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A squadron of the German Imperial Navy under the eye of a Zeppelin off the North Sea island and port of Helgoland.
Map of Syria, Palestine, Turkey, and Mesopotamia from the Baedeker 1912 travel guide Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus.
Austro-Hungarian soldiers, one with goggles around his hat, posing at their dugout in a January, 1917 photograph. The card is dated January 27, 1917, and field postmarked January 31.
Dive Copse British Cemetery in Sailly-le-Sec, France.
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.
"[Admiral Hipper's] tragic hesitation at the moment of greatest danger is apparent in his inept handling of the men and his total misjudgment of the situation. Although by November 1 it was obvious that the men were out of control, Hipper informed Scheer at the Seekriegsleitung that he saw no reason why the situation should be viewed pessimistically. Aghast at this calm amidst the disaster that was overtaking the fleet, the Seekriegsleitung curtly replied, 'We cannot concur with this view. It has been established that a military operation has been ruined by the illegal will of [certain] elements within the crews.' . . .Totally lacking in defensive measures, Kiel lay at the mercy of the rebellious sailors and stokers of the Third Squadron who, from the moment they landed in the city, were determined not to allow their recently arrested comrades to be martyred. . . . At a meeting on November 1 at the Trade Union Hall attended by 250 men from the Third Squadron, it was decided to form a committee to negotiate the prisoners' immediate release. At the same time it was agreed to convene another meeting for the following day in the event that those demands were not met." ((1), more)
"After breaking through Ottoman lines at Sharqat on October 28, 1918, Marshall accepted Hakki Bey's surrender, taking 11,322 prisoners, at 7:30 a.m. on October 30—the same day an armistice was signed between Britain and Turkey, effective at noon on the thirty-first. In a painful reminder, for the Turks, of the shady way Churchill and Britain had begun the war in the Persian Gulf prematurely four years before (to the day), Marshall pushed on after the armistice was signed, reaching Mosul on November 2, 1918, in clear violation of the armistice terms. The reason was not hard to grasp: Mosul had been promised to France, but His Majesty's government no longer wished her to have it." ((2), more)
"At this point, early on 3 November, the high command was unaware of an Italian stipulation that the ceasefire should come into effect with a 24-hour delay, so their forward units could be informed. General Weber realised the discrepancy would be disastrous for Austrian troops, but the high command refused to amend the order. In desperation, Weber asked Badoglio to suspend hostilities immediately. His request was brushed aside, and the Italians signed the armistice at 15:20. It would come into force at 15:00 on 4 November.As if bent on confirming, with its last breath, every accusation of haughty negligence towards the common people, the Habsburg élite had bungled the armistice. The Italians had 24 hours to round up unresisting Austrian soldiers who believed the war was over. Some 350,000 prisoners were taken in the last day of the war." ((3), more)
"Anthem for Doomed YouthWhat passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyesShall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds." ((4), more)
"The population of the Yugoslav areas was at this time also calling on the Serbian army to protect its national territory and maintain law and order there. On 4 November, a delegation of the National Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina transmitted a request to Vojvoda Stepanović for Serbian troops to enter its territory, whereupon units of the 2nd Army arrived in Sarajevo on 6 November. Envoys from Zermun, Pančevo and Osijek also arrived in Belgrade on 5 November with a request for military assistance. The National Council in Zagreb, in line with its previous decision to request Allied troops, sent a delegation to Serbia on 5 November, which arrived in Belgrade on 8 November. And, at the same time, Serb prisoners of war who had returned home from camps in Austria and Germany were in some places assuming the role that was actually expected of their comrades in the battle units." ((5), more)
(1) At the end of October 1918, with Germany clearly losing the war, German admirals and other naval officers planned a suicidal attack by the High Seas Fleet on the Royal Navy, the 'military operation' referred to in the first paragraph, itself an illegal mutiny by the naval officer corps. The men who 'ruined' the plan were sailors and coal stokers who refused to go ahead with the mission. Many of them were arrested and transported from the North Sea port of Cuxhaven to the Baltic port of Kiel. The Seekriegsleitung was the Maritime Warfare Command, formed in August 1918, and headed by Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the Chief of the German Admiralty Staff. He had commanded the German High Seas Fleet in the Battle of Jutland where Rear Admiral Franz Hipper had commanded a smaller battle squadron.
German Naval Mutinies of World War One by Daniel Horn, pp. 226, 236, copyright © 1969 by Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, publisher: Rutgers University Press, publication date: 1969
(2) General William Marshall commanded British and Indian forces in Mesopotamia in 1918. Hakki Bey commanded the Ottoman Sixth Army. Sharqat lay on the Tigris River north of Baghdad.
The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923 by Sean McMeekin, pp. 401–402, copyright © 2015 by Sean McMeekin, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2015
(3) Generals Viktor Weber von Weberau and Pietro Badoglio were the armistice negotiators for Austria-Hungary and Italy respectively. General Armando Diaz launched the battle of Battle of Vittorio Veneto on October 24, 1918. After resisting for two days, the Austro-Hungarian defense collapsed as the Empire itself broke apart.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 363, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(4) Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen, Second Lieutenant, Manchester Regiment, killed in action November 4, 1918, leading his men in attempting to cross the Sambre Canal. Owen was posthumously awarded the Military Cross for his actions on October 1, 1918 near the village of Joncourt.
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Owen, page 44, copyright © Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1963, publisher: New Directions, publication date: 1963
(5) Yugoslavia, the union of South Slavs, was the dream of Gavrilo Princip and his co-conspirators when he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. It would include the Allied nations of Serbia and Montenegro and, in whole or in part, the Austro-Hungarian regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Carniola. Vojvoda Stepa Stepanović commanded the Serbian Second Army in the advance that began on September 14. Mitrović writes, 'The rank of Vojvoda is the highest in the Serbian Army, approximately equivalent to field-marshal' (p. 347, note 128). Belgrade was, and is again (November 4, 2018), the capital of Serbia.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, pp. 323–324, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
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