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Beefy German Landsturm — national or territorial guard — laugh at the notion that Great Britain's blockade would starve them or their country.
Postcard of a cross-section of the German mine-laying submarine UC5, captured by the British.
A Turkish funeral with Turkish and German soldiers and officers attending and praying. Is this a young Mustapha Kemal praying?
We'll join in! Women beneath the flags of and in the uniforms of the Vierbund of Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria, are willing to play their part in the war effort.
Under her commander Captain Koenig, the German merchant submarine "Deutschland", largest in the world, ran the British blockade of Germany and British ships off the US coast to reach the neutral United States, arriving in Baltimore Harbor July 10, 1916.Postcard of the Deutschland of Bremen, and the tugboat Thomas F. Timmins of Baltimore.
". . . sergeants rule by sarcasm. Never can there have been an Army without its Falstaffs and its Pistols. During the War some were hit, many were 'invalided with rheumatism,' others were sent to jobs by a tactful C.O. Some breathed life enough into their men in buckram to get away with a decoration, and some did earn one; not a few got promotion, which might be repeated, at home or in some eddy overseas." ((1), more)
"From 26 July to 20 August, Arnauld de la Perière and U.35 enjoyed the most successful submarine cruise of any commander during the war; in the western Mediterranean he sank 54 steamers and sailing craft, representing more than 90,150 tons of shipping. Between July and September of 1916, Mediterranean U-boats sank directly or indirectly through submarine-laid mines 155 ships, or 321,542 tones, out of a worldwide total of 493,184 tons. The Mediterranean percentage of total sinkings by submarines had therefore risen from 49.6 percent in the second quarter of 1916 to more than 65 percent in the third quarter." ((2), more)
"Through its retreat and panics the [Turkish] Third Army had lost a great part of its strength, because thousands of men left the ranks without leave. About the middle of August [1916] the Third Army reported the capture of 13,000 deserters. The prefect of Sivas had engaged to apprehend and collect 30,000 deserters in a short time." ((3), more)
"On August 22 [1916], Brusilov's army was confronted, along a twelve-mile sector of the front, by two divisions of Turkish troops, who a year earlier had been fighting at Gallipoli. But still the Austrian forces were driven back. 'The officers on the active list occupy comfortable chairs in the higher Staff appointments, General Hoffman, who was now controlling the battle in Galicia, wrote in his diary on August 27. 'Besides, there are all these different races mixed up together — no less than twenty-three distinct languages. No one understands anyone else.'" ((4), more)
"U-Boot 'Deutschland' eingetroffenBremen, 23. August 1916Eigener DrahtberichtDas erste Untersee-handelsschiff 'Deutschland' ist heute vor der Werfer-mündung angekommen und hat dort Anker geworfen. An Bord alles wohl.Submarine 'Deutschland' arrivedBremen, August 23, 1916Private wire reportThe first commercial submarine 'Deutschland' arrived today at the estuary from which it was launched, and has cast anchor there. On board, all is well." ((5), more)
(1) Extract from the entry for August 19, 1916 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, then serving in the Somme sector. Falstaff and Pistol are characters in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Henry V, Falstaff in the first three, Pistol in the latter. Drunken, lecherous, boisterous friends of Prince Hal, they are banished from his company when he assumes the throne as King Henry V.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 252, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(2) Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière was a German submarine commander of French descent and the most successful submarine commander ever. The Mediterranean Sea was dominated by the surface fleets of the Entente Allies — Britain, France, and Italy — but offered many targets to a submarine including shipping crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and through the Suez Canal, passing to and from ports including Marseilles, those of Egypt and the Salonica Front, and the more distant ports in Mesopotamia and India.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 388, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(3) Russian forces under General Nicholai Yudenich has repeatedly defeated Turkish forces of the Second and Third Armies in the mountains of Eastern Turkey, and held a line from the Black Sea to Persia.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 130, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
(4) By August, 1917, the offensive in Galicia mounted by Russian General Alexsei Brusilov on June 4 — one that had broken the Austro-Hungarian front — was coming to a halt. German troops reinforced their ally, and German officers began taking command. The Russians began replicating the ineffective assaults that they had conducted through much of the war, and suffered far more casualties than their enemies. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was polyglot, with German-speaking Austrians, the Magyars of Hungary, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Italians, Bosnians, Ruthenians, Romanians, and other ethnic groups. The language of command in the armed forces was German. Adding the Turks and, soon, the Bulgarians — all the forces of the Vierbund — complicated command and coordination. The Turks had defeated the Anglo-French invasion of Gallipoli at the beginning of the year.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 277, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Evading the English blockade, the German merchant submarine Deutschland surfaced in Chesapeake Bay on July 9, 1916, docked at Norfolk, Virginia, and sailed to Baltimore, Maryland the next day. The large submarine was capable of transporting goods such as rubber, nickel, and materials for explosives that Germany desperately needed. The governments of the Entente Allies jointly protested that the Deutschland was a warship rather than a merchant, and should be interned until the end of the war. The United States disagreed, and the submarine returned to Germany, arriving in Bremen on August 23. Deutschland made a second journey, reaching Long Island Sound and New London, Connecticut on November 1. After returning to Germany a second time, she failed to sail again. Her younger sister ship Bremen left for the United States, but never arrived. By April, 1917 the United States and Germany were are war, leaving few destinations for a merchant submarine.
Short Rations: an American Woman in Germany 1915-1916 by Madeleine Z. Doty, page 160, copyright © 1917, by The Century Co., publisher: A. L. Burt Company, publication date: 1917
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