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Photograph of a village on Lake Van, an area of Turkey populated largely by ethnic Armenians. The area was one of the first targeted on a large scale when Turkey turned on its Armenian citizens. Photo from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916.
Postcard from a series on the Armies of the European War of 1914. The French Army included units from its African colonies including Morocco and Senegal, and the Départment of Algeria.
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.
The heck with the Zeppelins!Screw the Zeppelins!A French soldier and his lover couldn't care less about the Zeppelin raid in progress. It's hard to tell if he is holding a cigarette in his right hand, or giving a fig to the Zeppelin.
A gleeful Russian Cossack skewers Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph in Galicia, the Empire's northeastern region isolated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian Mountains. The caption is a play on words echoing the name of the mountain range in telling Franz Joseph, 'it seems your soldiers took to their heels.' After twin defeats in the Battles of Gnila Lipa and Rava Russka, the Austro-Hungarian Army lost the great fortress at Lemberg, and was being driven out of Galicia and back through the Carpathians. Russia's attempts to break through the Carpathians continued through April 1915, with heavy losses on both sides. The Austro-Hungarians, with German support, held.
". . . crowned with thousands of half-naked and still bleeding bodies, lying in heaps, tangled, as if in a last embrace in death. Fathers, brothers, sons and grandsons lay as they fell from the bullets or the murderers' yatagans. Heartbeats were still pumping the life-blood out of some slashed throats. Flocks of vultures sat on top of the heap, picking the eyes out of the dead and dying, whose rigid gaze still seemed to mirror terror and inexpressible pain, while carrion dogs sank their sharp teeth into entrails still pulsing with life." ((1), more)
"When Buchanan and I met at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs this morning, the same idea was in our minds:'To-day is the centenary of Waterloo!'But this is not the time for the ironic pleasures of historical comparison . . ." ((2), more)
"Standing up in the car and looking back, we watched the river of war wind toward us. Cavalry, artillery, lancers, infantry, sappers and miners, trench-diggers, road-makers, stretcher-bearers, they swept on as smoothly as if in holiday order. Through the dust, the sun picked out the flash of lances and the gloss of chargers' flanks, flushed rows and rows of determined faces found the least touch of gold on faded uniforms, silvered the sad grey of mitrailleuses and munition waggons. Close as the men were, they seemed allegorically splendid: as if, under the arch of the sunset, we had been watching the whole French army ride straight into glory. . ." ((3), more)
". . . In the Argonne the Germans attacked on the 20th June [1915], and a series of fights went on until the 14th July, both sides losing very heavily; and as a consequence General Sarrail was removed on the 22nd July from the command of the French Third Army, and replaced by General Humbert. In Woevre there was almost continuous trench warfare in the woods of Ailly, Mort Mare and Le Pretre, whilst in Alsace the enemy was driven out of Metzeral, and Barrenkopf was captured. These local attacks, necessary as they were until a general offensive could be mounted, resulted in very heavy casualties and absorbed a vast quantity of the limited munitions available. The lack of any signal success somewhat shook the reputation of General Joffre with his Government, but in no way depressed the morale of his troops, as was to be shown, seven months later, at Verdun." ((4), more)
"I beg you please don't believe that it is for lack of desire because you must know that I still love you madly and that my greatest happiness would be to be with you always. Only I know that you deprive yourself that you do without things and I don't want that I would prefer to send you money that I would otherwise spend so that you can take care of yourself." ((5), more)
(1) Rafael de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army who had taken part in the Turkish attack on the Armenian rebellion in the city of Van. Sairt (Siirt) is a city southwest of Lake Van. Along with the Armenian population that fell victim to the Turkish Government's genocide, the Assyrian population was also targeted. The yatagan was an Ottoman knife or short sword.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, pp. 139, 140, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
(2) From the entry for June 18, 1915 from the memoir of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, meeting the British Ambassador, George Buchanan in St. Petersburg, Russia.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. II by Maurice Paléologue, page 14, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(3) American author Edith Wharton visited the French battle fronts in 1915, and, after writing from Paris, Lorraine and the Vosges, and Argonne, was on her way to the north, behind the Belgian and British front, when her car inched through French troops moving west. Writing on June 19, 1915, she found the fields of Artois untouched. She was well west of where the French had been fighting the Second Battle of Artois since May 9.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 139, 140, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
(4) From a summary of 'the French Front: June-September 1915' by Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds in his history of British military operations. French Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre continued a strategy of attacks — which he referred to as nibbling at the enemy — even though it had become clear that success would require adequate artillery. With a shell shortage less serious than the British (and especially the Russians), the French still had inadequate heavy artillery and shells for major offensives. Relieved of command in the Argonne, General Sarrail would later be given command on the Salonica Front. The Battle of Verdun began on February 21, 1916.
Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915, Vol. II, Battles of Aubers Ridge, Festubert, and Loos by J. E. Edmonds, page 109, copyright © asserted, publisher: Macmillan and Co., Limited, publication date: 1928
(5) Marie Pireaud writing to her husband Paul on June 21, 1915. Paul was stationed close to Paris, in Melun and Rampillon. The couple was from Nanteuil in southwest France where she lived with Paul's parents. They hoped for a child. Paul encouraged her to repeat a visit she had made to his sector, but she argued that she had not the money, that their farm was generating little income, and that by visiting, she would not be able to purchase items to send to him.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, pp. 75, 76, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
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