Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
Image text: ПДМЯТЬ ВОИНЬ 1914-18To the memory of the soldiers 1914-18Reverse:19141918Г. САВИНСКИ (?)G. Savinskaya
A Swiss postcard of 'The European War' in 1914. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary face enemies to the east, west, and south. Germany is fighting the war it tried to avoid, battling Russia to the east and France to the west. Germany had also hoped to avoid fighting England which came to the aid of neutral (and prostrate) Belgium, and straddles the Channel. Austria-Hungary also fights on two fronts, against Russia to the east and Serbia and Montenegro to the south. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared neutrality, and looks on. Other neutral nations include Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Japan enters from the east to battle Germany. The German Fleet stays close to port in the North and Baltic Seas while a German Zeppelin targets England. The Austro-Hungarian Fleet keeps watch in the Adriatic. Turkey is not represented, and entered the war at the end of October, 1914; Italy in late May, 1915.
Image text: Der Europäische KriegThe European WarReverse:Kriegskarte No. 61. Verlag K. Essig, BaselKunstanstalt (Art Institute) Frobenius A.G. Basel
A Sanke postcard of a captured British Sopwith Triplane being wheeled along.
Image text: Erbeuteter Englische Sopwith Dreidecker1036Postkartenvertrieb W. SankeBerlin N.27Nachdruck wird gerichtlich verfolgt.Captured British Sopwith Triplane1036Postcard Distributor W. SankeBerlin N.27Reproduction will be prosecuted.Reverse:Postmarked March 2, 1918
1898 map of Petrograd, the Russian capital, Kronstadt Bay, and the Russian naval base of Kronstadt, from a German atlas. Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on Kronstadt Bay, an extension of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Kronstadt was an important naval base. North and east of central Petrograd was the Vyborg district, site of many factories and housing for workers.
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Wall plaques commemorating the First and Second Battles of the Marne from the Dormans Chapel and Memorial, Dormans, France. © 2014 by John M. Shea
"Your opinion on our policy as contained in your Serbian report is always appreciated by me, and I am sure that the Imperial Chancellor feels the same way about it. Nor do I hesitate to admit that many of your remarks are justified. But after all, we are allied to Austria; hic Rhodus, hic salta. There may also be different opinions as to whether we get all our money's worth from an alliance with that ever disintegrating composition of nations beside the Danube, but there I say with the poet — Busch, I think it was — 'If no longer you like your company, look for another, if any there be.' And, unfortunately, we have not yet been able to arrive at a relationship with England that promises complete satisfaction, nor could we, after all that has passed, arrive at it, if, indeed, we shall ever be able to do so." ((1), more)
"I was ready to follow my two buddies, when, all of sudden, I was overcome by an indefinable sensation of worry, anguish, fear. I was sure of it; this was the imminence of danger which I was feeling. . . .Many have escaped death, guided by intuition that they didn't even know they had. Everything may depend on the degree of sensitivity of our nerves, or how impressionable they are. . . .Therefore, of all the veterans of the 13th Squad, I was the only one left still fighting, along with the rationer Terrisse. All the others were killed or wounded. When would my turn come?" ((2), more)
"By the time the first [Sopwith] Pups arrived at No. 1 Wing RNAS at Dunkerque in July 1916, the prototype of another variant was joining them for front-line evaluation. Completed on May 30, 1916, Sopwith Triplane N500 combined the Pub's fuselage with a 130-hp Clerget engine and three sets of narrow-chord, high aspect ratio wings that gave the pilot a better view from the cockpit, a faster climb rate and superior maneuverability, even than the Pup's. Flying the new Triplane on July 1 was Flight Lieutenant Roderic Stanley Dallas of No. 1 Wing's 'A' Squadron, an Australian who already had three victories in Nieuports. To these he added a fourth in N500, when he drove down a German two-seater out of control southwest of St. Marie Capelle." ((3), more)
"On the morning of the fifth [July] I met Lenin. The offensive by the masses had been beaten off. 'Now they will shoot us down, one by one,' said Lenin. 'This is the right time for them.' But he overestimated the opponent—not his venom, but his courage and ability to act. They did not shoot us down one by one, although they were not far from it. Bolsheviks were being beaten down in the streets and killed. Military students sacked the Kseshinskaya palace and the printing-works of the Pravda. The whole street in front of the works was littered with manuscripts, and among those destroyed was my pamphlet 'To the Slanderers.'" ((4), more)
"With the enemy's drive across the Marne halted, Mangin's counter-attack on July 18 caught the Germans almost completely by surprise even though a deserter had warned them on the eleventh or twelfth about a large offensive southwest of Soissons. Striking first, Tenth Army advanced at 0435 without any artillery preparation. Preceded by tanks and a dense rolling barrage, Mangin's infantry advanced quickly and easily. The U.S. 2nd Division advanced eight kilometers, the deepest gain achieved by any unit on the first day, and the U.S. 1st Division interdicted the route at Buzancy from Château-Thierry to Soissons and thereby threatened the entire German position in the salient. By the end of the day Tenth and Sixth armies had achieved considerable success: Tenth Army captured 10,000 prisoners and 200 cannon, Sixth Army 2,000 prisoners and 50 cannon." ((5), more)
(1) Beginning of a private letter of July 18, 1914 from German Secretary of State Jagow to German Ambassador in London Lichnowsky.In one of Aesop's tales, an athlete boasts of a jump he once made in Rhodes and the many witnesses who could confirm it. A companion responds, 'Here is Rhodes; jump here.' Isaiah Berlin writes that it was misunderstood by Hegel and Marx, one of whom may be Jagow's source. Here, it most likely means, Dance with the one you brought to the dance.
July, 1914; the Outbreak of the First World War; Selected Documents by Imanuel Geiss (Editor), page 122, copyright © 1967 Imanuel Geiss, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1967
(2) Extracts from events of July 18, 1915, from the notebooks of French Corporal Louis Barthas. Barthas had joined two friends at their company's field kitchen, set up at a crossroads, when the sense of 'the imminence of danger' struck him. Thinking his comrades would deride him if he spoke of his fear, he went into a shop, and was browsing postcards when shells landed at the crossroads, wounding twelve men of his company including four critically injured cooks.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 101, 102, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(3) Thomas Sopwith was an aviator and founder of the Sopwith Aviation Company that produced some of the most successful aircraft of the war, including the Sopwith Snipe, Sopwith Pup, Sopwith Camel, and Sopwith Triplane. Germany's Fokker Eindekker (monoplane), designed by the Dutch Anton Fokker, had dominated the skies until the introduction of the French Nieuport planes. Many of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) planes were seaplanes with pontoons rather than wheels.
The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft by Jon Gutman, pp. 86-87, copyright © 2009 Jon Gutman, publisher: Westholme Publishing, publication date: 2009
(4) Leon Trotsky writing of some of the events of July 18, 1917 (July 5 Old Style) and the next days following the July 16 anti-war and anti-government demonstrations in which government ministers were threatened and over 100 were killed. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, did not think the time was ripe for seizing power. Other Bolsheviks, as well as workers and soldiers, clearly did.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 313, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(5) The 'enemy's drive across the Marne' was German commander Erich Ludendorff's Friedensturm, Peace Assault, the Champagne-Marne Offensive that left German forces with an enormous salient from Soissons and Reims to the Marne River. Commanding the French 10th Army, General Charles Mangin struck on the western side of the salient. General Jean Degoutte commanded the Sixth Army.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, pp. 470–471, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
