General Karl Freiherr von Pflanzer-Baltin in the snowy field.
Image text: Östl. Kriegsschauplatz. Generaloberst Freiherr von Pflanzer-Baltin. Serie 29/2. Nr. 46. Nach Photographien des Pressedienstess des k.u.k. KriegsministeriumsAustrian Front. Colonel General Baron von Pflanzer-Baltin. After photographs of the press office of the Imperial and Royal Ministry of War.Reverse:Ausgabe des Kriegsfürsorgeamtes Wien IX.Zum Gloria-Viktoria AlbumSammel. u. Nachschlagewerk des VölkerkriegesWar Office Assistance Edition, Vienna IXFor Gloria Victoria albumCollection and reference book of international war.
A map of the Russian-Turkish front from Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918, a 1930s German history of the war illustrated with hand-pasted cigarette cards, showing the Turkish Empire in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas and the Persian Gulf. To the west is Egypt, a British dominion; to the east Persia. Erzerum in Turkey and Kars in Russia were the great fortresses on the frontier.
Image text: Mittelmeer: Mediterranean SeaSchwarzes M: Black SeaKasp. M.: Caspian SeaKleinasien: Asia MinorTürkei: TurkeyRussland: RussiaMesopot.: MesopotamiaPersien: PersiaAgypten: EgyptKairo: CairoStellungen der: Positions of theTürken Jan. 1915. . .August 1916Russen Mai 1915 . . . Frühjahr 1916Engländer: November 1914 . . . Ende 1917Herbst 1918Positions of theTurks Jan. 1915 . . . August 1916Russians May 1915 . . . spring 1916English: November 1914 . . . the end of 1917autumn 1918
President Woodrow Wilson addressing the United States Congress on April 2, 1917, asking for a declaration of war on Germany. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot, 1918 Edition.
Image text: President Wilson delivering the message in which he called on Congress to declare a state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Tsaritsa Alexandra, their four daughters and son, a portrait of the Russian imperial family in 'An Ambassador's Memoirs' by Maurice Paléologue, the last French Ambassador to the Russian Court.
Image text: The Imperial Family
A crazed Great Britain urges a broken Russia, a nose-picking, dozing Italy, and a sullen France to continued offensives in a German postcard imagining the November 6, 1917 Entente Ally Conference of Rapallo after the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The Battle, also known as the Battle of Caporetto, was a disastrous defeat for Italy and the first Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Isonzo Front. The Austrians had significant German support.
Image text: Entente Konferenz der XII. IsonzoschlachtEntente Conference of the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo
"Gen. Pflanzer's Austrian Army moving eastward, retook the Kirlibaba Pass on January 22nd [1915], sweeping on through Bukowina to Czernowitz, the capital, which he occupied on February 18th. Only a single Russian column, 30,000 men at most, opposed the advance of his great army." ((1), more)
"Meanwhile, the British Relief Army from India, under command of General Aylmer, was fighting its way along the desert to the relieft of Kut-al-Amara. On January 8th, this army defeated the Turks in two pitched battles at Sheikh Saad, and-by January 22d had advanced to Umm-el-Hanna, where the Turks were strongly intrenched. The British bombarded the position, but the Turkish reply was so effective that the British withdrew with heavy losses. General Aylmer was then succeeded in command by General Gorringe." ((2), more)
"'No peace can last or ought to last which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .''I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged . . . and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely . . . These are American principles, American policies . . . They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.'" ((3), more)
"In the freezing cold of 9 January the streets of Petrograd were filled with 145,000 strikers. They were commemorating the tragedy of Bloody Sunday in 1905, when the priest Father Georgi Gapon had led 200,000 men, women and children through the snow to the Winter Palace. The people he led had wanted political rights and an end to the war with Japan. Dressed in their Sunday best they had carried aloft pictures of the Tsar but he rewarded their protest with bullets — among the 1,240 casualties 370 were killed. And now, 12 years on, the people at least knew where they stood. Their banners read 'Down with the Romanovs!' — gone were the portraits of 'the Tsar of all the Russias'. Now the red flags fluttered in the bitter breeze." ((4), more)
"While we stand under the menace—and perhaps on the eve—of the most powerful effort which the enemy has so far attempted against us, there exists no general plan for the operations of the Coalition in 1918." ((5), more)
(1) Although the Russian drive on Cracow and into Silesia had been driven back by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, the Russians had besieged the great Austro-Hungarian fortress city of Przemyśl on the San River, and still threatened to break through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains, putting them in a position to attack Budapest, the Hungarian capital. The Austro-Hungarians were particularly concerned about the loss of Bukovina out of concern that Russia would offer it to neutral Romania in exchange for their entry into the war on the side of the Entente Allies. General Pflanzer-Baltin was brought out of retirement after the defeat and dismissal of a number of Austro-Hungarian generals in 1914.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, pp. 144, 145, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(2) Attempting to capture Baghdad, the British had captured Kut-al-Amara along the way, and continued their advance. In early December, 1915 they were forced back to Kut, where they were soon surrounded by superior Turkish forces. The increasingly beleaguered force awaited the Relief Army that was stopped on January 22, 1916.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 219, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(3) Excerpts from the address of United States President Woodrow Wilson to the United States Senate, January 22, 1917, as quoted in John Dos Passos's Mr. Wilson's War. Wilson called for 'peace without victory.'
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, page 196, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
(4) The bitterly cold winter of 1916–17 strained all the combatant nations, perhaps none more so than Russia. The cold and a coal shortage prevented transport of adequate food supplies to the cities including the Russian capital of Petrograd. Russian Tsar Nicholas II was Nicholas Romanoff, autocrat and Tsar of all Russias. He hoped to pass the autocracy on to his son intact.
1917: Russia's Year of Revolution by Roy Bainton, page 50, copyright © Roy Bainton 2005, publisher: Carroll and Graf Publishers, publication date: 2005
(5) General Maxime Weygand, the French military representative to the Allied Supreme War Council, writing to French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau on January 22, 1918. The Allies had created the Council at the Rapallo conference in November, 1917, giving it responsibility to oversee the general conduct of the war and make recommendations to the Allied governments. Since the Bolshevik Revolution that same month and the armistice and subsequent peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, the Allies had been anticipating a German offensive in the west bolstered by forces moved from the Eastern Front.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 238–239, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
