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Balkan Front Postcard relief map of the Serbian Front. Although difficult to read, the following landmarks are legible and visible: The plains of Hungary are at the top immediately north of the Danube River and the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The Adriatic Sea is at the bottom left along the coasts of Montenegro and Albania. To the east, south to north, are Bulgaria, Romania, and the Transylvanian Alps. Serbian landmarks include the city of Nisch, and the valleys of the Struma.
Map of Syria, Palestine, Turkey, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus.
Map of northeastern Italy, the border with Austria-Hungary, and the northern Adriatic. Red lines mark railroads and red dots forts.
Kaisers Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph with Sultan Mohammed and their generals over some of their conquests: Lüttich — Liege, Belgium, Warschau — Warsaw, Russia, and Przemysl, Austria-Hungary, recaptured from the Russians.In the top left, Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany from 1871 to 1890, points to the dawn of the German Empire. In the top right, Helmut Moltke (the Elder), who led Germany to victory in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, discusses his plans with the future Emperor Wilhelm I.
Peoples of Austria-Hungary in 1914 from Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd. The empire's population included Germans, Magyars, Romanians, Italians, and Slavs including Croats, Serbians, Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Slovenes.
"Von Kövess's only course was to pull his troops back in as good order as possible to the very frontiers of the Dual Monarchy. He must abandon Serbia and put the broad trench of the rivers Danube and Save between his men and the invaders: surely by now they must have outrun their supplies. A weary army would receive no help in the plains along the river.With the fall of Niš, the Serbs had indeed come to a halt. They had advanced over 170 miles in three weeks of continuous battle. Now they waited for four days for French support to reach them. Had the Serbs been able to push on, then the Eleventh Army could well have been routed. As it was, the Germans were able to fight a stubborn rear-guard action at Paracin on October 22, but it could not affect the eventual outcome of the campaign." ((1), more)
"On the 21st of October our rear guards were abreast of Ma'arrat en Numan, halfway between Hamah and Aleppo. On the following day they were several times attacked by hostile Bedouins and armored cars, and upon orders from Kemal they fell back to Ch. es Sebil and the railroad station of Abu ed Duhur. . . . On October 23rd our outposts at Ch. es Sebil were attacked by numerous Bedouins, armored cars, and British cavalry. They had to fall back to the main position south of Aleppo. One portion was surrounded and captured after hand to hand fighting. The outposts at the railroad station of Abu ed Duhur were now also withdrawn to the main position. The enemy chiefly used armored cars in the pursuit. Heavy air attacks were made on the stations of Aleppo.In the Gulf of Alexandretta, British and French ships were observed. In front of Arsus, southwest of Alexandretta, a ship appeared at dusk on the 23rd, bombarded the coast and attempted to land troops." ((2), more)
"Imperial-and-Royal orders and officials were soon ignored in Agram, Budapest, Laibach, Prague, Warsaw, and even Vienna. On 21 October the Parliament of Lower Austria voted to create a new German-Austrian state. In Budapest Károly's 'Independent and '48er Party' demanded termination of the 1867 Compromise. Karl refused all calls from his military to deploy forces against the newly-emerging national states. On 23 October Croatian units rebelled in Fiume. Concurrently, other Croatian as well as Bosnian, Czech, Magyar, and Romanian formations left their posts in Venetia and headed home. The k.u.k. Army was in a state of open revolt and informal dissolution.General Diaz finally launched his long awaited assault on 24 October 1918, the first anniversary of the start of the Battle of Caporetto. The Italian Fourth and Twelfth armies attacked in the direction of Monte Grappa north of Bassano, while the Eighth and Tenth armies crossed the middle Piave toward Vittorio Veneto. Surprisingly, Hapsburg forces fought tenaciously for 2 days — and then melted away." ((3), more)
"The King received me in the large corner salon of the [Gödöllö] castle. . . . It was already growing dark and the chandeliers were lit. Charles IV, in his field uniform and gaiters, was standing near his writing table, smoking a cigarette and seemed to be suffering from great nervous strain. I could not help feeling deep sympathy for him.The King said pointedly, 'I have always been warned that you want a republic. Is that true?' 'I do not want a republic, I want an independent democratic Hungary.'" Then the ruler indicated that he approved of Károlyi's program and that he intended to make him prime minister. "'He dismissed me with the air of a man whose heart had been relieved of a heavy burden.'" ((4), more)
"Arz informed the Germans within 48 hours of the start of the Italian offensive that half his Army, 30 divisions, was in revolt. The Austrian official history of the war gives a long litany of divisions affected by dissolution between 26 and 27 October: the list included the 67th and 27th divisions at Asiago, the 34th and the 25th at Portule, the 16th at Sisemola, and the 5th in Borgo. Recent studies suggest that the Czech 13th and 26th, the Bohemian 29th and 43rd, the Croatian 42nd and 57th divisions, and even units of the elite Austrian 3rd (Edelweiss) Division were also in rebellion.On 24 October Hungarian leaders appealed to Honvéd soldiers to lay down their arms and head home. Field Marshal von Krobatin called for an end to hostilities already the next day; Archduke Joseph followed with a similar plea on 26 October." ((5), more)
(1) In October, 1918, Austro-Hungarian General Hermann Kövess von Kövess Háza commanded occupying forces in Serbia. Faced with the rapid advance of Allied forces under French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey on the Balkan Front, and the surrender of Bulgaria on September 30, 1918, he could do little more than retreat to defend Austria-Hungary. During the Central Power invasion of Serbia in 1915, Niš (Nisch or Nish) had briefly served as the Serbian capital after the fall of Belgrade. Paracin lies in the valley of the Great Morava River between the two cities.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 235, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(2) Excerpts from German General Otto Liman von Sanders' account of the British and Arab advance northward against Ottoman forces in northern Syria in October, 1918. Aleppo was a communication hub with the Turkish homeland and east to Mesopotamia. Mustapha Kemal, a hero of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, would become famous as Ataturk.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 316, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(3) By October, 1918, Allied leaders had for months been pressing the Italians to launch an offensive against Austria-Hungary. With Bulgaria out of the war, Turkish forces being pushed out of Syria and Mesopotamia, the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire forming nation states from the ruins of an Empire that still occupied northeastern Italy, General Armando Diaz and the Italian government feared having little clout to stake territorial claims at a post-war peace conference. Diaz's Battle of Vittorio Veneto, after a strong defense by the Austro-Hungarians, would turn into a advance into a broken, conquered nation. The 1917 Battle of Caporetto had been a major advance by the Austro-Hungarians and Germans that the Italians stopped on the Piave River. The Austro-Hungarian Army was kaiserlich-und-königlich, Imperial and Royal, as the Emperor was also Apostolic King of Hungary.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, pp. 436–437, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(4) Mihály Károlyi, who had organized an Hungarian national council on October 25, 1918, describing his meeting later that evening with Kaiser Karl, Emperor of Austria-Hungary and Apostolic King, Karl IV, of Hungary. The previous day, October 24, Italian Commander-in-Chief Armando Diaz had launched the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. On the 25th, the Austro-Hungarian defenders were holding, but would collapse the next day.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, page 787, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(5) Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl had appointed General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army in February, 1917, replacing Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. The 'Italian offensive' was the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, launched by Italian Commander General Armando Diaz on October 24, 1918. The Honvéd was the Hungarian equivalent of Austria's Landwehr, the territorial or national guard.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 437, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
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