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Postwar postcard map of the Balkans including Albania, newly-created Yugoslavia, expanded Romania, and diminished former Central Powers Bulgaria and Turkey. The first acquisitions of Greece in its war against Turkey are seen in Europe where it advanced almost to Constantinople, in the Aegean Islands from Samos to Rhodes, and on the Turkish mainland from its base in Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish war was fought from May 1919 to 1922. The positions shown held from the war's beginning to the summer of 1920 when Greece advanced eastward. Newly independent Hungary and Ukraine appear in the northwest and northeast.
Entrenched German soldiers behind sniper plates at Slota Gora, September 26, 1916. Slota (or Zlota) Gora was in Polish Russia, west of a line running from Warsaw to Cracow. An original watercolor (over pencil) by O. Oettel, 12th company of Landwehr, IR 32 in the field. A sketch in pencil and red crayon is on the reverse.
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.
Two Zouaves man an anti-aircraft gun, scanning the sky, in a 1915 advertising card for the aperitif Dubonnet. Title, Pigeon Shoot.
'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.
"The perpetual procrastination of [Prime Minister] Bratiano is placing Rumania in a dangerous position. The Central Powers are certainly beginning to adopt a threatening tone towards her. . . . 'The speedy arrival of a Russian army at the mouth of the Danube would be essential to secure us against attack by the Bulgarians in the Dobrudja,' [said Bratiano]. . . . Bratiano's private motive is only too plain: he wants to leave Russia the task of holding off the Bulgarians, so that the whole effort of the Rumanian army may be directed against Transylvania, the object of the national ambitions." ((1), more)
"January 25th.—Dolling, always watchful of the doings of enemy working-parties, had reported some new stakes. Expecting that wirers would be at work on them he and five bravoes stole across after dark. A party was seen and bombed—very successfully, judging by the cries of woe. Our guns co-operated, all but knocking our fellows' heads off. Stanway was giving occasional but deadly aid to the snipers. Once he snapped an officer where the German parapet was low. Another day he got a pheasant for the pot. He had a disconcerting habit at one time of keeping his revolver on the table when playing cards, to shoot rats as they ran along the cornice beam of the dug-out." ((2), more)
"On the 9th of January the 3rd Army attacked at Maisons de Champagne, on the 12th of February at Ste. Marie à Py, and on the 13th of the same month at Tahure. On the 28th and 29th of January the 2nd Army had a fine success at Frise, south of the Somme. The 6th Army struck on the 26th of January at Neuville, and on the 8th of February to the west of Vimy, and on the 21 of February east of Souchez. Gaede's Army detachment pushed forward into the French lines near Obersept on the 13th of February. Everywhere the appointed objectives were reached, and the enemy suffered heavy losses. The relatively slight German losses sustained on these occasions were justified, for it is highly probably that these operations materially contributed to mask our plans." ((3), more)
"January 27th.—The Kaiser's birthday. White flags, at regular intervals, were flown on the parapet opposite: they were taken in after dark. There is more air activity than usual, for the weather has not been so fine for two months—there have been several hours of sunshine on recent days. Extra movement is reported on the German-run railways. German guns are more active even then yesterday, when we had 14 casualties. Corps is interesting itself in these portents. The Archie guns on both sides were blazing away at aeroplanes, and their shell-splinters rained on us this morning. One whir-r-r ended in a thud and a cry, 'Oh,' from a seated man. His wrist was broken. He had barely exclaimed when half a dozen men scrimmaged for the nose-cap that hit him . . ." ((4), more)
"Dwindling real wages, long work weeks, and unsatisfactory food provoked mutterings and murmurings, and as early as 1915 discontent among miners flamed into short work stoppages. Yet, on an overall estimate, during the first half of the war, the industrial labor force toiled patriotically and sacrificially in the common cause of victory. . . . . . . authorities in Austria-Hungary tended to imitate procedures devised in Germany. Unregulated, price levels of many commodities soared in the first flush of the war; then officials began to set maximum prices, though decrees were not rigidly enforced, profiteering and hoarding ran rampant, and costs went on advancing. A reporter for the Arbeiter Zeitung, in January, 1916, noticing a billboard displaying pre-war prices and figuring out that the same goods cost at least six times more, soliloquized, 'It makes one's mouth water . . . what a good thing that . . . the old advertisements have not been removed. It is such a good thing because they talk for peace.'" ((5), more)
(1) Both the Entente Allies and Central Powers courted neutral Romania, trying to lure the country into the war, each side offering the opportunity of seizing land with large Romanian populations — Transylvania in Austria-Hungary, and Bessarabia in Russia. Romania was more interested in Transylvania, which lay across the Transylvanian Alps. The Danube River formed much of the western and southern border with Bulgaria, a not insurmountable barrier. The river flowed north then east before flowing into the Black Sea, the river and the sea shaping three sides of the Romanian eastern region of Dobrudja, which was exposed to Bulgaria along its southern border. Romania had taken the southern part of the Dobrudja from Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War in 1913.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 154, 155, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(2) Excerpt from the entry for January 25, 1916 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. Soldier Dolling had seen the stakes that would support newly-placed barbed wire, and rightly reasoned German soldiers would string new wire at night.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 178, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(3) German Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn's summary of his attacks along the French front in January and February, to divert attention from preparations for his coming offensive at Verdun. The 3rd Army was in Champagne, west of Verdun and east of Reims, the 6th in Artois. Ten kilometers from the Swiss border, Obersept was a German town in Elsaß, held, when Falkenhayn attacked, by the French. It is now Seppois-le-Haut in Alsace, France.
General Headquarters and its Critical Decisions, 1914-1916 by Erich von Falkenhayn, page 264, copyright © 1920 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publication date: 1920
(4) Beginning of the entry for January 27, 1916 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. In January and February, German Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn's launched local attacks along the front to divert attention from preparations for his coming offensive at Verdun. 'Archie guns' were anti-aircraft guns. The Medical Corps saw all this activity as harbingers of a coming German offensive.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 178, 179, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(5) Two excerpts from Arthur May's study, The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy 1914-1918, the end of Austria-Hungary and the House of Hapsburg ruling over it.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, Vol. One, pp. 337-338, 339, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
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