The Allies welcome Italy to the victory banquet, serving her Trento and Trieste. Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and Germany (the Central Powers) look in on the feast. The artwork is from the period between Italy's entry into the war on May 23, 1915, and Bulgaria's joining the Central Powers on October 14. It was a difficult year for the celebrants. Postcard by Aurelio Bertiglia.
Grande Hotel della CiviltàPiatti del GiornoImpero TedescoAustria-UngheriaTurchia EuropeaDolceVittoriaDolce della VittoriaTrento Trieste'Il Banchetto dei Vincitori''Le Banquet des Vainqueurs''The Banquet of the Victors'Great Hotel of CivilizationDishes of the DayGerman EmpireAustria-HungaryEuropean TurkeysweetvictorySweet VictoryTrento Trieste'The Banquet of the Victors''Le Banquet des vainqueurs''The Banquet of the Victors'Reverse:Logo:CCMRiproduzione artistica riservata1019Made in ItalyArtistic reproduction restricted
Black and white postcard with an embossed floral border, and a calendar for 1914. Two girls play at a water trough fashioned from a log, ribbons in their hair, and toy boats floating. On the trough, a poem:"This little card I send, and prayThat round about your path each dayThe light of love may shine alway."E. Hutchinson806J Copyright. Beagles' Postcards © Beagles' Postcards
Calendar from the French magazine Le Petit Journal with scenes including (clockwise from top left) the capture of a German battle flag by Zouaves and Chasseurs à pied, a French artillery crew manning a 75mm. field gun, a dragoon moving into position, a heavier gun firing, entrenched troops, and marines advancing. The calendar includes Roman Catholic holy days, saints days, fête nationale (Bastille Day), and the time of sunrise and sunset. Illustration by L. Bomblec (?).
Children dressed as Allied soldiers run to bring the New Year, 1916. France carries the 1, the United Kingdom (in a kilt) and Belgium — his national roundel on his hat — the 9, Serbia and Russia the 1 of the decade, and Italy the 6. Japan, bearing a flag, hurries to catch up. A folding calendar card for 1916 by G. Bertrand.Reverse: the calendar for 1916Inside:With best wishes for a happy Christmas with love from Wallis
1917 Wedgwood Calendar Tile with the United States Navy Yard in Boston on the face, and the 1917 calendar on the reverse.
1918 YMCA folding calendar card of two child French and American soldiers dancing beneath a ball of mistletoe and the words "With much Love", by Ray or R.A.Y.
"[British Colonel Fairholme] has been going to Louvain every day, to visit the General Staff and report to the King as the military representative of an ally. The first time he arrived in a motor with Gen. de Selliers de Moranville, the Chief of Staff. As they drew into the square in front of the headquarters, they saw that everything was in confusion and a crowd was gathered to watch arrivals and departures. When their car stopped, a large thug, mistaking him for a German officer, reached in and dealt him a smashing blow on the mouth with his fist, calling him a 'sal alboche' by way of good measure." *
". . . Compared with the towns of the north, Rheims is relatively unharmed; but for that very reason the arrest of life seems the more futile and cruel. The Cathedral square is deserted, all the houses around it are closed. And there, before us, rose the Cathedral — a cathedral, rather, for it was not the one we had always known. It was, in fact, not like any cathedral on earth. When the German bombardment began, the west front of Rheims was covered with scaffolding: the shells set it on fire, and the whole church was wrapped in flames. Now the scaffolding is gone, and in the dull provincial square there stands a structure so strange and beautiful, that one must search the Inferno, or some tale of Eastern magic, for words to picture the luminous unearthly vision. The lower part of the front has been warmed to deep tints of umber and burnt siena. This rich burnishing passes, higher up, through yellowish-pink and carmine, to a sulphur whitening to ivory; and the recesses of the portals and the hollows behind the statues are lined with a black denser and more velvety than any effect of shadow to be obtained by sculptured relief. The interweaving of colour over the whole blunted bruised surface recalls the metallic tints, the peacock-and-pigeon iridescences, the incredible mingling of red, blue, umber and yellow of the rocks along the Gulf of Ægina. And the wonder of the impression is increased by the sense of its evanescence; the knowledge that this is the beauty of disease and death, that every one of the transfigured statues must crumble under the autumn rains, that every one of the pink or golden stones is already eaten away to the core, that the Cathedral of Rheims is glowing and dying before us like a sunset. . ." *
"This Ark was presented in loving memory of Harold Lionel Isidore Spielmann of Pembroke College Camb Captain 10th Manchester Regiment T:F ... Born. Jan 12, 1895 killed in action Gallipoli Aug 13 1915 May his soul rest in peace."He led his men with skill & gallantry & reached his objective"Nelson Dawson Inv. et Fecit." *
"On 29 July [1916] the Germans, Austrians, and Bulgarians reached an agreement, later adhered to by the Turks, on the conduct of the campaign. Field Marshal Mackensen was given command of the southern frontier, that is, the region of the Dobrudja and Danube. AOK decided to retain the majority of the Danube Flotilla in the lower Danube rather than ordering it to make the long trip upstream from Rustschuk. After hostilities began, the flotilla, including the monitors at Rustschuk and the armed steamers spread along the Danube, proceeded to Balene; only the armed steamer Almos and patrol boats Lachs and Stör were upstream at Kladovo, and there were a few German motorboats at Orsova. The Austrians also sent special bridging equipment down to Belene in a few echelons in preparation for a future crossing of the Danube. On 13 August the Danube Flotilla was placed under the orders of Army Group Mackensen." *
"Artillery preparation began on the morning of August 11. Using 3,000 pieces, the French initially fired counterbattery missions and on August 13 began destroying enemy positions. From August 11 to 20 they fired 3,000,000 rounds of artillery, including more than 1,000,000 rounds from heavy guns. Using a technique borrowed from the British, the French also used machine guns to fire indirectly toward passage points, crossroads, supply lines, and enemy artillery batteries. The Germans responded with their own artillery fire and chemicals, but the French maintained control of the air with their fighters and obtained better results." *
"During the [August 13, 1918] meeting, Ludendorff despaired of what he called Hindenburg's 'more optimistic view' of the situation.'I reviewed the military situation, the condition of the Army, the position of our Allies, and explained that it was no longer possible to force the enemy to sue for peace by an offensive . . . I sincerely hoped, however, that the Army in France would stand fast. The state of affairs on the Western Front was naturally bound to make an unfavourable impression on our Allies. In this connection, the morale of our Army and people became a matter of even greater importance than before.'After speaking for some time, the Secretary of State, Paul von Hintze, drew 'the logical conclusion that peace negotiations were essential and that we should have to bring ourselves to take up a very conciliatory attitude.'" *
* Quotation contexts and sources
During the four and half years of the Great War from the summer of 1914 to November 11, 1918, over eight million combatants and six million civilians died. In battle, they were killed by new and increasingly powerful weapons, 70% by artillery fire, and in higher percentages than in Europe's wars of the previous century. Civilians died from starvation, from being shelled and bombed, and from genocidal operations against ethnic minorities.
In the war and its aftermath, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were destroyed, and new nations were born and reborn.
New technologies were invented and young ones advanced rapidly - the airplane, poison gas, the machine gun, the tank, flame-throwers, submarines. Industrial production of the technologies, of shells, of bullets, of barbed wire, grew to unprecedented levels.
Societies changed. Women entered the wage labor market to free men up for combat and to meet the production demands of the war. Passports, identity cards, and increased border controls became increasingly common.
When the war itself ended, related wars continued: in Russia, Civil War between the new Bolshevik government and its enemies, both foreign and domestic; in Turkey, war by Greece to seize islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of the mainland of Turkey itself; in Ireland, war for independence from Great Britain.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary, a team of seven conspirators with grenades, pistols and cyanide capsules/tablets, joined the crowds that had turned out to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg. A failed assassination attempt - a grenade that slightly wounded spectators and two in the royal couple's entourage - altered some plans and led to other events. A planned visit to City Hall went ahead, but a decision to visit the victims in hospital necessitating a changed route, a failure to inform the drivers of the change, the lead driver's attempt to back to correct the mistake - put the Archduke's stopped car in front of the most determined of the assassins, the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He stepped forward, averted his eyes, and fired twice, shooting the Archduke through the throat and his wife through the groin. The couple was dead within an hour. The gun, the bombs, the cyanide Princip took, and some of the conspirators would be traced to Serbia.
The Archduke was not popular in Austria-Hungary, and the reaction to his death was muted. But Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, polyglot nation with populations that wanted to leave the empire. Princip had acted to advance his vision of a union of South Slavs that included Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Vienna, the capital, government officials feared the rise of Serbia, which had been victorious and doubled its size in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.
Initial concerns in other European capitals of an Austro-Hungarian response to the assassination lessened as July passed. In Petersburg, the Russian capital, government officials felt they must support Serbia if Austria-Hungary acted. The French and Russian governments communicated their support of their alliance and mutual commitment to aid the other in the event of war. The government of Great Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente with Russia and France, heard little that alarmed it. In Berlin, capital of the German Empire, which was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, there was support for a quick and limited military action by Austria-Hungary.
Defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and humiliated in 1908 when it failed its Balkan ally Serbia, and did not prevent Austria-Hungary's incorporation of Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina, many government officials in Russia felt the country must act in the next crisis when it inevitably arose. Many in the French government wanted to restore the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but feared a Germany that had a population half again as large as that of France, and worked to strengthen its ties with Russia, in part by financing its ally's rapid recovery from the 1905 war. Having seen the creation and rise of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, that had all wrested land and nationhood from the Ottoman Empire, and had come close to eliminating Turkey in Europe, Austria-Hungary feared losing its peoples and territories to these nations and to nations that did not yet exist. Great Britain, with the most powerful fleet in the world, and rule over one quarter of the world's population, but with a small army that was not structured for a European land war, was troubled by Germany's expansion and strengthening of its fleet. Many in the German military thought that war with Russia was inevitable, and that, with the recovery of Russia from the war and revolution of 1915, it should come sooner rather than when Russia had become even stronger. The military also feared a two-front war, facing France to the west, and Russia to the east. The military plan to address this, the Schlieffen Plan, aimed for a rapid defeat of France so that troops could be transported by rail across Germany to face the slowly-mobilizing Russians.
When Austria-Hungary's response to evidence that Serbia had played a role in the assassination came, there was little time for governments to react. Austria-Hungary submitted demands of Serbia that included unconditional acceptance within 24 hours. As European governments learned of the response, and hurried to react, Serbia accepted all by one of Austria-Hungary's demands, that which most impinged upon its sovereignty. The ambassador receiving the response left immediately for Vienna. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the next day bombarded Belgrade, its capital.
Russia mobilized its army in support of Serbia, but with a mobilization plan that activated troops facing not only Austria-Hungary but also Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg to begin its assault on France. France ordered general mobilization effective August 2, and began executing its plan to attack Germany along their border, through Alsace and Lorraine. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and requested passage of its troops through Belgium to attack France along its northern border. Belgium, defending the neutrality that France, Germany, and Great Britain had pledged to support, refused. On August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. In Great Britain, where there was significant opposition to the war, the invasion of Belgium shifted the opinion of the public and the government. Britain declared war on Germany.
Across Europe, millions of men were in motion, on trains, horseback, and on foot. France and Britain were bringing troops and laborers from its colonies and the British Commonwealth, France from Algeria, Senegal, and Dahomey, Britain from Egypt and India. Generals had not assembled armies this large before, and had not put them into motion, nor led them into battle. Most generals, most soldiers, most civilians thought the war would end in months, that their their army would be in Berlin, in Paris, in Petersburg, by Christmas, before 1915. Only a few saw this war would be different, and would not end for years.
