Captains and sailors of the German battleships Goeben and Breslau signing up for the Turkish Navy. After shelling Allied ports and sinking Allied ships in the Mediterranean, the two ships had entered Turkish waters at the Dardanelles on August 8, 1914. Claiming the ships and their crews as Turkish allowed Turkey to maintain a veil of neutrality for a time. This was dropped on October 29 when the ships sank a Russian gunboat in the Crimean Black Sea port of Odessa. The postcard's caption compares the captain to Leonidas who died leading the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 during Xerxes's invasion in the Second Persian War.
Gli eroi della Goeben e della BreslauThe heroes of the Goeben and Breslau - Desideran signori?- Il testamento Vogliam dettar.- Sono a' vosti comandi, Nobili cuori! All'epico cimento Leonida del mar, sarete grandi!- Si; lo giuriam per tutti i patrii avelli: In fondo . . . scapperem ai Dardanelli.- What do you wish, gentlemen?- We want to dictate our wills.- I am at your service, Noble hearts! In this epic ordeal, Leonidas of the sea, you will be great!- Yes, we swear it on the graves of our countrymen: In the end … we will escape to the Dardanelles.
"'We were lunching yesterday on deck,' my daughter told me, 'when I saw two strange-looking vessels just above the horizon. I ran for the glasses and made out two large battleships, the first one with two queer, exotic-looking towers and the other quite an ordinary-looking battleship. We watched and saw another ship coming up behind them and going very fast. She came nearer and nearer and then we heard guns booming. Pillars of water sprang up in the air and there were many little puffs of white smoke. . . . The captain told us that the two big ships were Germans which had been caught in the Mediterranean and which were trying to escape from the British fleet. He said that the British ships were chasing them all over the Mediterranean, and that the German ships are trying to get into Constantinople."
The daughter of Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to Turkey, traveling from Venice to Constantinople with her husband and three daughters, witnessed the approach of the German battleships Goeben and Breslau, pursued by the British light cruiser Gloucester, to the Dardanelles leading to Constantinople. Turkey would not enter the war until the end of October, but its welcome of the ships greatly worried the Entente Allies.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. II, 1914, pp. 94, 95, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
Goeben, Breslau, 1914, August, S. M. Battleship Goeben, S.M.S. Goeben, S.M. Breslau, S.M. Kleiner Kreuzer Breslau
