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'Street Life, 1916' by Hans Larwin, a native of Vienna and painter of the war on multiple fronts, including the home front. A bread line, chiefly of women, waits along the shopfronts to buy bread. To the left, a policeman stands guard.
The salute of General Black Jack Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, landing in France, June, 1917. Pershing landed in Boulogne on June 13.
Advertising postcard map of Austria-Hungary from the Amidon Starch Company with images of Vienna, Budapest, and a wheat field.
A shower is so refreshing! A French couple enjoy the Hour of the Tub, the soldier perhaps home on leave.
Austro-Hungarian soldiers celebrate the 30th birthday of Kaiser Karl, waving paper lanterns as one holds a framed portrait of the Emperor in an postcard promotion for a Festival for the Kaiser.
"More than 2000 women had rioted in Vienna's public market on 11 January; 5 days later 25 000 stood in line at the main meat market. It was not unusual for buyers to line up at markets the night before; many fainted in the process. While the best hotels and butcher shops had beef and port for sale to their regular (and wealthy) clients, the markets in the working-class districts had only horse meat on hand. Butchers there complained bitterly that they were forced to sell at fixed prices. Soup kitchens were besieged by patrons, many of them Landser on leave. Countless 'soldiers in rags' went door to door begging food. The capital's populace, in the words of the police, was on the point of starvation and rebellion." ((1), more)
"France's new allies received a very different welcome [from that given the Russians]. The first American units had disembarked in June 1917, but the build-up over the autumn and winter was slow, and by January only 161,750 men had crossed the Atlantic. By September, however, there would be over 1.5 million American troops in France." ((2), more)
"In January of 1918, Vienna and other substantial Austrian cities experienced the most serious civilian convulsions of the war era. Accumulated resentments among industrial workers due to war-borne hardships and to the trend of diplomatic negotiations at Brest-Litovsk combined with bitterness because of a sudden cut in the slim bread rations in Austria and with faint undertones of Bolshevism to produce concerted mass action. . . . Socialist-organized mass meetings on January 13, 1918 protested furiously against the sabre-rattling tactics of German General Hoffmann at Brest-Litovsk. 'Without any warning or signal from the Socialists,' Viktor Adler explained, 'the idea had suddenly spring up among the masses that if this hope [a peace settlement with the Russians] vanishes, and there is nothing to eat, we have nothing to lose.' Starting spontaneously in a left-wing clique at the Daimler works at Wiener Neustadt, a strike movement spread to locomotive and munitions factories there and thence to other industrial centers." ((3), more)
"I pass over the joy of spending time once again in the midst of my loved ones, and the sadness of returning to duty. I was completely discouraged, broken in body and spirit, when I found myself once again at Les Islettes station, the morning of January 14 [1918].Sad and alone, under a gray sky in which a few snowflakes swirled, I made my way to the trenches.At the village of [Le] Neufour, where the company sergeant-majors were encamped, I hoisted my pack, my weapons, and all the gear with which a poilu was loaded down, and I headed off briskly because I had a dozen kilometers to cover, through the woods, along bad roads unknown to me, as the regiment had now taken up front-line positions near Vauquois." ((4), more)
"I have just received a letter from Statthalter N.N. which justifies all the fears I have constantly repeated to your Majesty, and shows that in the question of food-supplies we are on the very verge of catastrophe. The situation arising out of the carelessness and incapacity of the Ministers is terrible, and I fear it is already too late to check the total collapse which is to be expected in the next few weeks. My informant writes: 'Only small quantities are now being received from Hungary, from Rumania only 10,000 wagons of maize; this gives then a decrease of at least 30,000 wagons of grain, without which we must infallibly perish. On learning the state of affairs, I went to the Prime Minister to speak with him about it. I told him, as is the case, that in a few weeks our war industries, our railway traffic, would be at a standstill, the provisioning of the army would be impossible, it must break down, and that would mean the collapse of Austria and therewith also of Hungary. To each of these points he answered yes, that is so, and added that all was being done to alter the state of affairs, especially as regards the Hungarian deliveries. But no one, not even your majesty, has been able to get anything done. We can only hope that some deus ex machina may intervene to save us from the worst.'" ((5), more)
(1) Food shortages were acute in Austria-Hungary in January, 1918, and a strong impetus for the country to conclude peace with Russia in the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Austria-Hungary had not recovered from the loss of its rolling stock in the battles of 1914, Hungary withheld food supplies from the rest of the empire, and the failure to agree treaties prevented transportation of food from the breadbaskets of Russia and Romania. Landser is a colloquial expression for Landwehrmann, the Austrian home or territorial guard.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, pp. 363–364, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(2) After their revolution in November, 1917, the Bolsheviks agreed an armistice with the Central Powers while a peace treaty was negotiated. Many French, anticipating a German offensive supported by troops recently redeployed from the Eastern Front, spoke ill of their former ally. The United States had declared war in April, 1917, but were not on the front lines.
They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Ian Sumner, page 185, copyright © Ian Sumner 2012, publisher: Pen and Sword, publication date: 2012
(3) Food shortages were acute in Austria-Hungary in January, 1918, and a strong impetus for the country to conclude peace with Russia in the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Count Ottokar Czernin was prepared to make peace with no annexations,but the German negotiators, particularly the military representatives led by General Max Hoffman, were not. On January 12, Hoffman had given a particularly bellicose speech at the conference, in which he made it clear Germany would not evacuate occupied territory. Viktor Adler was a founder of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers' Party.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, Vol. 2, pp. 654, 655, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(4) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas. He had been in the 296th Regiment which had been implicated in the army mutinies of the spring and early summer. The regiment had been dissolved and its men assigned to other units, Barthas to a regiment from Breton. On December 23, 1917 they went into two weeks of rest, Barthas's sixth leave.Vauquois is 30 km west of Verdun in the Argonne; both Les Islettes and Le Neufour about 20 km from Vauquois. Barthas was from the south of France. Brackets in source.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 351–352, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(5) Excerpt from a telegraph to Austro-Hungarian Kaiser Karl from the Empire's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ottokar Czernin, sent January 15, 1918 from Brest-Litovsk, where Czernin lead the Austro-Hungarian delation in the Central Power peace negotiations with Russia. Czernin was increasingly a powerless bystander in the debate between the German and Russian delegates even as food riots and strikes broke out in Vienna. As Hungary withheld food from Austria, peace would offer the hope of supplies from Russia. A Statthalter is a governor.
In the World War by Count Ottokar Czernin, pp. 264–265, copyright © 1920, by Harper & Brothers, publisher: Harper and Brothers, publication date: 1920
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