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Photograph of a village on Lake Van, an area of Turkey populated largely by ethnic Armenians. The area was one of the first targeted on a large scale when Turkey turned on its Armenian citizens. Photo from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916.
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.
Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
Map of northeastern Italy, the border with Austria-Hungary, and the northern Adriatic. Red lines mark railroads and red dots forts.
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.
"This is a night for feast and triumph, Pour oil into the lamp, O Bride,My boy returns a victor from war — Trim well, trim well the wick, O Bride.A waggon stops before the door, beside the well, Light up, light up the lamp, O Bride,My boy returns, bay leaves on his brow — Bring up, bring up the lamp, O Bride.Lo — with grief and blood the waggon's laden — Hold up, hold up the lamp, O Bride.Here lies my valiant son shot through the heart — O . . . snuff out, snuff out the lamp, O Bride." ((1), more)
"During those black days of August 1915, when the Armenians of Asia Minor—the toddlers, the elderly, the virgins, the brides, and the grandmothers—were being massacred under the guise of 'deportation' or 'exile,' and when the fate of those exiled to Chankiri and Ayash had already been settled, the eighteen to twenty of us who remained in Chankiri were awaiting ours. The Ottoman Parliament members Krikor Zohrab and Vartkes Serengulian had been arrested in Constantinople during this time, and after being held in prison briefly, they had been put on a train to Diyarbekir on the pretext of being tried before the court-martial there." ((2), more)
"A dull, implacable ennui began to settle on the Allied Army. It was not exactly hopelessness, not cynicism, it was an absence of purpose in their lives, a mechanical focusing down of their minds on to the simplest and the nearest things, the next meal, the last mail from home. The 'awful, horrible, lethargic flies' persisted, and the high dry winds of the early autumn sent the dust billowing through the air. Once more the soldiers began to report sick. Many of them were so weak with dysentery they moved at no faster pace than a crawl, and on the Anzac sector in particular, it was noticed that the former panache had gone . . ." ((3), more)
"On the same day, 29 August, the Second Army tried to capture Mount Rombon, at the northern limit of the Isonzo front. After belatedly occupying Flitsch, the Italians were pinned down by fire from Rombon, towering overhead. Boroević had wisely garrisoned Rombon with the 2nd Mountain Rifles, a regiment that was almost 90 per cent Slovene. The soldiers were fighting to save their nation from Italian domination as well as defending their emperor against traitors. Rombon was a bulwark, guarding over a million Slovenes, and the troops were packed onto a narrow summit, still snowbound in late August." ((4), more)
"The losses of the Russian army have been colossal. From 350,000 men a month in May, June and July, the figure has risen to 450,000 in August. Since the first defeat on the Dunajec the Russian army has thus lost approximately 1,500,000 men." ((5), more)
(1) 'The Flickering Lamp' by the Armenian Turkish poet Daniel Varoužan or Varujan, translation by Aram Tolegian. Varoužan was tortured, mutilated, and killed on August 26, 1915, victim of the Armenian Genocide.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 376, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(2) Excerpt from the memoir of Grigoris Balakian, a priest of the Armenian Church, and one of the Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople imprisoned on the night of April 24, 1915 and moved to Chankiri and Ayash. Most of the others were already dead. The two Parliament members Krikor Zohrab and Vartkes Serengulian found supporters who offered to help them escape, but they believed the court-martial would exonerate them. In Aleppo, the two came briefly under the protection of governor Jelal, who petitioned Turkish Interior Minister Talaat Pasha to keep them in the city. Talaat, one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide, instead replaced the governor. Under the guard of mounted police, the two Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament were seized by or delivered to bandits who tortured and killed them.
Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918 by Grigoris Balakian, page 103, copyright © Introduction and Translation 2009 by Peter Balakian, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2009-00-00
(3) The Allied Campaigns in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed. The naval campaign to force the Dardanelles, the April landings at Helles and Anzac Cove, the August 6 landing at Suvla Bay in an attempt to end the stalemate had all failed. The Allies could not advance; the Turks could not drive them into the sea. Bodies lay unburied between trench lines that were in some places only yards apart. Heat, flies, disease, and failure oppressed those men who were still alive. The last major Allied offensive took place on August 29, 1915. It failed.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, page 289, copyright © 1956 by Alan Moorehead, publisher: Perennial Classics 2002 (HarperCollins Publications 1956), publication date: 2002 (1956)
(4) The Italians failed in their attempt near the end of the Second Battle of the Isonzo to capture Mount Rombon. Along most of the Italian-Austro-Hungarian front, the Hapsburg army held higher ground including alpine summits. The Second Battle cost Italy 42,000 casualties, Austria-Hungary 47,000.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 111, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(5) Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, writing on August 30, 1915. He had met earlier with General Bielaïev, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army. The German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive — begun on May 2 on a line lying, in part, along the Dunajec River — had broken the Russian line, and the Russian army's retreat extended from the Baltic Sea to Romania. The ambassador also recorded that Russia was producing more shells and rifles, and importing more weapons, and that Moscow lay far from the front, that four armies defended the capital of Petrograd, and that autumn rains would soon slow the German advance. The two cities were likely safe.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 62, publisher: George H. Doran Company
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