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Bulgarian machine-gunners laying out ammunition belts on the Salonica Front.
Austro-Hungarian soldiers marching through a city, their officers bawling orders. Women and a child watch and talk, possibly shouting to be heard over the marching feet. An original watercolor on blue paper, signed W. Rittermann or Pittermann, December 26, 1915.
Uncle Sam weighs the lives lost in the German sinking of the Lusitania (and other ships, as seen on the horizon) to his cash flow from selling weapons and other supplies to the combatants, particularly the allies. The moneybags have tipped the scales. A 1916 postcard by Em. Dupuis.
Map of the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian advance into Serbia in October and November, 1915, with the Central Power offensive along the Greek border in August 1916 and the Allied counteroffensive the following month. Map from the Reichsarchiv Herbstschlacht in Macedonien (Autumn battle in Macedonia).
The German armored cruiser S.M.S Prinz Adalbert under steam. Stationed in the Baltic Sea, Prinz Adalbert had run aground on January 24, 1915, and been torpedoed by the British submarine E.9 on July 2. On October 23 submarine E.8 torpedoed the battleship setting off an explosion in a magazine. Only three survived.
"General Teodoroff's Bulgarian Army, moving rapidly into Macedonia, in two columns, aimed at seizing the main line of railroad and preventing communications between the vanguard of General Sarrail's French Army and the Serbians.One Bulgarian column cut the railroad at Vranya and occupied the city on October 17th [1915]. Teodoroff's main army, going South, seized Palanka, Sultan Pepe and Katshaua, and advanced to Veles, where on October 20th, they again cut the railroad line, making any further advance of General Sarrail's army impossible." ((1), more)
"When the Italians moved out of their trenches on the 21st, they expected large gains. The Austrians, however, were more than ready. Enough machine guns always survived to check the Italians — even when they advanced in armour of steel plates, as they did in some places. Very little was achieved on the northern Isonzo. The Italians had briefly recaptured the 'Big Trench' on Mrzli at the end of September, only to lose it to the usual ferocious counter-attack. They hauled artillery onto Krn to pound the summit of Mrzli and its rear lines from the north while the infantry drove up from the south and west. Assisted in this way, the Salerno Brigade took the Big Trench on 21 October." ((2), more)
"America had better look out after this war. I shall stand no nonsense from America after the war." ((3), more)
"One month after the start of the [German and Austro-Hungarian] offensive the attackers could see that they had advanced, but as many as a fifth of their troops were out of action. Nonetheless, [Serbia's] defence, already weakened, declined totally. When the Bregalnica division could not halt the incomparably stronger units of the Bulgarian 2nd Army, the state of affairs on the Macedonian front soon became critical. The Bulgarians reached the Vardar River on 19 October, entered Kumanovo on the 20th, reached Skopje on the 22nd, and took the strategically important Kačanik Gorge on the 26th." ((4), more)
"Goodhart in E.8 scored one of the more spectacular successes of the submarine campaign while operating off Libau on 23 October [1915]. He encountered the recently repaired armored cruiser Prinz Adalbert escorted by two destroyers and torpedoed her. One of the cruiser's magazines exploded, and there were only three survivors. It was the heaviest loss of the war for the German Baltic forces." ((5), more)
(1) Inflicting heavy casualties on German and Austro-Hungarian forces invading along its northern and northwestern border, and awaiting support from French and British troops recently landed in Salonika, Greece, Serbia was isolated when Bulgaria's two armies invaded along its eastern border in mid-October, 1915. With the cutting of the railroad, the Serbian government, having fled the capital in Belgrade, was isolated in the city of Nish, and cut off from the Franco-British forces under the command of French General Maurice Sarrail.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 188, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
(2) Italy began a new offensive on the Isonzo Front — the Third Battle of the Isonzo — with a preliminary bombardment on October 18, 1915, but much of the artillery was 75 mm. field guns which did little damage to trenches or barbed wire.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 128, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
(3) Kaiser Wilhelm to American Ambassador to Germany James Gerard, October 22, 1915. The Kaiser was complaining to Gerard about American financial aid to Great Britain and France, and about submarines built in America and escorted to Britain by ships of the American navy.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(4) With most of its forces facing German and Austro-Hungarian forces along on its northern and northwestern fronts, Serbia had an army of 100,000 men to face two Bulgarian armies totaling roughly three times as many men along its eastern border. The movements of the Bulgarian Second Army were ensuring the isolation of Serbia from the Franco-British forces trying to come to its aid from Salonika.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, page 146, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
(5) Responding to a Russian request for aid in the Baltic Sea, Great Britain dispatched two submarines, E.8 and E.13 on August 15, 1915. Only E.13, under the command of Lieutenant Commander F. H. J. Goodhart, made the dangerous passage from the North Sea through the Skaggerak and Kattegat, the straits between the neutral countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. E.1 and E.8 had reached the Baltic in October 1914. By September 4, 1915, E.18 and E.19 did as well, giving Britain five submarines operating in the Sea. S.M.S Prinz Adalbert had run aground on January 24, and been torpedoed by E.9 on July 2.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 203, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
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