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Austro-Hungarian soldiers marching through a city, their officers bawling orders. Women and a child watch and talk, possibly shouting to be heard over the marching feet. An original watercolor on blue paper, signed W. Rittermann or Pittermann, December 26, 1915.
Uncle Sam weighs the lives lost in the German sinking of the Lusitania (and other ships, as seen on the horizon) to his cash flow from selling weapons and other supplies to the combatants, particularly the allies. The moneybags have tipped the scales. A 1916 postcard by Em. Dupuis.
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.
The German armored cruiser S.M.S Prinz Adalbert under steam. Stationed in the Baltic Sea, Prinz Adalbert had run aground on January 24, 1915, and been torpedoed by the British submarine E.9 on July 2. On October 23 submarine E.8 torpedoed the battleship setting off an explosion in a magazine. Only three survived.
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.
"When the Italians moved out of their trenches on the 21st, they expected large gains. The Austrians, however, were more than ready. Enough machine guns always survived to check the Italians — even when they advanced in armour of steel plates, as they did in some places. Very little was achieved on the northern Isonzo. The Italians had briefly recaptured the 'Big Trench' on Mrzli at the end of September, only to lose it to the usual ferocious counter-attack. They hauled artillery onto Krn to pound the summit of Mrzli and its rear lines from the north while the infantry drove up from the south and west. Assisted in this way, the Salerno Brigade took the Big Trench on 21 October." ((1), more)
"America had better look out after this war. I shall stand no nonsense from America after the war." ((2), more)
"One month after the start of the [German and Austro-Hungarian] offensive the attackers could see that they had advanced, but as many as a fifth of their troops were out of action. Nonetheless, [Serbia's] defence, already weakened, declined totally. When the Bregalnica division could not halt the incomparably stronger units of the Bulgarian 2nd Army, the state of affairs on the Macedonian front soon became critical. The Bulgarians reached the Vardar River on 19 October, entered Kumanovo on the 20th, reached Skopje on the 22nd, and took the strategically important Kačanik Gorge on the 26th." ((3), more)
"Goodhart in E.8 scored one of the more spectacular successes of the submarine campaign while operating off Libau on 23 October [1915]. He encountered the recently repaired armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert escorted by two destroyers and torpedoed her. One of the cruiser's magazines exploded, and there were only three survivors. It was the heaviest loss of the war for the German Baltic forces." ((4), more)
"Since the beginning of the war Jagodina has been full of refugees, especially from Belgrade. Now, when the enemy has started to infiltrate from all sides, refugees have been arriving constantly, night and day, in trains, carts and on foot, and then going on. . . . Many are homeless, without food, and the poor, barefoot and in tatters, are unable to withstand the cold October weather." ((5), more)
(1) Italy began a new offensive on the Isonzo Front — the Third Battle of the Isonzo — with a preliminary bombardment on October 18, 1915, but much of the artillery was 75 mm. field guns which did little damage to trenches or barbed wire.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 128, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(2) Kaiser Wilhelm to American Ambassador to Germany James Gerard, October 22, 1915. The Kaiser was complaining to Gerard about American financial aid to Great Britain and France, and about submarines built in America and escorted to Britain by ships of the American navy.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) With most of its forces facing German and Austro-Hungarian forces along on its northern and northwestern fronts, Serbia had an army of 100,000 men to face two Bulgarian armies totaling roughly three times as many men along its eastern border. The movements of the Bulgarian Second Army were ensuring the isolation of Serbia from the Franco-British forces trying to come to its aid from Salonika.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, page 146, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
(4) Responding to a Russian request for aid in the Baltic Sea, Great Britain dispatched two submarines, E.8 and E.13 on August 15, 1915. Only E.13, under the command of Lieutenant Commander F. H. J. Goodhart, made the dangerous passage from the North Sea through the Skaggerak and Kattegat, the straits between the neutral countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. E.1 and E.8 had reached the Baltic in October 1914. By September 4, 1915, E.18 and E.19 did as well, giving Britain five submarines operating in the Sea. S.M.S Prinz Adalbert had run aground on January 24, and been torpedoed by E.9 on July 2.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 203, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(5) Description by Serbian Socialist leader Dragiša Lapčević writing in October, 1915 of Serbian refugees in Jagodina, a town midway between the Serbian capital of Belgrade and its wartime capital of Nish. Serbia's Army and citizens were retreating before the combined invasion forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria.
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