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A hold-to-light postcard of the German and Austro-Hungarian victory (shortlived) over the Russians in the Uzroker Pass in the Carpathians on January 28, 1915. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, launched an offensive with three armies on January 23, including the new Austro-Hungarian Seventh Army under General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin.
Fantasy map of Europe with the territory of Germany and Austria-Hungary incorporated into France, Russia, Italy, and Serbia. Children representing Belgium, Great Britain (pen in hand), Russia, and France admire the result as Germany and Austria-Hungary walk away bearing their dead or dying national symbols, the eagle or double-headed eagle. A postcard by Aurelio Bertiglia.
John Bull, symbol of Great Britain and here a bird-catcher, tries to entice the kingdom of Romania, in 1915 a neutral nation, into his trap. He already has Russia by the nose, and the plucked cock of France and an Italian fowl close at hand. Neutral (and wise) Greece rests out of reach, while Bulgaria sings to the Islamic crescent moon of Turkey. In the background Turkish, German, and Austro-Hungarian soldiers meet at a crossroads. Carved into the tree is a heart dated 1915, and the initials 'F A R', perhaps for 'France aime Russie:' France loves Russia.
An Italian postcard map of central and southern Africa with insets for New Guinea and Kiautschau, China, with the colonies of Italy, Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Belgium.
Postwar postcard map of the Balkans including Albania, newly-created Yugoslavia, expanded Romania, and diminished former Central Powers Bulgaria and Turkey. The first acquisitions of Greece in its war against Turkey are seen in Europe where it advanced almost to Constantinople, in the Aegean Islands from Samos to Rhodes, and on the Turkish mainland from its base in Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish war was fought from May 1919 to 1922. The positions shown held from the war's beginning to the summer of 1920 when Greece advanced eastward. Newly independent Hungary and Ukraine appear in the northwest and northeast.
"Russian attacks [in the Carpathian mountains] came in a series of short jabs through the valleys, broken off for lack of force after they had won initial successes. This, in mountain-conditions, was an excellent way of proceeding, for the Russians completely confused Austrian reserves without, themselves, running into insuperable supply-difficulties. Yet the Austrian commanders could not afford the general retreat that might have saved things: once they lost the mountains, they thought, they would be pushed back on Budapest. Their armies stayed in the mountains, losing thousands of prisoners. An attack on III Army produced crisis; appeals went from Conrad to Ludendorff and Falkenhayn; by 6th April a new German force — Beskidenkorps, under Marwitz — was made up of troops from Ludendorff's front and Südarmee (two and a half divisions). Its intervention, together with the problems of supply brought by the Russians' advance, brought the Carpathian offensive to a halt." ((1), more)
"I propose first of all to discuss the question of peace and conditions preliminary to this.. . . [The Belgian Minister of Finance] is of the opinion that we should accept territorial aggrandisements if they are proposed to us.I point out that the question of maintaining or not maintaining our neutrality must be solved before everything, as it governs our political orientation. We cannot, on our own account, launch into a policy of conquest which would eventually exclude us from the benefits of neutrality. . . .The annexation of Luxemburg meets with general sympathy.I recommend prudence in the utterance of these ambitions. The result of the war remains indecisive, and our recent offensives have hardly been crowned with success. It is possible that peace may be signed on the present-day line and that the reduction or splitting up of Germany may turn out to be false dreams." ((2), more)
"Night had fallen once more, a night bringing thaw, the sky livid and heavy with clouds; slabs of snow saturated with water hung dripping from the tall trees like the linen of some giant washing-day, or crashed to the ground with a muffled thud like peaches bursting where they fell; rivulets of water trickled everywhere; the earth seemed to have been taken under some mysterious and mighty wing, bringer of warm air and sounds of stirring, and over everything hung a kind of anguish as if something was being born or dying.At the dark mouth of the pear-tree fork, the little white shirtfront had appeared like a silent snowfall from a higher branch, and picking her way slowly, Fuseline came to the ground." ((3), more)
"The men gathered on the platform [at Waterloo Station, London] make up the main body of a battalion of volunteers, the 25th Royal Fusiliers, and they are just setting off on their long journey to East Africa. They already know that it is not easy for European units to work in that part of Africa but the majority of the uniformed men here already have experience in hot climates and difficult terrain. 'This old Legion of Frontiersmen' come from places as varied as Hong Kong, China and Ceylon, Malacca, India and New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Egypt; the battalion includes both former polar explorers and former cowboys. . . .At two o'clock the train rolls out of Waterloo Station. The destination is Plymouth, where a steamer, HMTS Neuralia, is waiting. It will take them all the way to East Africa." ((4), more)
". . . I asked [Goremykin, President of the Russian Council] about a matter that has been on my mind for some time, the question of the Ukraine. He broke in:'There is no Ukrainian question!''But even if there's no Ukrainian question, or perhaps I should say no separatist movement in the Ukraine, you won't deny that there's a very strong particularist spirit in Little Russia.''Oh, yes! The Little Russians have a very original individual character. Their ideas, literature, and songs have a very pronounced flavor of the soil. But that only shows itself in the intellectual sphere. From the national point of view the Ukrainians are as Russian as the purest Muscovites. And from the economic point of view the Ukraine is necessarily tied to Russia.'" ((5), more)
(1) Both Russia and Austria-Hungary launched offensives in the Carpathian Mountains in the first months of 1915, the Russians in an attempt to break through the mountain passes to the Hungarian plain and capital of Budapest, the Austro-Hungarians in an attempt drive the Russians from the mountains and from Galicia and Bukovina, Austria-Hungary's northeastern provinces. Unable to entrench in frozen ground, under-supplied, repeatedly launching attacks with no hope of advancing, both sides suffered heavy casualties. Erich von Falkenhayn was Commander in Chief of the German Army, Conrad von Hötzendorf his Austro-Hungarian counterpart. With General Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff commanded German forces on the Eastern Front. The Südarmee was a German-led, primarily Austro-Hungarian army.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, pp. 120, 121, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
(2) Excerpt from the entry for a cabinet meeting on April 7, 1915 by Albert, King of the Belgians. The King continued to restrain the cabinet from planning on a larger postwar Belgium. Other cabinets and rulers, in both large and small nations, had similar dreams of expansion at the expense of defeated neighbors. As Albert wrote on April 17, 'this question must be left open, particularly in view of the indecisive character of the war.' In response to Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium, Britain had declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914. Nearly all of the Belgium was overrun in the first weeks of the war, and nearly all of it was occupied as Albert wrote.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, pp. 32, 33, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(3) Extract from De Goupil à Margot, by French writer Louis Pergaud, translated by Siân Reynolds. Fusiline, 'the white shirtfront,' is a beech or stone marten, and has survived through the winter by, in part, raiding a hen house, and slaying all the hens. She has since found a single egg in the same spot each night. On this night, leaping for the egg, one of her forepaws is caught in a steel trap. In pain, fear, and desperation, expecting a man to appear to shoot her, she breaks her leg and bites through the flesh to escape, leaving her paw.Leading an attack in Lorraine on the night of April 7-8, 1915, Pergaud was caught in German barbed wire, shot in the foot, and taken prisoner. On the morning of the 8th he was given medical treatment and held with other French wounded. A French artillery barrage killed him and his wounded comrades.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 285, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(4) Soldiers and civilians waiting for a train a Waterloo Station, London. The 25th Royal Fusiliers includes big-game hunters, men who have deserted other units to join, men who are over-aged, veterans of the Boer War, and one who had been in the Canadian wilderness and learned of the war three months after it started. The unit is considered so experienced, it is never given military training. As evening turns to night, and no trains come, the civilians depart. When the train does come, it brings with it police seeking the deserters, who hide, but then depart with the train. The men were bound for British East Africa where Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck led a guerilla campaign from German East Africa. 'HMTS' is 'His Majesty's Troop Ship'.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, pp. 100, 102, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
(5) Excerpt from the entry for Saturday, April 10, 1915 from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, the French Ambassador in Russia. The Ambassador presses Goremykin pointing out that Austria-Hungary is supporting a Ukrainian national movement which has a society in Vienna and publishes in neutral Switzerland. Goremykin dismisses their efforts, claiming they have tried and failed to influence peasants and workers in sugar factories in Kiev and Berdichev, and that the authorities regularly confiscate socialist tracts from the same group.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, pp. 328, 329, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
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