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Russia's Tsar Nicholas II displays an icon to some of his kneeling troops.
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.
Serbia's wartime capital, Niš or Nisch, was taken by Bulgarian forces on November 5, 1915 in the combined Central Power invasion and conquest of Serbia. The postcard portrait is of Bulgaria's Tsar Ferdinand beneath the Imperial Bulgarian flag, and shows street scenes in Nisch.
Tinted French Postcard of French Generals de Castelnau, Joffre, and Pau. Joffre was Commander of the French Army at the beginning of the war, and engineered the Allied victory of the Marne. General Pau was brought out of retirement to lead the short-lived Army of Alsace, disbanded to strengthen French forces to the west for the French counterattack at the Marne. De Castlenau commanded the French Second Army at the beginning of the war.
Postcard map of East Prussia and Polish Russia with a message and postmark, Vienna, August 20, 1915. From a series that asks, 'Do you know the high times?'
". . . he has given much thought and prayer to the matter. At last, after hearing mass a day or two ago, he said to us: Perhaps a scapegoat is needed to save Russia. I mean to be the victim. May the will of God be done. He was very pale as he said this, but on his face was an expression of utter resignation.'These words of the Emperor made me shiver all down my spine. The idea of predestination to sacrifice and complete resignation to the divine will is only too consistent with his passive nature." ((1), more)
"At about 3:20 P.M. personnel at the Nordholz base spotted what appeared to be an airship, and then saw a large flash of flame and heard an explosion. In a few minutes a report by telephone stated that a Zeppelin had fallen in flames near Neuwerk Island. Coastal batteries near Cuxhaven had a clear view of the disaster, and a sentry who had watched LZ.10 struggling shoreward with the upper portion of her hull shrouded by clouds, said he had seen a flash of lightning and with that a jagged flame that burst from the hull. Others saw the fire spread until the nose of the airship tilted down and she began to dive at about 80 degrees, and eventually piled up on the tidal flats, and burned in great clouds of smoke." ((2), more)
"A new front line was dug in Nomansland in the Cambrin sector. Everywhere assembly trenches were dug behind the support line, and gun-emplacements were dug in it. Stores for bridging trenches, ladders for getting out of them, had to be carried. Large and heavy metal cylinders, slung from a pole, that weighed on the shoulders of two men, were carried from Annequin cross-roads to be dug into the front line. The official name for the content of these cylinders was 'accessory.' It was a crime to call it 'gas.' . . . New batteries rolled in behind us, flung up emplacements in the chalky soil, and registered: all with the barest pretence of secrecy. Troop, train, and wagon movements were unconcealed. There was so much to be seen and sought for by both sides . . . And air activity increased greatly on both sides." ((3), more)
"My duty to my country, which has been intrusted to me by God, impels me to-day, when the enemy has penetrated into the interior of the Empire, to take the supreme command of the active forces and to share with my army the fatigues of war, and to safeguard with it Russian soil from the attempts of the enemy.The ways of Providence are inscrutable, but my duty and my desire determine me in my resolution for the good of the State." ((4), more)
"The German victory at Gorlice-Tarnów and the Allies' failure to force the Turkish Straits encouraged Romania to maintain its neutrality, and Berlin spent the summer of 1915 negotiating Bulgaria's entry into the war. Offers of immediate cession of Turkish lands (Thrace) and future gains at Serbia's and possibly Greece's expense (Macedonia) led Tsar Ferdinand, the "Balkan Richelieu", to conclude a military convention with the OHL on 6 September. Turkey joined the alliance 8 days later." ((5), more)
(1) Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, writing on September 2, 1915. The first speaker is Madame Vyrubova, an intimate companion of the royal family, sent by Tsar Nicholas of Russia to get the Ambassador's thoughts on the Tsar's decision to take command of the Russian Army in the face of the on-going Russian retreat before the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive begun on May 2, four months earlier. The Russian retreat extended from the Baltic Sea to Romania. Later in the evening Paléologue was asked for his conclusion after all he had heard, and replied, 'I haven't any. . . . When mysticism takes the place of policy it's impossible to prophesy. I'm ready for anything now!'
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 65, 68, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(2) Sent out on September 3, 1915 to attack England with three other airships, LZ.10's commander Klaus Hirsch reported he was returning to Nordholz, south of Cuxhaven on the North Sea. Hirsch and his crew died.
The Zeppelin Fighters by Arch Whitehouse, page 99, copyright © 1966 by Arch Whitehouse, publisher: New English Library, publication date: 1978
(3) Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, describing on September 4, 1915 some of the preparations for the Champagne-Loos-Artois Offensive, the great Anglo-French autumn offensive. With the Russians ongoing retreat since the beginning of the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, Italy's failures in the First and Second Battles of the Isonzo, and French political pressure to drive German forces from occupied territory, French commander Joseph Joffre continued planning for the offensive despite reservations from French and British generals including Noël Édouard de Castelnau and Douglas Haig, who thought the first British use of poison gas might lead to victory.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 146, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) Proclamation of September 5, 1915 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to the Grand Duke Nicholas, announcing his replacement as Commander of the Russian Armies by the Tsar himself. For four months, since the beginning of the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, Russia have been retreating, ceding not only its Austro-Hungarian conquests in Galicia, but, by September 5, parts of the Empire itself, including Polish Russia and Lithuania.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, pp. 316, 317, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(5) Since May 2, 1915, the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive had driven the Russians back and ultimately out of Poland. The Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles with a naval assault had been abandoned for the Gallipoli invasion, which also failed, dashing hopes of driving Turkey out of the war and reopening the Mediterranean route to Russia. Favoring the Entente Allies, Romania remained neutral in the face of these defeats. More certain of the war's outcome, Bulgaria sided with the Central Powers against Russia, a fellow-Slav empire, with the opportunity to expand at the expense of Greece and Serbia, its allies in the First and enemies in the Second Balkan war. Tsar Ferdinand had ruled over the expansion of Bulgaria in 1885 and its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. OHL was Oberste Heeresleitung, the German High Command.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 157, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
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