French postcard celebrating the Allied victory at the Battle of the Marne with the Kaiser tumbling in the river, Germans (in green) fleeing. The French in blue and red advance and tend to German wounded. The British, France's ally, advance in the distance.
Image text: Caption:Dans un élan magnifique, les armées allemandes on passé deux fois la Marne. Tout va bien. Les troupes sont fraîches. (Agence Wolff)With magnificent élan, the German armies have crossed the Marne twice. All is well. The troops are fresh. (Wolff Agency)Signs and text:On demande couturière pour recoudre les bochesVoulez vous que j’écrive a vos parents?Poudres sèches pour la guerre future 1873Sucre pastilles caramelleBaton provisoire de maréchalWe need a seamstress to mend the BocheYou want me to write to your parents?Dry powder for future war 1873Caramel sugar lozengesMarshal’s provisional batonReverse:"Artistic Caricatures" (1re Série de 6 cartes)
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
'December snow.' Hand-painted watercolor calendar for December 1917 by Schima Martos. Particulates from a smoking kerosene lamp overspread the days of December, and are labeled 'December höra,' 'December snow.' The first five days or nights of the month show a couple at, sitting down to, or rising from a lamp-lit table. The rest of the month the nights are dark, other than four in which the quarter of the moon shows through a window, or Christmas, when the couple stands in the light of a Christmas tree.
Image text: December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
An Austro-Hungarian Young Troop New Blood Generation Machine, turning babies into soldiers. A postcard by Rud. Kristen for the benefit of Deutschmeister- Witwen- und Waisen-Stiftung (Aktion im Felde) — the German Master Widows and Orphans Foundation (Action in the Field).
Image text: K.u.K Truppen-Nachwuchs-Erzeugungs-MaschineK.u.K Troops New Blood Generation MachineK.u.K.: Kaiserlich und Königlich: Imperial and RoyalSigned Rud. Kristen.Reverse:Deutschmeister- Witwen- und Waisen-Stiftung (Aktion im Felde)Deutschmeister- Widows and Orphans Foundation (Action in the Field)Druck: C. Pietsche, Wein V.Printer: C. Pietsche, Vienna V.Nr. 37.
Northern Palestine from Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus by Karl Baedeker
Image text: Northern PalestineScale 1:700,000
"Lieutenant Janata owed me seven hundred crowns and had the cheek to fall at the battle of the Drina. Lieutenant Prášek was captured on the Russian front and owes me two thousand crowns. Captain Wichterle, owing me the same amount, got himself killed by his own soldiers at Ruska Rava. Lieutenant Machek, taken prisoner in Serbia, owes me fifteen hundred crowns. There are more people like that here. One falls in the Carpathians with an unpaid bill of exchange of mine; another gets taken prisoner; another gets drowned in Serbia; and a forth dies in a hospital in Hungary. Now you can understand my fears that this war will ruin me if I'm not energetic and ruthless. . . .I'm in a desperate situation. Is this war being waged to put out of the way all who owe me money?" ((1), more)
"On September 23, at four in the afternoon, the regiment was assembled and massed in a square in a meadow. Our Colonel Poujal announced what we already knew, that a general offensive was going to be unleashed, that at this moment the Russians were falling back, but while most of the Germans were bogged down in Poland we would crush them on our front.'And now,' he cried in a loud voice. "Forward! No more hernias! No more weak hearts! No more ached and pains! Nothing but the will to win! Vive la France!"This patriotic nonsense didn't arouse the slightest enthusiasm. We hadn't forgotten the horrors of the last offensive in Lorette. An impressive silence greeted the colonel's final words. Only the undertaker Torrès smiled. He nodded his head as if to say, "Yes, let the herniated, the weak-hearted, the sciatics come to me. They'll get a nice reception!"" ((2), more)
"The food distribution is fairer [in Bavaria than in Prussia]. Wild birds are to be had without meat cards, but not chickens or ducks. For all supplies, visitors must have cards. The hotels furnish only bread and meat tickets. I refused to go through the red tape needed to secure magistrate's cards for other edibles. The result made meals frugal. Eagerly I would scan a bill of fare. My eye would light on a pudding. Putting is a luxury. 'I'll have some,' I'd order. 'I'm sorry, Madame,' the waiter would reply, 'but the pudding contains an egg and you have no egg card.' In despair I would turn to something else. 'Give me this,' I would urge. But again would come the answer, 'I'm sorry, Madame, but that contains meal and you have no meal card.' Food is richer in Munich than in Berlin, for fodder is better and the animals fatter. But I had less to eat than in Prussia." ((3), more)
"— If one were allowed to express one's views, I should write an article entitled 'The Vintage,' portraying the younger generation flung into the winepress, crushed, with the incessant gurgle of streaming blood—pale, frightened mothers looking on—while the levers of this winepress would be forced down by the unwearied arms of the ambitious politicians, the Chauvinists, the profiteers, while the idiot mob cheered them on. . . ." ((4), more)
"It should be stated, however, that from the 20th to the 22d [of September, 1918], none of the orders from the Army Group, forwarded through the Fourth Army, had reached the Eighth Army and that the leader of the Eighth Army therefore did not attach to the Tiberias front the extreme importance for the general situation that the Army Group did. . . .On the early morning of September 23d, the Asia Corps effected the crossing of the Jordan without much loss. The staffs of the 16th and 19th Divisions however were captured on the west bank by British cavalry. Turkish soldiers went over to the enemy in crowds as soon as fired upon, or bombarded by British fliers. Most of them had thrown away their arms. It was another consequence of the fatal order of headquarters of the Eighth Army." ((5), more)
(1) A money lender to an indebted chaplain in Jaroslav Hašek's comic novel The Good Soldier Švejk. Švejk is batman — a personal servant — to the Austro-Hungarian chaplain who plans to administer extreme unction — the last rites of the Catholic church — to a victim in a cholera ward the next day. The money lender lost another indebted chaplain in similar circumstances the week before. The lender's debtors are dropping like flies in Austria-Hungary's failed military adventures of 1914. Serbia's northern border is shaped by rivers — the Danube, the Save, and the Drina. By late September 1914 Austria-Hungary had invaded Serbia twice with heavy losses, some of them drowned in the Drina. In the Battle of Rava Russka, Russia had swept Austria-Hungary from Galicia, and threatened to cross the Carpathians into Hungary. The Russians took 120,000 prisoners in Galicia before the end of the year.
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, page 149, copyright © Cecil Parrott, 1973 (translation), publisher: Penguin
(2) Extract from the notebooks of French Corporal Louis Barthas whose reserve unit was in the process of being moved from Flanders to the Arras sector in Artois to take part in the Third Battle of Artois, part of the great autumn Anglo-French offensive of 1915. Barthas and many of his reservists were older, and suffered the ailments (or complained of them) listed by Colonel Poujal. The preliminary bombardment had begun and, on September 24, Barthas 'could hear a violent cannonade all along the front.' The corporals were assembled in the company post and given one cutlass for each of their men (14 to Barthas). Having heard elsewhere the weapons were for slaying the wounded and killing prisoners, Barthas and all but one of his men discarded them.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 107, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(3) American Madeleine Doty writing of her visit to Munich in Bavaria in September, 1916. She continues, 'In spite of Bavaria's attempt to democratize food, her poor go hungry. As in Berlin, there are long lines of people struggling for potatoes. The wages of unskilled workers have not perceptibly increase. The poor can't afford the city's feeding kitchens. Munich is one of Germany's richest cities but it has extreme poverty.' Doty begins her chapter on 'Peace Meetings in Munich' relating how, 'Official Germany tries to Prussianize her people through education.' Of a teacher friend she writes, 'German for generations, she comes of Jewish stock' and taught history. Learning of this the central school authorities sent the school principal the following order: 'Do not let that young woman teach history. Only a Prussian may teach German history. Let her teach mathematics.' The same spirit walks among us in 2016.
Short Rations: an American Woman in Germany 1915-1916 by Madeleine Z. Doty, pp. 208–209, copyright © 1917, by The Century Co., publisher: A. L. Burt Company, publication date: 1917
(4) Entry for September 23 or 24, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Corday supported peace efforts to end the war, and railed those he lists above, and others who demanded a fight to victory at any cost.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 276, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(5) On September 19, 1918 British General Edmund Allenby attacked Turkish forces in Palestine, advancing along the Mediterranean coast rather than inland where Arab forces working with T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — had staged raids on Daraa, the Hejaz Railroad, and communications. Djevad Pasha, Commander of the Turkish Eighth Army, took the feint for the offensive and gave 'the fatal order' for his forces to cross to the east bank of the Jordan River, away, that is, from a position where it could have supported the Turkish Seventh and Eighth Armies' retreat before the British offensive. The Arabs and Royal Air Force continued strikes on communications infrastructure, isolating Turkish commanders.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 291 and 292, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
