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A Russian POW leaning on a shovel or other tool. A drawing by Wilhelm Hartmann dated September 22, 1915.
I've killed many Germans, but never women or children. Original French watercolor by John on blank field postcard. In the background are indolent Russian soldiers and Vladimir Lenin, in the foreground stands what may be a Romanian soldier who is telling the Russians, 'You call me savage. I killed a lot of Boches [Germans], but never women or children!'
Austro-Hungarian soldiers, one with goggles around his hat, posing at their dugout in a January, 1917 photograph. The card is dated January 27, 1917, and field postmarked January 31.
The Russian Duma: priest deputies and officers. From White Nights and Other Russian Impressions by Arthur Ruhl. Ruhl reported from Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution.
Uncle Sam weighs the lives lost in the German sinking of the Lusitania (and other ships, as seen on the horizon) to his cash flow from selling weapons and other supplies to the combatants, particularly the allies. The moneybags have tipped the scales. A 1916 postcard by Em. Dupuis.
"If someone had said to me, 'One day you're going to eat soup made from dirty potatoes', or 'You're going to fight over a swede', I would have said 'What nonsense!' But nothing surprises me here — like today, I saw a soldier rummaging in a rubbish pit, picking out potato and swede peelings and eating them slowly to make them last. The hunger is dreadful: you feel it constantly, day and night. You have to forget who you once were and what you have become.Our people resent the fact that the French, Belgians and English live so well and are not forced to work. They don't go about hungry like we do. They boast that their governments send them bread and parcels from home. But we, Russians, get nothing: our punishment for fighting badly. Or, perhaps, Mother Russia has forgotten about us." ((1), more)
"The men are starting to look human again, they can cut their hair, shave, put on clean underwear and mend their clothes and clean their guns. The officers spend all day drinking and playing cards. They get their batmen to get self-distilled vodka from the rear or buy up triple-strength eau de cologne which does just as well.There is nothing to read, just some old newspapers. But Borov got hold of a whole pile of new editions. They accuse the Government of greed, indecision and secret negotiations with the Germans. We read all this in secret. Zemlianitsky says, 'It's time to finish off this war, brothers!'" ((2), more)
"The Allies had abandoned exclusive use of patrolled routes in the Mediterranean shortly before the Germans adopted unrestricted submarine warfare. The Germans declared the great majority of the Mediterranean a Sperrgebiet (prohibited area) except for the extreme western portion off Spain, including the Balearics, and initially, the 20-mile-wide corridor to Greek waters. The Austrians promised to assist the Germans outside the Adriatic. Their smaller submarines as they became available would now operate against Allied shipping between Malta and Cerigo. In the early part of 1917, the situation in the Mediterranean was deceptively favorable to the Allies, for in January the greater part of the Mediterranean U-boat flotilla was under repair and refit at Pola and Cattaro after the heavy demands of 1916. In January sinkings fell to 78,541 tons, only 24 percent of the total of 328,391 tons sunk in all theaters. It was the lull before the storm . . ." ((3), more)
"During January at least three separate centers of agitation against the Czar began to take shape in Petrograd. There was the Union of Nobles, an organization of the aristocracy which was plotting for a palace revolution. There were the political parties of the extreme left, chiefly the Social Democrats, forever eating away underground, like white ants, inside the factories and the armed services. And there was the Duma itself. Through all three groups the Okhrana coiled itself like some parasitical creeper that flourishes best where it can generate rottenness and decay." ((4), more)
"From February 1, 1917, sea traffic will be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice in the following blockade zones around Great Britain, France, Italy and in the Eastern Mediterranean:[Footnote:] Briefly summarized, the following paragraphs describe a complete enclosure or blockade of Britain and adjacent isles, France, Belgium, Italy and their North African possessions, except for one small space on the French Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from a diary by Russian POW Alexei Zyikov, captured in Russian Poland in 1915, and held in a POW camp in northeastern Germany. Russian POWs did not receive food parcels from the Russian government.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 268, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(2) Russian soldier Dmitry Oskin writing in January, 1917. Russian Prime Minister Protopopov was . . . The Empress Alexandra, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, was believed to favor Germany, and possibly actively forwarding its interest. Oskin writes that new recruits, primarily Ukranian, continue to arrive. On being given lentils for lunch, they start a food riot.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 289, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
(3) The British, French, and Italian allies only poorly coordinated efforts to counteract the U-boat threat in the Mediterranean, trying to establishing zones and patrolled routes. The Austro-Hungarian Adriatic ports of Pola and Cattaro were used by both Austrian and German U-boats. Germany proclaimed a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare beginning February 1, 1917.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 390, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
(4) A somewhat overwrought description of the groups plotting against Russian Tsar Nicholas II in the capital of Petrograd in January, 1917. Members of the aristocracy and the Russian Duma had killed the monk Rasputin at the end of December, a blow that struck at the heart of the royal family.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 134, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
(5) Beginning of a memorandum included with a letter delivered to the United States Secretary of State by German Ambassador von Bernstorff, Washington, D.C., January 31, 1917 announcing the commencing of unrestricted submarine warfare effective in a few hours, on February 1. The policy was opposed by German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg who argued that it would bring the United States into the war. The campaign was supported by Kaiser Wilhelm, German Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, and Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, Chief of Germany's Naval General Staff, all of whom argued that America would not react, or if it did, it would be too late to prevent the starving of Britain or its intervention would prove ineffectual.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. V, 1917, p. 6, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
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