairy-tale witch, stopped near us. Peering into our faces, she told us with breathless, excited mutterings that she had seen the villains who had lighted the fire; she had seen them, she avowed, in the act of igniting a straw thatch. 'Kazaki oni byli! Nashi ruskiye; svoi ruskiye! [Cossacks they were! Our Russians; our own Russians!]' and, she continued, 'What could the poor and helpless do when their own people turned against them?'. . . 'German spies!' denounced the soldiers; 'Kazaki!' moaned the peasants under their breath." ((2), more)
"'He gave me the impression,' such is the entry I find in my diary on August 3d [1915], 'that Talaat is the one who desires to crush the poor Armenians.' He told me that the Union and Progress Committee had carefully considered the matter in all its details and that the policy which was being pursued was that which they had officially adopted. He said that I must not get the idea that the deportations had been decided upon hastily; in reality, they were the result of prolonged and careful deliberation." ((3), more)
"The 'foreign' volunteers were disliked by ordinary Italian soldiers, for they might be Austrian spies and they actually wanted this foul war. Patrizio Borsetti, a volunteer from the south Tyrol, wrote home in August 1915: 'the soldiers look at us as if we were the reason why they have to fight. How many curses on account of "Trento and Trieste" . . .'" ((4), more)
"This was the summer of 1915, a time of great tribulation for the Russian Army, as every student of the World War is aware. Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaievitch was pursuing a policy which rightly disturbed the Emperor, who constantly complained that the commander in chief of his armies sent the men forward without proper ammunition, without artillery support, and with no adequate preparations for safe retreat. Disaster after disaster confirmed the Emperor's fears. Fortress after fortress fell to the Germans. Kovno fell. Novogeorgiesk fell, and finally Warsaw itself fell. It was a terrible day when the Emperor, white and trembling, brought this news to the Empress as we sat at tea on her balcony in the warm autumn air." ((5), more)
(1) Italian infantryman Virgilio Bonamore wrote of fighting the Austro-Hungarians in the Julian Alps. Most of his battalion suffered frostbite in the last days of July, 1915, a period during which it rained constantly. On the morning of August 1, his unit was relieved, and made its way along the ridge, vulnerable, in single file.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 159, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(2) Frances Farmborough, an English teacher in Moscow when war broke out, trained for and joined a Red Cross unit serving with the Russian Army. The joint German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, launched on May 2, had broken the Russian front, splitting the northern and southern armies, and driving the Russians back hundreds of miles. Trying to leave nothing for the advancing enemy, the Russians, in Farmborough's account chiefly Cossacks, set villages ablaze. The night of August 1, 1915 (July 19 Old Style), Farmborough's unit had turned in for the night after pitching its tents in the village of Rymachi when she was awakened to cries the village was burning. By the morning Rymachi was ruins, and still more refugees joined the estimated one million driven eastward.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, pp. 104, 105, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916, met repeatedly with Turkish officials to stop the government's campaign against its Armenian citizens. The Ambassador made repeated attempts during 1915 to convince the rulers of Turkey, particularly Interior Minister Talaat and War Minister Enver, to spare the Armenian population. He found Talaat 'the most implacable' against the Armenians who told Morgenthau in early August that Turkey had 'already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians'. The Union and Progress Committee was the party of the Young Turks who had seized complete control of the government in 1913.
Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau, page 333, copyright © 1918, by Doubleday, Page & Company, publisher: Doubleday, Page & Company, publication date: 1918
(4) Parts of Italia irredenta, unredeemed Italy, including the French territory of Piedmont but more importantly the Austro-Hungarian city of Trieste and region of Trentino, both with significant populations of ethnic Italians, were offered to Italy as a prize for entering the war by the Entente allies, by Germany, and, ultimately and too late, by Austria-Hungary. Italy had already seen that the 1914 dreams of quick victory were false, but entered the war in May, 1915 with the same hope. By August, 1915, Italy and Austria-Hungary had fought two Battles of the Isonzo River on their border, the First costing Italy 15,000 casualties; the Second 42,000.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 114, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(5) Extract from the memoir of Anna Viroubova, confidant to the Empress Alexandra, and one of the few people, other than Rasputin, the Empress associated with. Of German birth, the Empress was suspected of German sympathies, as were those about her. Warsaw was one of the largest cities of the Russian Empire, and the principle city of Polish Russia. After the German-Austro-Hungarian breakthrough of the Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign, it was one of the greatest losses of the long Russian retreat through the summer and into the fall of 1915. Viroubova writes that the fall of Warsaw made it clear to Tsar Nicholas that he needed to take command of the Russian Army himself, relieving Grand Duke Nicholas.
Memories of the Russian Court by Anna Viroubova, page 123, copyright © 1923 by The MacMillan Company, publisher: The MacMillan Company, publication date: 1923
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