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A Swiss postcard of 'The European War' in 1914. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary face enemies to the east, west, and south. Germany is fighting the war it tried to avoid, battling Russia to the east and France to the west. Germany had also hoped to avoid fighting England which came to the aid of neutral (and prostrate) Belgium, and straddles the Channel. Austria-Hungary also fights on two fronts, against Russia to the east and Serbia and Montenegro to the south. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared neutrality, and looks on. Other neutral nations include Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Japan enters from the east to battle Germany. The German Fleet stays close to port in the North and Baltic Seas while a German Zeppelin targets England. The Austro-Hungarian Fleet keeps watch in the Adriatic. Turkey is not represented, and entered the war at the end of October, 1914; Italy in late May, 1915.
Red Cross postcard of Turkish cavalry routing a Russian patrol in the Caucasus. 1914 illustration.
Embossed postcard of the flag and coins of Russia, with fixed exchange rates for major currencies including Germany, Austria-Hungary, England, the Latin Monetary Union, Netherlands, and the United States of America. The Russian Ruble equaled 100 Kopeks. Tsar Nicholas II is on the obverse of most of the gold and silver coins; Tsar Alexander III is on the 7 1/2 ruble gold piece.
A mass of German troops bear an enormous egg striped in the black, white, and red of the german flag. Atop the egg, a cannon is fired by troops with a Hungarian flag. The target, diminutive in the distance, is Paris, Eiffel Tower gray against the brown city.The watercolor is labeled,Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso.The card is a Feldpostkarte, a field postcard, from Asbach Uralt, old German cognac. Above the brand name, two German soldiers wheel a field stove past a crate containing a bottle of the brandy under the title Gute Verpflegung, Good Food. Above the addressee is written Einschreiben, enroll, and Nach Ungarn, to Hungary. The card is addressed to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Hamburg, 1918-03-30. A Hamburg stamp also decorates the card.A hand-painted postcard by Schima Martos. , Germany on registered fieldpost card, 1918, message: Red Egg for Paris, Easter, 1918.The German advance in Operation Michael in the March, 1918 nearly broke the Allied line, and threatened Paris, putting it once again in range of a new German supergun capable of hitting the city from 70 miles away.
German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
"When the old year closed a complete deadlock existed between the great combatants in the West by land and by sea. The German fleet remained sheltered in its fortified harbours, and the British Admiralty had discovered no way of drawing it out. The trench lines ran continuously from the Alps to the sea, and there was no possibility of manœuvre. The Admirals pinned their faith to the blockade; the Generals turned to a war of exhaustion and to still more dire attempts to pierce the enemy's front. All the wars of the world could show nothing to compare with the continuous front which had now been established. Ramparts more than 350 miles long, ceaselessly guarded by millions of men, sustained by thousands of cannon, stretched from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea. The Germans had tried in October and November to break through while these lines were still weak and thin. They had failed with heavy losses. The French and British Headquarters had still to be instructed in the defensive power of barbed wire and entrenched machine guns." ((1), more)
"On the morning of the fifth, the medical officer evacuated me to Ste-Menehould. From the automobile that carried me toward the rear, I could hear the familiar roll of the cannon fading little by little into the distance.VIThus from August 10, 1914, to January 5, 1915, I led a life as different as possible from my ordinary existence: a life at once barbarous, violent, often colorful, also often of a dreary monotony combined with bits of comedy and moments of grim tragedy. In five months in the field, who would not have amassed a rich harvest of experiences?" ((2), more)
"The Russians have just inflicted a defeat on the Turks near Sarykamish, on the Kars-Erzerum road.This success is a particularly fine piece of work as our Ally's offensive is in a region of mountains as high as the Alps, intersected by precipices and with passes often over 2,500 metres in height. It is appalling cold at this season of the year, and there are incessant snowstorms. No roads and the whole region laid waste. The army of the Caucasus is performing prodigies of valour every day." ((3), more)
"During the last nine days there has been heavy fighting on the left bank of the Vistula, in the sector between the Bzura and the Ravka. On January 2 the Germans succeeded in carrying the important Borjymov position : their front is thus no more than sixty kilometres from Warsaw.This situation comes in for very strong comment in Moscow, if I am to credit the information given me by an English journalist who was dining in the Slaviansky Bazaar only yesterday: 'In all the drawing-rooms and clubs at Moscow,' he said, 'there is great irritation at the turn military events are taking. No one can understand this suspension of all our attacks and these continuous retreats which look as if they would never end. But it is not the Grand Duke Nicholas who gets the blame but the Emperor and still more the Empress. The most absurd stories are told about Alexandra Feodorovna ; Rasputin is accused of being in German pay and the Tsaritsa is simply called the Niemka [the German woman] . . . '" ((4), more)
"Day by day the limping figures grow more numerous on the pavement, the pale bandaged heads more frequent in passing carriages. In the stalls at the theatres and concerts there are many uniforms; and their wearers usually have to wait till the hall is emptied before they hobble out on a supporting arm. Most of them are very young, and it is the expression of their faces which I should like to picture and interpret as being the very essence of what I have called the look of Paris. They are grave, these young faces: one hears a great deal of the gaiety in the trenches, but the wounded are not gay. Neither are they sad, however. They are calm, meditative, strangely purified and matured. It is as though their great experience had purged them of pettiness, meanness and frivolity, burning them down to the bare bones of character, the fundamental substance of the soul, and shaping that substance into something so strong and finely tempered that for a long time to come Paris will not care to wear any look unworthy of the look on their faces." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the chapter 'The Deadlock in the West' in Winston Churchill's history of the war, and Churchill's explication of why the war was different from its predecessors. Among the reasons: 'The turning movement, the oldest manœuvre in war, became impossible. . . . the power of modern weapons . . . the use of barbed wire . . . the centre could not be pierced and there were no flanks to turn.' Germany's major October and November offensive ended in defeat in the Battle of Flanders.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, pp. 291, 292, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
(2) Excerpt from the memoirs of French historian Marc Bloch, a sergeant, later adjutant, with the 272nd and 72nd infantry regiment in the Argonne. Bloch was on convalescent leave from January 5 to July 13, 1915. In the first five months of his service he observed the 'total inadequacy of our material preparation as well as of our military training' — poor tools for digging, wire with no barbs, inadequate phone lines. He is a sharp observer of men, their strengths and weaknesses.
Memoirs of War 1914-15 by Marc Bloch, pp. 157-159, copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988, publisher: Cambridge University Press, publication date: 1988
(3) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Wednesday, January 6, 1915. Turkish War Minister Ismail Enver Pasha planned and took command of a winter invasion of Russia in the mountains of the Turkish/Russian border. From December 27, the Russians held off repeated Turkish attacks until counter-attacking on January 2. In the follow two weeks, the Russians destroyed much of what was left of the Turkish army, the remnants of which retreated to Erzerum. Estimates of Turkish casualties in the Battle of Sarikamish vary widely, from 30,000 to 90,000 dead, and from 7,000 to many times that taken prisoner. Kars was the great Russian fortress on the Russo-Turkish border, Erzerum the Turkish.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 237, 238, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(4) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Thursday, January 7, 1915. By that date, the Russians had invaded and fled East Prussia, and seized and yielded Galicia in Austria-Hungary. German and Austro-Hungarian forces were advancing for the third time into Polish Russia. Grand Duke Nicholas was Commander of the Russian Army. Paléologue goes on to defend the German-born Empress Alexandra, noting that she lived in England from the age of six when her mother died, and that, 'in her inmost being she has become entirely Russian.'
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 238, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(5) Conclusion of 'The Look of Paris', the first chapter of Edith Wharton's Fighting France. Wharton writes of the look of the city from mobilization in August 1914, through the disappearance of men from the city, the arrival of refugees, and the arrival of the wounded in January and February 1915, wounded who initially had been diverted from the capital, but now make their grave presence felt and visible.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 40, 41, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
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