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Austrian Mountain Rangers 'resting in the shade of southern flora' on the Italian front. The card was postmarked from Berlin on January 5, 1916.
The Russian Duma: priest deputies and officers. From White Nights and Other Russian Impressions by Arthur Ruhl. Ruhl reported from Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution.
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.
A color map of Germany before and during the war from a French postcard, including the German states, views of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Rhine. Alsace and Lorraine are in the southwest.
Chosen Boy, a 1918 watercolor by Paul Klee. From Paul Klee: Early and Late Years: 1894-1940. © 2013 Moeller Fine Art
"The Allies had abandoned exclusive use of patrolled routes in the Mediterranean shortly before the Germans adopted unrestricted submarine warfare. The Germans declared the great majority of the Mediterranean a Sperrgebiet (prohibited area) except for the extreme western portion off Spain, including the Balearics, and initially, the 20-mile-wide corridor to Greek waters. The Austrians promised to assist the Germans outside the Adriatic. Their smaller submarines as they became available would now operate against Allied shipping between Malta and Cerigo. In the early part of 1917, the situation in the Mediterranean was deceptively favorable to the Allies, for in January the greater part of the Mediterranean U-boat flotilla was under repair and refit at Pola and Cattaro after the heavy demands of 1916. In January sinkings fell to 78,541 tons, only 24 percent of the total of 328,391 tons sunk in all theaters. It was the lull before the storm . . ." ((1), more)
"During January at least three separate centers of agitation against the Czar began to take shape in Petrograd. There was the Union of Nobles, an organization of the aristocracy which was plotting for a palace revolution. There were the political parties of the extreme left, chiefly the Social Democrats, forever eating away underground, like white ants, inside the factories and the armed services. And there was the Duma itself. Through all three groups the Okhrana coiled itself like some parasitical creeper that flourishes best where it can generate rottenness and decay." ((2), more)
"From February 1, 1917, sea traffic will be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice in the following blockade zones around Great Britain, France, Italy and in the Eastern Mediterranean:[Footnote:] Briefly summarized, the following paragraphs describe a complete enclosure or blockade of Britain and adjacent isles, France, Belgium, Italy and their North African possessions, except for one small space on the French Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border." ((3), more)
"On February 1 [1917], defending the U-boat decision before the Reichstag, [Zimmermann] urged all the reasons—the Western states, the anti-war feeling, the menace of Japan—why the United States would not go to war. . . .In London expectancy was equally tense; in Washington it was highest of all. The long-awaited challenge, fended off so often, had suddenly been flung in America's face. Freedom of the seas, commented one American paper, would henceforth be enjoyed 'by icebergs and fish.'" ((4), more)
"— The long spell of bitter cold, the lack of coal, are compelling many people in the country to use wood for heating purposes. Thus the war is destroying our trees as well as our people. It is an irreparable loss both for the earth and for the human race.— The 2nd. The cold spell has lasted a fortnight. But not one word appears in the papers about the terrible hardship in the trenches, with twenty degrees of frost. Such hardships are passed over in silence by the more patriotic papers. Very convenient! They conceal their sufferings from the enemy so carefully that they even conceal them from themselves." ((5), more)
(1) The British, French, and Italian allies only poorly coordinated efforts to counteract the U-boat threat in the Mediterranean, trying to establishing zones and patrolled routes. The Austro-Hungarian Adriatic ports of Pola and Cattaro were used by both Austrian and German U-boats. Germany proclaimed a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare beginning February 1, 1917.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 390, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(2) A somewhat overwrought description of the groups plotting against Russian Tsar Nicholas II in the capital of Petrograd in January, 1917. Members of the aristocracy and the Russian Duma had killed the monk Rasputin at the end of December, a blow that struck at the heart of the royal family.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 134, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
(3) Beginning of a memorandum included with a letter delivered to the United States Secretary of State by German Ambassador von Bernstorff, Washington, D.C., January 31, 1917 announcing the commencing of unrestricted submarine warfare effective in a few hours, on February 1. The policy was opposed by German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg who argued that it would bring the United States into the war. The campaign was supported by Kaiser Wilhelm, German Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, and Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, Chief of Germany's Naval General Staff, all of whom argued that America would not react, or if it did, it would be too late to prevent the starving of Britain or its intervention would prove ineffectual.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. V, 1917, p. 6, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(4) Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917, having delivered notice to American Secretary of State Robert Lansing at 4:00 p.m. the previous day. The policy was opposed by German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg who argued that it would bring the United States into the war. Alfred Zimmerman was Germany's Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The western states backed American president Woodrow Wilson in his successful bid for re-election, in part because 'he kept us out of war.' Zimmerman had authored 'the Zimmerman Telegram' in January, inviting Mexico to ally with Germany and Japan, then allied with the Entente powers, against the United States. Mexico's lost territories in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico were to be its reward.
The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman, page 145, copyright © 1958, 1966 by Barbara W. Tuchman, publisher: Ballantine Books, publication date: 1979
(5) Entries for February 1 and 2, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. On January 24, Corday recorded that a coal crisis had broken out, that women were queuing outside stores, and that shops had no fuel for central heating. The winter of 1916–17 was Germany's 'turnip winter', but the cold bit across the continent. Russia's railway network fell victim to it, preventing deliveries of food to the cities and supplies to the army.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 229, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
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