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
Russian troops fleeing a solitary German soldier. The Russian First Army invaded Germany in August 1914, and defeated the Germans in the Battle of Gumbinnen on the 20th. In September the Germans drove them out of Russia in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. In September and October, a joint German, Austro-Hungarian offensive drove the Russians back almost to Warsaw. Illustration by E. H. Nunes.
Image text: Die Russen haben große Hoffnungen auf den Krieg gesetzt, - es ist aber auch eine Kehrseite dabei.The Russians have set high hopes for the war - but there is also a downside to that.Reverse:Kriegs-Postkarte der Meggendorfer-Blätter, München. Nr. 25War postcard of the Meggendorfer Blätter, Munich. # 25
'Street Life, 1916' by Hans Larwin, a native of Vienna and painter of the war on multiple fronts, including the home front. A bread line, chiefly of women, waits along the shopfronts to buy bread. To the left, a policeman stands guard.
Image text: Hans LarwinStraßenbild 1916Street Life, 1916Reverse:Galerie Wiener Künstler Nr. 681.Gallery of Viennese Artists, No. 681.W.R.B. & Co, W. III.
'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.
"On January 11th [1915] the tide turned, but it was not until January 16th, when a strongly fortified Turkish position at Zivin, a few miles west of Kara Urgan, was stormed, that victory was assured and the Turks were thoroughly routed. 'Despite violent snowstorms, which lasted from the 8th to the 16th of January, rendering the roads very difficult, our troops by dint of the greatest heroism and extraordinary tenacity progressed continuously with attack after attack,' says the Russian communiqué of February 1st; 'the enemy's forces were completely broken up and retreated precipitately, abandoning wounded and ammunition and flinging their guns down precipices.'" ((1), more)
"3rd January [Old Style]At any moment first aid work might be awaiting us in the trenches. The New Year has brought renewed hope. We trust implicitly in the loyalty and patriotism of our soldiers; we know that they are longing for an opportunity to win back all the fertile territory which the enemy has succeeded in wrenching from Russia. They are now rested and their ranks reinforced; the future seems reassuringly bright. 'Wait!' we tell each other. 'Wait! a little more patience and we shall see the victories which 1916 has in store for us.'" ((2), more)
"— Either vanity or shame prevents certain aspects of life from being reflected in our illustrated papers. So posterity will find the pictorial documentation of the war very defective. For instance: they do not show us the insides of houses almost completely dark, owing to the lighting restrictions; the fruit stalls lit by candles in the deep gloom of the streets; the dustbins lying about on the the pavement, owing to the shortage of staff, until three in the afternoon; the queues of three thousand people waiting for their ration of sugar outside the large grocery stores. And, conversely, they do not record the enormous crowd thronging restaurants, tea-rooms, theatres, music-halls, and cinemas." ((3), more)
"Telegrams arriving show the situation becoming critical for us. Regarding questions of food, we can only avoid collapse on two conditions: first, that Germany helps us temporarily, second, that we use this respite to set in order our machinery of food-supply, which is at present beneath contempt, and to gain possession of the stocks still existing in Hungary.. . . I must, however, emphatically point out that the commencement of unrest among our people at home will have rendered conclusion of peace here absolutely impossible. As soon as the Russian representatives perceive that we ourselves are on the point of revolution, they will not make peace at all, since their entire speculation is based on this factor." ((4), more)
(1) The Turkish offensive that aimed to seize the frontier rail terminus at Sarikamish before advancing on Russia's fortress at Kars ended in disaster in the mountains, snow, and bitter weather of the Caucasus. On January 16, 1915, the Battle of Sarikamish, which had begun on December 24, 1914, was drawing to a close.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, pp. 47, 48, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, writing on January 16, 1916 (January 3 Old Style). On the same day, Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, recorded that in the capital of Petrograd, and with the failure of the Allied Gallipoli Campaign, people had given up hope of capturing Constantinople,and with that possibility foreclosed, saw little point in continuing the war.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 167, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
(3) Entry for January 16, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Corday often comments on the 'enormous crowd thronging restaurants' not more than 50 miles from the front.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 225, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(4) Excerpt from a telegram to Austro-Hungarian Kaiser Karl from the Empire's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ottokar Czernin, sent January 16, 1918 from Brest-Litovsk, where Czernin lead the Austro-Hungarian delegation in the Central Power peace negotiations with Russia. Czernin was increasingly a powerless bystander in the debate between the German and Russian delegates even as food riots and strikes broke out in Vienna. Leon Trotsky led the Russian delegation, and he and Vladimir Lenin fully expected that the example of the Bolshevik Revolution would spread across Europe. Austria-Hungary had not recovered from the loss of most of its rolling stock in the battles against Serbia and Russia in 1914. Hungary withheld food from the rest of the empire, and a peace settlement offered the hope of supplies from Russia and Romania.
In the World War by Count Ottokar Czernin, page 266, copyright © 1920, by Harper & Brothers, publisher: Harper and Brothers, publication date: 1920
