Chinese laborers working under the direction of German supervisors on a hill above the city of Tsingtau, China. The card was sent from Earl's Court in London, January 6, 1905, and cancelled in Teichel, Germany two days later. From a painting by K. Hei...
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Map showing the territorial gains (darker shades) of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, primarily at the expense of Turkey, agreed in the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War. Despite its gains, Bulgaria also lost territory to both Romania and Turkey.
Image text: The Balkan States According to the Treaty of Bucharest; Acquisitions of New Territory shown by darker shades
Battle on the Somme, by Oskar Martin Amorbach, showing the blue Hessen (Infantry Regiment Lieb, 'Grand Duchess') in combat against British troops.
Image text: Signed: Oskar Martin AmorbachMünchenReverse:Regiments-Gedenktag des ehem. Infanterie Liebregiments, 'Großherzogin' (3. Großherzoglich Hessisches) Nr. 117 1697–1922Die blauen Hessen im Kampfe mit Engländern im Sommegebiet September 1916Kunstdruck Gerling & Erbes, Darmstadt. Nr. 27008Regimental memorial of the former. Infantry Regiment Lieb, 'Grand Duchess' (3 Großherzoglich Hessian) No. 117 1697-1922The blue Hessen at war with British in Somme area September 1916Art Print Gerling & heritage, Darmstadt. No. 27008
German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
Image text: Der KanalStraße von CalaisThe English Channel and the Strait of CalaisReverse:Panorama des westlichen Kriegsschauplatzes 1914/15 Von Arras bis Ostende.Die Panorama-Postkartenreihe umfaßt mit ihren 9 Abschnitten Nr. 400 bis 408 den gesamten westlichen Kriegsschauplatz von der Schweizer Grenze bis zur Nordseeküste.Panorama of the western theater of operations 1914/15 from Arras to Ostend. The panoramic postcard series includes nine sections, with their No. 400-408 the entire western battlefield from the Swiss border to the North Sea coast.Nr. 408Wenau-Postkarte Patentamtl. gesch.
Detail showing the British sector of the Western Front from a map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch. The 1st and other armies to the south are French.
"October 6, 1914. During the first attack on the infantry works of Tsingtao, the combined Japanese and English were repulsed with a loss of 2,500 men." ((1), more)
"Commanded by Field Marshall Mackensen, who had proved himself one of the most capable German commanders in the war, the troops involved in the entire operation numbered, according to some estimates, 800,000 men. They had modern equipment and air cover. On 6 October the combined German and Austrian armies attacked with a powerful artillery barrage, and the first small groups were sent across the Danube and Sava. The main operation of forcing those rivers took place the next day. Serbia, for its part, was able to counter with 300,000 troops at the most, and these were mostly either newly mobilized or order soldiers drawn from the approximately 1,000-kilometre front and deployed all over to await attacks from the north, west, and east." ((2), more)
"Every evening we could witness the tragic show which the front lines of the Battle of the Somme put on for us. The sky was crisscrossed with flashes, illuminated, lit up with meteoric bolts, sudden bursts of light, all accompanied by a deafening, continuous rumbling. We felt like we were watching a gigantic volcano, seeing the sinister reflections of hell itself.'It's just like Verdun,' said the veterans, worried, 'but there will also be cold, rain, and mud!' The young ones were terrified before this frightful tableau, just right for inspiring horror of war and filling the soul with terror." ((3), more)
"We marched at 10.15 by Wisques to Wizerne, in a lime-stone district. There was more or less rain nearly all the way. To have some warmth and comfort to-night I carried a full pack and a bundle, and wondered all the time how the men carry what they must, let alone rations, dixies and what not as well. We waited about from noon until 4 to entrain. News came in of a lucky stroke at Passchendaele Ridge, plainly quite a good Show. The whole of the line attacked was thrown into confusion, the front overrun, the reserves staggered. The local civilians know all about the tactical idea of the Ypres moves; they are in high spirits, and talk about a German withdrawal from Belgium." ((4), more)
"Further south Horne's, Byng's and Rawlinson's armies had by a combination of concentrated onslaughts on narrow sectors of the Siegfried Position followed by leverage to widen the penetrations and so link up, smashed through the entire width of the main German fortifications by October 6th. Their success had been extraordinary and only achieved by considerable skill and determination . . . plus mist — which if not so thick as upon the first morning of the British crossing of the canal, or upon the morning of March 21st, had nevertheless made their progress possible. Even so the Siegfried Line had been won only at immense cost, and by the time the Fourth Army had breached the final defences — the Beaurevoir Line — they had exhausted their strength." ((5), more)
(1) An ally of Great Britain, Japan delivered an ultimatum to Germany on August 15, 1914 to surrender all its ships in Asian waters. Receiving no response by the August 23 deadline, Japan declared war and blockaded the port of Tsingtao, part of the German concession of Kiautschau, China.
The German defenders of Tsingtao turned back an assault by a combined Japanese and British force, front, publisher: NPG(?)
(2) Serbia had defeated three Austro-Hungarian invasions in 1914, with heavy casualties on both sides, 163,000 of them Serbian. In the winter of 1914-1915, and in the absence of further attacks, the country suffered epidemics of spotted typhus, dysentery, and cholera, which killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, 35,000 soldiers, and 30,000 prisoners of war. Britain and France were able to supply Serbia with some medical and military supplies, and also supply Russia, through ally Montenegro on the Adriatic coast. Both Serbia and Russia were in desperate need. Since May 2, 1915, German General August von Mackensen had driven the Russians back hundreds of miles, and destroyed, for a time, their offensive capability in the joint German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. With Russia quiescent, German Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn turned on Serbia. With Bulgaria about to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers, the defeat of Serbia would cut off a primary communication route between Russia and its allies, and would connect Germany and Turkey with a rail line from Berlin to Constantinople.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, pp. 144, 145, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
(3) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, writing on October 6, 1916, when his unit moved toward the front lines in the Battle of the Somme.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 256, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(4) Entry for October 6, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him, then fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres, started on July 31. The Battle of Broodseinde was fought on October 4. Dunn's unit had fought in the Battle of Polygon Wood
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 406–407, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(5) From north to south, the British commanders mentioned were Henry Horne, First Army, Julian Byng, Third Army, and Henry Rawlinson, Fourth Army. To the north the Belgian Army Group under Albert, King of the Belgians, was struggling with the ground conditions. The combined, well-constructed, multi-line German defense system was referred to by the Allies as the Hindenburg Line, by the Germans as the Siegfried Zone. Germany's Operation Michael, the first of five offensives in 1918, had begun on March 21 in fog that had helped confound the British defenders.
1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, page 253, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963
