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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.
Postcard of Veles, Serbia, showing a view of the town and its marketplace with some German officers among the residents. An inset shows four German officers on the heights above the city and the Vardar River.
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.
Germany and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria squeeze pincers on Serbia at the city of Nisch. Germany and Austria-Hungary began their joint invasion across Serbia's norther border on October 6, 1915. Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers on October 14, and invaded Serbia from the east. Nisch fell to the invaders on November 5.The Serbia capital of Belgrade on the Danube and the city of Monastir on the Greek border are marked with initials.Handmade postcard map dated November 12, 1915.
"America had better look out after this war. I shall stand no nonsense from America after the war." ((1), 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." ((2), 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." ((3), 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." ((4), more)
"Monday, October 25, 1915The Serbian disaster is developing apace.A swift Bulgarian raid on Vrania, on the upper Morava, and Uskub, on the Vardar, has cut the Nish-Salonica railway. Henceforth the Royal Government and the diplomatic corps cannot flee to Monastir. They intend to try and reach Scutari and the shores of the Adriatic via Mitrovitza, Pritzend and Diakovo, i.e., crossing the mountain tangle of Albania, where all the passes are already blocked by snow!Every day Pastchich is sending a desperate—and vain—appeal to the Allies." ((5), more)
(1) 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
(2) 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
(3) 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
(4) 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.
(5) Attacked from the north and northwest by German and Austro-Hungarian forces, and from the east by two Bulgarian armies, Serbia's sole hope was the Franco-British forces that had landed in Salonika, Greece. In cutting the rail line from Greece, the Bulgarians had insured the Serbs could neither retreat to the south nor expect relief from that direction. The only direction possible was west, into mountainous Albania to reach the Adriatic Sea whence Allied ships could transport them to safety. Monastir was a Serbian city on the Greek border. Pastchich, or Pashitch, was the Serbian Premier.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 96, publisher: George H. Doran Company
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