Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Map of the the Balkan Front — Germany's Southeast Front — with the mountain passes between Austria-Hungary and Romania. From the Reichsarchiv history of the wars in Serbia and Romania, Herbstschlacht in Macedonien; Cernabogen 1916.The capitals of Belgrade (Serbia), Bucharest (Romania), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Constantinople (Turkey) are prominent, as is Salonica, Greece, the Allied entry port into the country.
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.
Stereo card view of wounded Belgian soldiers in an Antwerp hospital attended by a Red Cross nurse. The nurse attends to a severely wounded soldier whose head, face, and hands are swathed in bandages.
Vote Yes pin for Australian conscription, October 28, 1916, with the flags of Australia and Great Britain. A tin badge or tie-back pin in support of the Australian referendum on conscription, October 28, 1916. Australia voted no on this occasion and again, by a wider margin, in December, 1917.
Under her commander Captain Koenig, the German merchant submarine "Deutschland", largest in the world, ran the British blockade of Germany and British ships off the US coast to reach the neutral United States, arriving in Baltimore Harbor July 10, 1916.Postcard of the Deutschland of Bremen, and the tugboat Thomas F. Timmins of Baltimore.
"Aided by his heavy artillery, Mackensen smashed through the Roumanian Center with such force that the whole line westward to the Danube gave way. In rapid succession he captured Rasova, Madgidia and on October 25th, he crowned his offensive by the seizure of Cernavoda on the Danube. The Roumanians, after crossing the great bridge at this point, destroyed it, leaving Mackensen in possession of the railroad." ((1), more)
"At sea, German submarine sinkings were continuous: on October 28 the British liner Marina was torpedoed without warning off the Fastnet Rock. Eighteen passengers were drowned, among them six Americans. A United States steamer, the Lanao, was also sunk by a German submarine that day, off Portugal. Many observers wondered how long it would be before these sinking forced the United States to declare war on Germany. Two days earlier President Wilson had told the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce: 'I believe that the business of neutrality is over. The nature of modern war leaves no State untouched.'" ((2), more)
"This afternoon the Grand Duchess Marie opened an exhibition at the corner of the Champ-d-Mars and the Moika, of prothetic appliances for facial injuries. She asked me to meet her there.. . . The wan light which came through the windows made this melancholy exhibition seem still more depressing. In every showcase photographs, plaster masks and wax figures alternated with appliances for demonstrating their working and uses. All these torn and battered faces, with bones fractured or missing and in some cases deprived of all resemblance to the human countenance, made a loathsome picture for which no word can be found in any tongue." ((3), more)
"The British decision [to implement conscription] set a precedent for the Dominions, New Zealand introducing compulsory military service in July 1916. Yet Canada did not follow suit until the last year of the war, and in Australia the government lost two referendums on the issue in October 1916 and December 1917, the first narrowly but the second by a wider margin. Opposition came partly from radicals and socialists but also from a portion of the Irish community and the Catholic hierarchy, antagonized by the suppression of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Even in Britain itself conscription failed to solve the 'manpower' problem (a term that entered the political lexicon at this time). Fewer soldiers were recruited in 1916 with conscription than in 1915 without it." ((4), more)
"Did we really have such a good life in peacetime? Even if it might seem as if we did, we weren't really satisfied. I remember that many of us hoped for war so that things would get better for us. Whenever I remember how we used to worry about getting a job, about pay disputes and the length of the working day, it makes the thought of peace less attractive. But at the moment it seems like paradise, a time when you could buy all the bread, all the sausage, all the clothes we wanted. Not that that was much help to all the poor buggers with no money to buy anything! Perhaps the real crisis will come when we are all lucky enough to be at peace again." ((5), more)
(1) Romania entered the war on August 27, 1916 by crossing the Transylvanian Alps and southern Carpathian Mountains into Transylvania in Austria-Hungary. Within a month, a German and Austro-Hungarian army was driving the invaders back into Romania while, across the small country to the east, a combined German, Bulgarian, and Turkish army under German General August von Mackensen had driven the Romanians back in Dobrudja, a region between the Danube River and the Black Sea. After a pause, Mackensen recommenced his attack on October 25.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 257, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(2) In 1916 Germany's submarine warfare sank not only ships of its enemies, but also those within the war zone around the United Kingdom that Germany had declared on February 4, 1915. In some cases, the ships were neutral, but Germany claimed Britain false-flagged its ships, flying those of neutral countries. When he spoke in Cincinnati, President Woodrow Wilson was in the last days of a presidential campaign, and would be re-elected on November 7. Fastnet Rock is 13 kilometers off county Cork, the southwestern coast of Ireland.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 292, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) Excerpts from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Friday, October 27, 1916. The Grand Duchess later pulls the Ambassador aside to discuss her concerns for the war, her country, and its weak-willed ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, whom she sees as no match for his wife, Empress Alexandra.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 71–72, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(4) In January 1916 Great Britain introduced conscription for single men aged 18 to 41 with the Military Service Act, extending it to married men in May, in both cases excluding Ireland outside of northern Ireland. The Dominions and colonies of the British Empire gave it access to a large pool of men including those of India and the Union of South Africa. The Easter Rising took place in April, 1916. Support for it grew enormously after the executions of 16 of its leaders in May and August.
Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy by David Stevenson, pp. 165–166, copyright © 2004 by David Stevenson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2004
(5) Richard Stumpf, a German sailor on SMS Helgoland. On October 29, 1916, he watched the return of submarine U-53 which had accompanied the missing merchant submarine Bremen on its maiden voyage. Bremen vanished.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, pp. 311–312, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
1 2 Next
