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Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.
God punish England & destroy Italy! A sailor drowns. The hand and sword of God blaze from the heavens as a ship begins to sinks, either struck by a torpedo or having struck a mine. In the distance a Zeppelin approaches the coast. A submarine may lurk.
Original pencil portrait of a recipient of the Iron Cross by Allenn (?), February 12, 1915.
View over the battlefield of the Loretto Heights, France. Notre Dame de Lorette, a pilgrimage site, stood on the Heights, and was, with Vimy Ridge, part of the high ground seized by German troops in the Race to the Sea after the Battle of the Marne in 1914. French commander Joffre hoped to capture Loretto Heights and Carency, a village the Germans had fortified, in the First Battle of Artois in December, 1914. He tried to take the hill again in mid-February, 1915.
Winter on the Masurian Lakes of East Prussia. German forces launched the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes in a blinding snowstorm.
"The repeated attacks to which the Russians have been treated in covering Warsaw on the Bzura line during the last ten days are only a feint. All indications point to the fact that the Germans have concentrated in East Prussia everything necessary for a very violent offensive, under the pressure of which the Russian line is already wavering." ((1), more)
". . . there is a very different feeling for each of the three allies. The Russians 'don't count,' so to speak. They are dangerous because of their numbers . . . Toward the French there is no bitterness either, rather a sort of pity and the wish to be thought well of. . . . Toward John Bull there is no mercy. He is shown naked, trying to hide himself with neutral flags; he is sprawled in his mill with a river of French blood flowing by from the battle-fields of France, while the cartoonist asks France if she cannot see that she is doing his grinding for him . . .. . . there is a cartoon of a young mother holding up her baby to his proud father with the announcement that he has spoken his first words. 'And what did he say?' 'Gott strafe England!'" ((2), more)
"Sunday, February 14, 1915.From the Tilsit region on the Lower Niemen to Plotzk on the Vistula the Russian army is on the retreat on a front of 450 kilometres. It has lost its entrenchments on the Angerapp and all the defiles between the Masurian Lakes which were so favorable for defence : it is retiring hastily on Kovno, Grodno, Osowiec, and the Narev." ((3), more)
"While all these events were taking place in the East, relief offensives for the Russians had been developed by strong forces of the English and the French in the Western theatre of the war.In the middle of February immensely superior masses of the French attacked the German positions of the 3rd Army in Champagne, others, north of Arras (in the neighborhood of the Loretto Heights), the portions of the 6th Army there." ((4), more)
"The 9th Army is having great difficulty in extricating itself from the forest region which stretches east of Augustovo and Suvalki. At Kolno, on the Lomza road further south, one of its columns has been surrounded and destroyed. The communiqués of the Stavka are confined to an announcement that under the pressure of large forces the Russian troops are retiring to the fortified line of the Niemen. But the public understands." ((5), more)
(1) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Friday, February 12, 1915. Russian commander Grand Duke Nicholas continued to claim he was ready to resume his offensive on Berlin when he had adequate ammunition.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 280, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(2) Excerpt from 'The Great Days' in Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, a journalist from the neutral United States. In February, 1915 Ruhl wrote from Berlin. Among the Germans who viewed Great Britain as the ultimate enemy were German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who had mistakenly convinced himself that England would not go to war over Belgian neutrality in 1914, and German commander Erich von Falkenhayn, who became convinced that Britain was Germany's true enemy, and that defeating France or Russia was chiefly a means to isolate and defeat England.
Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, pp. 108, 109, copyright © 1916 by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1916
(3) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Sunday, February 14, 1915. After this stark report, Paléologue wrote that the retreat gave the Russian monk Rasputin an opportunity to turn on his former patron Russian commander Grand Duke Nicholas who had helped introduce Rasputin into the royal family, but then turned against him, and asked the Tsar to do so as well.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 285, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
(4) In the Race to the Sea in 1914 German forces had seized the high ground of Loretto Heights and Vimy Ridge in Artois. From December 17 to 19, 1914 French Generals Joffre and Foch tried but failed to take the Heights in the First Battle of Artois. On February 7, 1915, German commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff had launched the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes on the Eastern Front, and were driving back the Russians along a 450 km. front. The February French offensives in Champagne and Artois were an attempt to draw German forces from the Eastern Front to the Western, in hopes of relieving the Russians.A pilgrimage site in 1914, the church of Notre Dame de Lorette is on the crest of Loretto Heights. It is the location of the world's largest French military cemetery.
General Headquarters and its Critical Decisions, 1914-1916 by Erich von Falkenhayn, page 71, copyright © 1920 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publication date: 1920
(5) Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Tuesday, February 16, 1915. German forces had surprised the Russian army in East Prussia by attacking first in a blizzard on February 7, 1915, then by attacking from the north with a new and, to the Russians unknown, army the next day. The Russian army escaped encirclement and annihilation, but with heavy losses. Stavka was the Russian General Headquarters.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 287, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
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