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A mass of German troops bear an enormous egg striped in the black, white, and red of the german flag. Atop the egg, a cannon is fired by troops with a Hungarian flag. The target, diminutive in the distance, is Paris, Eiffel Tower gray against the brown city.The watercolor is labeled,Husvét . Páris piros tojása . 1918Easter . Red eggs for Paris . 1918The front of the card is postmarked 1918-04-05 from Melököveso.The card is a Feldpostkarte, a field postcard, from Asbach Uralt, old German cognac. Above the brand name, two German soldiers wheel a field stove past a crate containing a bottle of the brandy under the title Gute Verpflegung, Good Food. Above the addressee is written Einschreiben, enroll, and Nach Ungarn, to Hungary. The card is addressed to Franz Moritos, and is postmarked Hamburg, 1918-03-30. A Hamburg stamp also decorates the card.A hand-painted postcard by Schima Martos. , Germany on registered fieldpost card, 1918, message: Red Egg for Paris, Easter, 1918.The German advance in Operation Michael in the March, 1918 nearly broke the Allied line, and threatened Paris, putting it once again in range of a new German supergun capable of hitting the city from 70 miles away.
Advertising postcard map of European Russia, with inset images of a mounted Cossack lancer, a troika, and St. Petersburg.
The disparity in the number of nations arrayed against the Central Powers was a common motif, and was updated as the numbers on each side increased. Italy's entry into the war on May 23, 1915 changed the numbers again.Central Powers (top) Sultan Mohammed V of Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Allies (center and bottom rows) Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of the United Kingdom, President Raymond Poincaré of France, King Nikola of Montenegro, King Peter of Serbia, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, King Albert I of Belgium, Emperor Taishō of Japan.In the center, a poem: Drei gegen Acht, Three against Eight.
View from the Observation Tower on Californie Plateau, Chemin des Dames, France.
Postcard map of the Chemin des Dames between Soissons and Rheims. The view is facing north towards the heights of the 'Ladies Road,' the Aisne River to its south. The Germans held the high ground after the retreat from the Marne in 1914. The French suffered heavy casualties taking the Chemin des Dames in the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, an offensive that led to widespread mutinies in the French Army. The Third German Drive of 1918, the Third Battle of the Aisne, drove the French, and supporting British troops, from the heights, and again threatened Paris.
"— A raid on Tuesday the 21st [May 1918] from 10.45 p.m. to 1.30 in the morning. I was visiting Victor Margueritte, with Jacques Richepin, and the Weylers. The men in the party lay down on cushions on the drawing room carpet and went to sleep. It was a beautiful night. Bombs fell at Versailles and Saint-Cyr.— On Wednesday the 22nd there was an air raid from 11.30 p.m. until a quarter past midnight, and a further raid from 1.30 to 3.30 a.m., that is, until dawn. A stormy sky with a bright moon. Barrage of fire of unusual violence. Bombs dropped on the Gare d'Austerlitz, the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, the School of Arts and Crafts, the Rue Legendre, and also at Juvisy.— You are no longer allowed hot water for washing in hotels, except on Saturdays and Sundays." ((1), more)
"On May 23 [1918] the British War Cabinet had taken a decision to dispatch a 560-strong military mission to the port of Archangel, and a further six hundred men to Murmansk, to guard the British military stores there, that had earlier been sent through the Arctic as Britain's military contribution to the Russian army. The British also offered to train the hundreds of thousands of anti-Bolshevik Russians to defend themselves against any future Bolshevik assault. Three days later, in Siberia, 60,000 Czech troops, who had made their way through Siberia to the Far East of Russia after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had liberated all Austrian prisoners-of-war, turned actively against the Bolsheviks." ((2), more)
"As though by chance on the following day, the French Press published a success by the Belgian troops 'under the orders of General de Cueninck, subordinate to General Foch', and on the 24th M. de Broqueville handed the King a memorandum, trying to prove that the Sovereign's command was only fictitious and that the Chief of the Army Staff alone was responsible for the conduct of operations." ((3), more)
"The second event was the escape of three French prisoners-of-war from their camp not far behind the German lines, as a result of the massive reorganization of life there consequent upon the preparations for the attack. They reached the British lines just before dawn on May 25th, where they were admitted, fed, and closely questioned upon the conditions existing on the far side of the Ailette. Any doubts still existing in the minds of those conducting the interrogations as to the precariousness of their position were quickly dispelled, and a strongly worded report was forwarded to Sixth Army Headquarters.But Duchesne's reply read coldly: 'In our opinion there are no indications that the enemy has made preparations which would enable him to attack tomorrow' . . ." ((4), more)
"At daybreak on the 26th [May 1918] two German prisoners were taken by the French. One was a private and the other an officer-aspirant, belonging to different regiments of Jäger. On the way to Divisional Headquarters their captors entered into conversation with them. The private said there was going to be an attack; the officer contradicted him. Arrived at the Army Corp Intelligence centre the prisoners were examined separately. The officer, questioned first, was voluble, and declared that the Germans had no intention of making an offensive on this front. The interrogation of the private followed. He said that the soldiers believed that they would attack that night or the following night. He was not sure of the date. . . . [The officer] gave in the end the most complete details of the attach which impended the next day. It was already three o'clock in the afternoon of the 26th. The alarm was given, and the troops available took up their battle positions." ((5), more)
(1) Entries from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. The French capital had been struck in March by Gotha bombers and by 'the Paris gun,' a new weapon that the German advance in Operation Michael put Paris within range of. Corday wrote further that the newspapers of May 23 reported the arrest and imprisonment for two weeks of a chauffeur who observed that, 'the damage was tremendous,' referring to a bombed house. The court found this statement both provided information about military operations and would adversely affect morale. Versailles and Saint Cyr, home to the leading French military academy, are south-southwest of Paris.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 346, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(2) Russia's inadequate railways resulted in many of the supplies France and Britain sent to support the Russian Empire's war effort never making it from their ports of entry on the Arctic Ocean and White Sea in northern Russia. With control of the railways, the Bolsheviks controlled the supplies. Britain, France, and the United States would send additional troops in an ultimately failed attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik government. The Czech Legion was prepared to fight for independence from Austria-Hungary, but had to cross Russia to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In the course of their journey, the Bolsheviks tried to ensure the Czechs were not a military force that could turn on the Revolution and began to disarm them. The Czechs eventually resisted.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 425, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) Albert, King of the Belgians, resisted repeated requests by the Allies, including Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to subordinate Belgian troops to non-Belgian command. One request would have deployed forces to Italy. Albert repeatedly pointed out agreeing to any of these requests was constitutionally impossible. He hotly disagreed with his Prime Minister's position, summarized above, pointing out that he had commanded the Army for nearly four years in accordance with Article 64 of the Belgian Constitution. Charles de Broqueville served as Prime Minister of Belgium from June 17, 1911 to June 1, 1918.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 209, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(4) German forces were preparing what would prove to be a devastating attack on the Allied line, the Aisne (Blücher) Offensive, the third of five drives to victory in 1918. The first event our author, Barrie Pitt, refers to had two parts: the first that American intelligence officers had recognized that an attack on the Chemin des Dames, which is south of the Ailette River, was imminent, and the second that the Chief of French intelligence came to believe they were correct. French General Denis Auguste Duchêne, who had already failed to follow General Henri Philippe Pétain's order to strengthen and restructure his line, would have none of it. Duchêne was correct to the extent that the former prisoners provided their information on May 25, 1918, and the attack took place on the 27th, not his 'tomorrow'. Four British divisions that had been devastated in Operations Michael and Georgette in March and April had been moved into what was expected to be a quiet sector held by the French.
1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, page 145, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963
(5) German forces were preparing what would prove to be a devastating attack on the Allied line, the Aisne (Blücher) Offensive, the third of five drives to victory in 1918. On May 25, three French prisoners of war escaped and reported on German preparations for the assault. French General Denis Auguste Duchêne, who had already failed to follow General Henri Philippe Pétain's order to strengthen and restructure his line, dismissed the report saying, 'In our opinion there are no indications that the enemy has made preparations which would enable him to attack tomorrow'. The German prisoners take the next day were believed, and the defenders scrambled to defend a line that would prove indefensible.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, pp. 793–794, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
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