The rulers of the Central Powers — Kaisers Wilhelm and Franz Joseph, Tsar Ferdinand, and Mohammed V — surrounded by the Allies: Belgium, Britain, France, Italy to the west, the Balkan states of Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece, where Britain and France ensure Greek participation in the war, and Russia its strength bolstered by Japan's munitions supplies. Out to sea, the British, French, and Italian navies stand guard, with that of Russia in the distance. Portugal likely stands at the lower left. By 1916, Serbia was already occupied by the Central Powers.
L'Actualite par la carte postale (1916)Troisième Année de GuerreL'Offensive Générale Enserre les Empires CentrauxThe News in Postcards (1916)Third Year of the WarThe General Offensive Encircles the Central Powers
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.
"Colonel FitzGerald and Captain Guest reported that on May 12 and 14 [1915] they had carried out my instructions and laid the facts before Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Bonar Law. On May 15, Colonel Repington's article appeared in the 'Times.' The world knows what then happened. The Coalition Government was formed, with Mr. Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions; and, though delays afterwards occurred, the problem was at last faced with the intelligence and energy that its gravity demanded . . ." *
"No less than 400,000 Austrians were thrown into the narrow sector of 25 miles between the Adige and the Val Sugana. More than 2,000 guns suddenly rained projectiles of all calibers upon the Italian position. A bombardment of incredible violence ensued. Aeroplanes regulated the fire of a 15-inch naval gun [that] showered projectiles on the town of Asiago.Following the hurricane of artillery fire, the Austrian troops attacked in mass formation. Four onslaughts were made on Zugna Torta. The Italian machine guns cut down the grey-blue masses of men; the wire entanglements were heaped with dead. The Austrians then hurled themselves against the advance posts of the Val Terragnolo, but the Alpini defended every foot of the ground, fighting always in the snow." *
"The most damaging attack on the drifters took place on 15 May 1917 and led to the largest action of the war in the Adriatic. . . . The three Austrian cruisers when they passed through the line of drifters between Cape Santa Maria di Leuca and Fano were at first assumed in some places to be friendly and no alarm was given. The attack on the drifters began at approximately 3:30 A.M. and continued until after sunrise. The cruisers were armed with 3.9-inch guns and were able to overwhelm the little drifters, armed with six pounders or 57-mm guns. The Austrians at times behaved with considerable chivalry, blowing their sirens and giving the drifter crews time to abandon ship before they opened fire. Some of the drifter men chose to put up a fight, and Skipper J. Watt of the Gowan Lee, which survived in battered condition, was later awarded the Victoria Cross. There had been 47 drifters on the line that night, 14 were sunk and 4 damaged, 3 badly. Seventy-two of the drifter crews were picked up by the Austrians as prisoners." *
"In German-occupied Belgium, it was three years since the first printing and circulation of an illegal patriotic newspaper Libre Belgique. Its network had been wide, its operations vexing for the Germans. At the end of January 1918 most of the paper's distributors, sixty-one in all, had been arrested, the Kaiser sending a telegram of congratulations to the Military Governor, General von Falkenhausen, whom the paper had described as 'a bird of prey sent to live on the palpitating flesh of Belgium'. The Kaiser himself was 'His Satanic Majesty' in the paper's parlance.On May 15 the sixty-one were brought to trial in Brussels. They were sentenced to imprisonment, some for ten to twelve years. After a short interval, the paper appeared once more . . ." *
* 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.
