Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
A Bulgarian postcard of Red Army soldiers at rest, with rifles stacked, and reading newspapers or leaflets.
Map showing the territorial gains (darker shades) of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, primarily at the expense of Turkey, agreed in the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War. Despite its gains, Bulgaria also lost territory to both Romania and Turkey.
Portrait card of the French Ace Georges Guynemer in French and Arabic. In his hand, and by his side, are machine guns, presumably from the plane he shot down, number 43.
A call to Italians to buy war bonds to help fund the powerful weapons needed for the last push to Trieste, a mere 25 kilometers from the Italian front lines. It pays 5%, after all, tax free, for an effective rate of 5.55%!
Alexander Kerensky, leader of Russia's Cadet party and a member of the Provisional government in 1917 as Minister of Justice, War, and Prime Minister. From 'The War of the Nations Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings Compiled from the Mid-Week Pictorial Published by the New York Times Co. New York City N.Y.' © Copyrighted 1919 by the New York Times Company 1914 - 1919
". . . the government itself began to release us, for the same reason that it had called the Bolshevik sailors to guard the Winter Palace. I went straight from the Kresty to the newly organized committee for the defense of the revolution, where I sat with the same gentlemen who had put me in prison as an agent of the Hohenzollerns, and who had not yet withdrawn the accusation against me. . . . The Bolsheviks stepped into the harness, and were everywhere in the first line of the defense. The experience of Kornilov's mutiny completed that of the July days: once more Kerensky and Co. revealed the fact that they had no forces of their own to back them. The army that rose against Kornilov was the army-to-be of the October revolution. We took advantage of the danger to arm the workers whom Tzereteli had been disarming with such restless industry." ((1), more)
"On the night of 10–11 September [1917], several parties of engineers from the 1st ID were sent out with wire cutters. They succeeded in opening only one hole of about 20 meters. When the infantry attacked the next morning, the first wave was able to penetrate the gap. But then the men encountered additional barriers and enemy machine guns. Virtually all were either killed or wounded. . . . The final attempt to take Cireşoaia was a needless and costly failure. Casualties for the Romanians in two days exceeded 1,200 killed, wounded, or missing." ((2), more)
"When his motor was in order and tested, Guynemer flew off, straight to St. Pol. None of us ever saw him again.Next morning, 11 September, 1917, at 8:25, he went again to fight, followed by one of his usual companions, Lieutenant Bozon-Verderuz. But he had, that day, a single ticket without return, and he did not come back." ((3), more)
"Cadorna had blown his last chance. The battle continued, with varying degrees of intensity and carnage but without any significant change of position, until 12 September [1917].. . . the deadly cost of attritional warfare, together with the Pope's condemnation of the war, had very seriously damaged the morale of the Italian soldiers. In terms of men killed, the Tenth Battle had cost the Italian army more than the previous nine battles put together, and the number of dead in the Eleventh Battle would exceed that for the Tenth Battle. The infantry had fought one battle too many." ((4), more)
"The events of the next few days can be related very quickly. On September 12 [1917] General Krymov, the commander of the Third Cavalry Corps, was arrested by his soldiers and handed over to the government in Petrograd. He committed suicide almost at once. Kerensky, meanwhile, elevated himself to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the army, and ordered Alexeiev to arrest the rebel Kornilov. On the 12th Alexeiev reluctantly and politely carried out these instructions, and Kornilov, in a state of high fever, was taken off to imprisonment in a monastery near Bikhov. Kerensky now formed a five-man 'directory,' with himself at the head. . . . As a further sop to the socialists Russia was proclaimed a republic. By the 18th Alexeiev had resigned and many of the other Kornilovist generals had been dismissed or imprisoned, and with this, the Kornilov affair can be said to be finally ended." ((5), more)
(1) Leon Trotsky had been imprisoned at the Kretsky Prison after the 'July Days' in which anti-war and anti-government demonstrations on July 16 (July 3 Old Style), 1917 resulted in government ministers being threatened and over 100 people being killed. In the crackdown that followed, Bolsheviks were attacked and imprisoned, and some, including their leader Vladimir Lenin, fled Petrograd for safety. A month later, with General Lavr Kornilov attempting to march on the capital to seize power, the Government released the Bolsheviks, and armed them for the city's (and the government's) defense. The Winter Palace was the seat of the Russian government headed by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky. The Hohenzollerns were the German Royal family headed by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The October Revolution would bring the Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks to power.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 318, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(2) A Romanian offensive, the Battle of Cireşoaia on September 9, 10, and 11, 1917 was an attempt to take advantage of the transfer of German and Austro-Hungarian troops from the Romanian front in Moldavia in a sector that had seen the Austro-German offensive at Oituz in early August. It would be the last Romanian offensive for more than a year.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 252–253, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(3) Georges Guynemer was killed on September 11, 1917, credited with 53 victories, second of French aces in the war after René Fonck (75 victories). Our author, Willy Coppens, was Belgium's leading ace with 37 victories, all but two of his victims being observation balloons Although these balloons were tethered, they were well protected by anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes, making 'balloon busting' a hazardous specialty. Floating over the flat landscape of Flanders they were particularly menacing to those under their watchful eye. The day before his death, Guynemer had set down at the field of Coppens' squadron with engine trouble. The Belgians recognized him immediately, and crowded about. Coppens felt their attention made the famous ace nervous.
Flying in Flanders by Willy Coppens, page 111, publisher: Ace Books, publication date: 1971
(4) Italian commander in chief Luigi Cadorna's Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo came at a time when Italian moral was low, and desertion rates climbing. Much of the battle took place along ridges two to three thousand feet high.
Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign: The Italian Front 1915–1918 by John MacDonald with Željko Cimprić, page 148, copyright © John MacDonald, 2011, 2015, publisher: Pen and Sword Books, publication date: 2011
(5) Russian General Lavr Kornilov had been made Supreme Commander of the Russian Army on July 31, 1917. Although claiming to support the Russian Revolution, he opposed many of its reforms, and wanted to bring back the death penalty for deserters from the army, many of whom had simply left the front. He had begun planning a coup with conservative officers, financiers, and industrialists in the first days of the revolution. Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky had already held the titles of Justice Minister and War Minister when he asked the government to hand him power to deal with Kornilov. Petrograd was the seat of the Russian government and center of revolutionary activity. In preparing to defend the city from an attack by Kornilov, the government freed and armed the Bolsheviks who would overthrow it in October.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, pp. 224–225, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
1 2 Next
