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A British artillery crew deploying a new 120 mm. mortar in a field planted with hops south of Ypres. French officers stand to the right.
An Italian postcard of the Industry of War. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany squeezes gold from France and Belgium, filling sacks of money he provides to his ally Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary who feeds his guns to fire at Tsar Nicholas of Russia who vomits up troops. On the bottom right, Serbia, Montenegro, and Japan join the battle against Germany and Austria-Hungary. To the left, Great Britain flees to its ships. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy surveys it all, serenely neutral until May 1915. Germany taxed Belgium and occupied France heavily during its occupation, in money, in food and other necessities, and in human life and labor. Austria-Hungary borrowed heavily from Germany to support its war effort. The enormous manpower of Russia was a source of consolation for its allies, and of trepidation to its enemies. Some suspected Great Britain would take its small army and return to its ships, home, and empire.
Serbia's wartime capital, Niš or Nisch, was taken by Bulgarian forces on November 5, 1915 in the combined Central Power invasion and conquest of Serbia. The postcard portrait is of Bulgaria's Tsar Ferdinand beneath the Imperial Bulgarian flag, and shows street scenes in Nisch.
Tinted French Postcard of French Generals de Castelnau, Joffre, and Pau. Joffre was Commander of the French Army at the beginning of the war, and engineered the Allied victory of the Marne. General Pau was brought out of retirement to lead the short-lived Army of Alsace, disbanded to strengthen French forces to the west for the French counterattack at the Marne. De Castlenau commanded the French Second Army at the beginning of the war.
Postcard map of East Prussia and Polish Russia with a message and postmark, Vienna, August 20, 1915. From a series that asks, 'Do you know the high times?'
"A new front line was dug in Nomansland in the Cambrin sector. Everywhere assembly trenches were dug behind the support line, and gun-emplacements were dug in it. Stores for bridging trenches, ladders for getting out of them, had to be carried. Large and heavy metal cylinders, slung from a pole, that weighed on the shoulders of two men, were carried from Annequin cross-roads to be dug into the front line. The official name for the content of these cylinders was 'accessory.' It was a crime to call it 'gas.' . . . New batteries rolled in behind us, flung up emplacements in the chalky soil, and registered: all with the barest pretence of secrecy. Troop, train, and wagon movements were unconcealed. There was so much to be seen and sought for by both sides . . . And air activity increased greatly on both sides." ((1), more)
"My duty to my country, which has been intrusted to me by God, impels me to-day, when the enemy has penetrated into the interior of the Empire, to take the supreme command of the active forces and to share with my army the fatigues of war, and to safeguard with it Russian soil from the attempts of the enemy.The ways of Providence are inscrutable, but my duty and my desire determine me in my resolution for the good of the State." ((2), more)
"The German victory at Gorlice-Tarnów and the Allies' failure to force the Turkish Straits encouraged Romania to maintain its neutrality, and Berlin spent the summer of 1915 negotiating Bulgaria's entry into the war. Offers of immediate cession of Turkish lands (Thrace) and future gains at Serbia's and possibly Greece's expense (Macedonia) led Tsar Ferdinand, the "Balkan Richelieu", to conclude a military convention with the OHL on 6 September. Turkey joined the alliance 8 days later." ((3), more)
"— The 7th. Painlevé has seen Castelnau, who adopted the same tone of fatalism he displayed to Foch. Painlevé expressed the gravest concern about it to Poincaré. Absurd to take the risk of an offensive under the orders of a general who has no faith in it. Poincaré went to see Castelnau, who declared that he was not obliged to tell the truth to Deputies." ((4), more)
". . . the line had been so shortened—from 1,700 kilometres to 1,000—that Russian reserves could now be freed for the northern sector. Moreover, the Russian output of shell was increasing: 100,000 rounds per week in July, 220,000 in September, while reserve-troops began to come in greater numbers. X Army around Vilna had 105,000 men, most of them with rifles, and 600 guns, with up to 200 shells to use.. . . The German offensive took the form of a frontal attack on Vilna, which failed, and a flank-attack to the north, which succeeded. On 8th September [1915] three German infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions came round the northern flank of the Vilna defenders." ((5), more)
(1) Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, describing on September 4, 1915 some of the preparations for the Champagne-Loos-Artois Offensive, the great Anglo-French autumn offensive. With the Russians ongoing retreat since the beginning of the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, Italy's failures in the First and Second Battles of the Isonzo, and French political pressure to drive German forces from occupied territory, French commander Joseph Joffre continued planning for the offensive despite reservations from French and British generals including Noël Édouard de Castelnau and Douglas Haig, who thought the first British use of poison gas might lead to victory.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 146, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(2) Proclamation of September 5, 1915 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II to the Grand Duke Nicholas, announcing his replacement as Commander of the Russian Armies by the Tsar himself. For four months, since the beginning of the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, Russia have been retreating, ceding not only its Austro-Hungarian conquests in Galicia, but, by September 5, parts of the Empire itself, including Polish Russia and Lithuania.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, pp. 316, 317, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) Since May 2, 1915, the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive had driven the Russians back and ultimately out of Poland. The Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles with a naval assault had been abandoned for the Gallipoli invasion, which also failed, dashing hopes of driving Turkey out of the war and reopening the Mediterranean route to Russia. Favoring the Entente Allies, Romania remained neutral in the face of these defeats. More certain of the war's outcome, Bulgaria sided with the Central Powers against Russia, a fellow-Slav empire, with the opportunity to expand at the expense of Greece and Serbia, its allies in the First and enemies in the Second Balkan war. Tsar Ferdinand had ruled over the expansion of Bulgaria in 1885 and its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. OHL was Oberste Heeresleitung, the German High Command.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 157, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(4) Entry for September 7, 1915 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government. Paul Painlevé was a French Deputy representing Paris's Latin Quarter, who would later serve as cabinet minister and Prime Minister. Raymond Poincaré was President of France throughout the war. General Noel de Castelnau would command the French Fourth and Fifth Armies in the Second Battle of Champagne, French Commander Joffre's great offensive in the autumn of 1915. Many French and British commanders doubted the attack could succeed, particularly the British, who did not expect to have adequate men or weapons until spring or summer of 1916. With the industrial north of their country occupied, Italy's failures in its initial battles, and Russia's continuing retreat before the month's-long German-Austro-Hungarian advance, Joffre and other French leaders believed they had no alternative.The Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 105, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) By late August, 1915, the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, which had driven the Russian Army from the Carpathian mountains and Russian Poland, was coming to an end. Defending a shorter line, able to arm its soldiers and provide more shells for its artillery, the Russians faced invaders who had marched hundreds of miles, extended their supply line, and were reaching their limit. German Commander Erich von Falkenhayn had instructed his generals to stop in August and again on September 2, but General Erich Ludendorff proceeded with his plan for a continued offensive, one Falkenhayn had rejected in June.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, pp. 188, 189, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
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