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Map showing the territorial gains (darker shades) of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, primarily at the expense of Turkey, agreed in the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War. Despite its gains, Bulgaria also lost territory to both Romania and Turkey.
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.
View of Moscow, the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral along the Moskva River. The message on the reverse was dated from Moscow May 29, 1914 (new style); multiple postmarks May 17 (old style; May 30 new style) and May 21 (old style; June 3 new style).
Western Ottoman Empire showing the travels of Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War, from his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent.
A crazed Great Britain urges a broken Russia, a nose-picking, dozing Italy, and a sullen France to continued offensives in a German postcard imagining the November 6, 1917 Entente Ally Conference of Rapallo after the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The Battle, also known as the Battle of Caporetto, was a disastrous defeat for Italy and the first Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Isonzo Front. The Austrians had significant German support.
"French officers addressing units of its 30th ID were met with shouts of 'Russians make war for France' and 'Peace and nothing more.' Their reports described Russian officers as demoralized and humiliated. In the 117th Regiment, officers of one battalion were arrested by their men and forced to march at command. Men of the 119th Regiment stormed their officers' mess, sacked the place, and forced its occupants to flee out a window. '30 Division is not the only [Russian] division . . . in a state of anarchy,' Colonel Ion Antonescu commented. 'The Russian 6th Army does not wish to fight and the troops of this army . . . would retreat at the first move of the enemy.'Consequently, Romanian reserves were channeled into strategic areas behind the 6th Army. Neighboring Romanian commanders made contact with their Russian counterparts to work out a plan of operations in the event of an enemy attack. On 13 November, after one regiment of the 30th ID left the line and its replacement refused to man it, a Romanian regiment took its place." ((1), more)
"The 14th. The Painlevé Ministry fell on the 13th at ten o'clock in the evening. It is the first Cabinet during the war to be defeated on a division. Painlevé has fallen a victim to his friendships." ((2), more)
". . . the anti-Bolshevik forces had the demoralizing news that Kerensky's drive on Petrograd had failed, while the soviet side could count on a steady flow of reinforcements. The cadets were gradually pressing into a tighter circle, and finally on November 2 troops of the soviet stormed back into the Kremlin itself. Recognizing the hopelessness of further fighting, the Committee of Public Safety surrendered to the MRC. Moscow was won for the soviets, but at the cost of civil war in earnest; some five hundred men had been killed on the Bolshevik side alone." ((3), more)
"On November 15, Australian and New Zealand troops occupied the towns of Ramleh and Lydda. This latter was the former crusader town of St Georges de Lydde, home of St George of dragon-slaying fame whom British crusaders had brought back as their patron saint six hundred years earlier. New Zealand cavalrymen entered Jaffa on November 16 [1917]. Their next objective was Jerusalem." ((4), more)
". . . the 112th Heavy Artillery found itself in late November en route to the Piave valley (where the Italian retreat had halted a month earlier). Still headquartered in the Champagne, where the regiment had enjoyed a few months of respite after the bitterly contested battles of the summer, the 112th received its marching orders on 12 November and left five days later. The journey was slow—Paul did not arrive in Italy until the first of December—and fraught with logistical difficulties." ((5), more)
(1) Until being ordered on July 25,1917 by Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky to stop all offensive action, the Russians had participated in a Romanian offensive. France had helped rebuild the Romanian army after its defeat in 1916, providing materiel and training. One of the demands of the Bolshevik Revolution was an immediate end to the war. Without Russian support, what remained of the Romanian army would not be able to hold what remained of unoccupied Romania: Moldavia, the northern part of the country. 'ID' is an infantry division.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 261–262, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(2) Entry for November 14, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government. French President Raymond Poincaré served through the entire war, but the prime ministers and their governments were less stable. Stable or not, they maintained a Union Sacrée across the political spectrum. The fall of Paul Painlevé's government was different, and came after mutinies in much of the French army in May and June and the Bolshevik Revolution a week before Corday wrote, in a storm of charges of collaboration with Germany and outright treason directed against pacifists, socialists, the leftist press, and some close to Painlevé.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, pp. 292–293, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(3) Forces supporting the Bolshevik Revolution did not immediately secure Moscow, Russia's second city, but were opposed by a conservative Committee of Public Safety that included officer cadets who took the Kremlin and slayed some of its defenders on October 28 (November 11 New Style), 1917. The Military Revolutionary Committee that recaptured the Kremlin on November 2 (15 N.S.) was the counterpart of the one that had been victorious in Petrograd. Alexander Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government that fell to the Bolsheviks, unsuccessfully tried to rally troops to retake the capital. Bolsheviks dominated many of the soviets that represented military units, workers, factories, cities, and towns.
Red October: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 by Robert V. Daniels, page 207, copyright © 1967 Robert V. Daniels, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1967
(4) From May 1916 to March 1917, British forces built the infrastructure—roads, rail, and water—to support an offensive against Ottoman forces in Palestine and Syria. Advancing from the Egyptian border, they crossed Sinai along the Mediterranean coast. They were defeated by the Turks in two Battles of Gaza (March 26 to 28, April 20), but victorious in the Third Battle of Gaza, fought from November 1 to November 6, and ending with the Turks abandoning the city. Lydda and Ramleh (now Lod and Ramla, Israel) are about 10 miles from the coast, seaside Jaffa lying to their northwest. Jerusalem is further inland.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 377, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(5) Martha Hanna's Your Death Would Be Mine is based on the correspondence between Paul Pireaud and his wife Marie. In the summer of 1917, Paul served with the 112th Heavy Artillery Regiment in the Moronvilliers sector northeast of Reims in Champagne. French and British units were sent to support the Italians after the disaster of Caporetto. The Italian retreat finally stopped on the Piave River.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 232, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
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