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Peoples of Austria-Hungary in 1914 from Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd. The empire's population included Germans, Magyars, Romanians, Italians, and Slavs including Croats, Serbians, Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Slovenes.
An Austro-Hungarian soldier posing for the camera, leaning on his rifle, bayonet at his waist. He is from the k.u.k (kaiserlich und königlich/imperial and royal) Landsturm Battalion No. 83, a reserve militia of men 34 to 55, some of whom saw active duty.
A column of French Renault tanks moving to the front in a stereo card. The Renault tanks were used by both French and American forces. © By the Keystone View Company
Railroad and occupied territory map of western and central Europe, northern Africa, and Turkey. A German postcard map postdating the taking of Riga on the Baltic Sea on September 3, 1917 but before the German advance in February, 1918. The inset shows the Western Front and French-occupied territory in Alsace, then German Elsass.
Stamps of occupied Belgium: German stamps overprinted in black with 'Belgien' and denominations in centimes: 3, 5, 8, 10, 15, 25, and 75.
"At the middle of May [1918], Czech patriots and representatives of other Slav national groupings staged ominously anti-Hapsburg demonstrations in Prague, to be recounted farther along. Tactlessly, [Prime Minister Ernst] Seidler poured oil on the flame by announcing that Bohemia would be partitioned for administrative purposes into Czech and German areas; Czech patriotic sentiment firmly insisted upon a unified Bohemia in which Czechs would profit from a majority position. Yet it was believed by the moderate Illas Naroda that 'the entire Czech opinion contemplates a Czech nation within the framework of Austria, under the Hapsburg scepter.'" ((1), more)
"[In May, 1918] national aspirations began to emerge in the Austrian army. On May 12 there was a mutiny in the heart of Austria, at the Styrian town of Judenburg, when an infantry platoon captured the barracks and munition stores, looted the food stores, and destroyed the telephone and telegraph lines. The platoon was largely Slovene. Their cry was: 'Let us go home comrades, this is not only for us but also for our friends on the fronts. The war must be ended now, whoever is a Slovene, join us. We are going home; they should give us more to eat and end the war; up with the Bolsheviks, long live bread, down with the war.'" ((2), more)
"— The 13th [May, 1918]. The strike in the Renault factory is being kept dark. The workers are not asking for any increase of pay. They are merely protesting against being put back into the army, against the use of foreigners to fill their places, against the refusal of the peace offers last year, and against a harsh war-policy. Finally, they insist on publication of our war-aims.— Since the evening of the 14th, the strike movement has calmed down. The newspapers are still silent about it. It is a silence truly symbolic of the ignorance imposed on public opinion. A hundred thousand men have left factories at the very gates of Paris, but Paris knows nothing about it." ((3), more)
"The fate of the [Black Sea] fleet became worrisome to the Allies after the armistice, and the situation turned critical when German and Austrian troops marched into the Ukraine to secure the wheat fields. . . .The Germans continued to the east and then turned southward to the Crimea. They were in front of Sebastopol by 1 May [1918]. What would happen to the Black Sea Fleet? The commander in chief was now Vice Admiral N. P. Sablin, but his authority was extremely tenuous and no one could be certain what the sailors would do. The Bolshevik government, now in Moscow, ordered Sablin to sail to Novorossisk on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. Sablin managed to get fourteen destroyers and torpedo boats to sail on the 13th, but the two dreadnoughts and four destroyers remained behind. They finally sailed on the night of the 14th, just as German patrols entered the city." ((4), more)
"In German-occupied Belgium, it was three years since the first printing and circulation of an illegal patriotic newspaper Libre Belgique. Its network had been wide, its operations vexing for the Germans. At the end of January 1918 most of the paper's distributors, sixty-one in all, had been arrested, the Kaiser sending a telegram of congratulations to the Military Governor, General von Falkenhausen, whom the paper had described as 'a bird of prey sent to live on the palpitating flesh of Belgium'. The Kaiser himself was 'His Satanic Majesty' in the paper's parlance.On May 15 the sixty-one were brought to trial in Brussels. They were sentenced to imprisonment, some for ten to twelve years. After a short interval, the paper appeared once more . . ." ((5), more)
(1) Baron Ernst Seidler von Feuchtenegg served as Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister in 1917 and 1918. In the face of increasing demands for an independent Czech or Czechoslovak state, Seidler more than once offered his resignation to Kaiser Karl, who finally accepted it on July 22, 1918.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, Vol. 2, pp. 661-662, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(2) As the war dragged on, the Austro-Hungarian Empire increasingly fractured along ethnic lines. Austria's food shortages and subsequent riots had been exacerbated in January 1918 by Hungary's refusal to send food to its imperial partner. In the same month of May as the Slovene mutiny, Czech and other Slavik nationals met in Prague and held anti-Hapsburg demonstrations. The March 1918 peace that followed the Bolshevik Revolution saw the ostensible birth or rebirth of nations (even if dominated by Germany) holding out the promise not only of peace, but of the achievement of national aspirations.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, pp. 421–422, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) Entries for May 13 and (likely) 15, 1918, from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. The Renault company manufactured the Renault tank, used by the French and American armies. The Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, the armistice and subsequent peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, peace initiatives in December by Pope Benedict XV, American President Woodrow Wilson, and by Germany had raised hopes for peace across Europe.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 344, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(4) The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the armistice that quickly followed in December, and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between Russia and the Central Powers in March all occurred as ethnic groups within Russia and Europe's remaining empires increasingly called for independence. In the last days before the signing of the Treaty, a newly independent Ukraine signed its own treaty even as the Ukrainian and Russian delegations debated whose forces controlled Kiev, the new capitol of the new state.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 256, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(5) The Belgians of Libre Belgique were imprisoned. Many other Belgians under the occupation were executed for far less. Occupation always and everywhere corrupts the occupier. The occupied always and everywhere have the right to fight for freedom.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 423, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
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