Captains and sailors of the German battleships Goeben and Breslau signing up for the Turkish Navy. After shelling Allied ports and sinking Allied ships in the Mediterranean, the two ships had entered Turkish waters at the Dardanelles on August 8, 1914. Claiming the ships and their crews as Turkish allowed Turkey to maintain a veil of neutrality for a time. This was dropped on October 29 when the ships sank a Russian gunboat in the Crimean Black Sea port of Odessa. The postcard's caption compares the captain to Leonidas who died leading the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 during Xerxes's invasion in the Second Persian War.
Gli eroi della Goeben e della BreslauThe heroes of the Goeben and Breslau - Desideran signori?- Il testamento Vogliam dettar.- Sono a' vosti comandi, Nobili cuori! All'epico cimento Leonida del mar, sarete grandi!- Si; lo giuriam per tutti i patrii avelli: In fondo . . . scapperem ai Dardanelli.- What do you wish, gentlemen?- We want to dictate our wills.- I am at your service, Noble hearts! In this epic ordeal, Leonidas of the sea, you will be great!- Yes, we swear it on the graves of our countrymen: In the end … we will escape to the Dardanelles.
On August 4, the two battleships of the German Mediterranean Squadron, Goeben and Breslau, which had sailed the Mediterranean since the First Balkan War in 1912, fired on the French-Algerian ports of Bone and Phillipville. They attacked coaling ships further east off Messina, Italy, continued across the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas evading Allied warships, and, on August 8, entered Turkish waters in the Dardanelles, one of the bodies of water separating Europe from Asia and leading to the Black Sea. The ships passed the forts defending the strait along the northern and southern shores, crossed the Sea of Marmora, and, at the mouth of the Bosphorus leading to the Black Sea, anchored in Constantinople, Turkey's capital.A neutral nation, Turkey was obligated to impound the vessel. Instead, Germany transferred the ships and their crews to Turkey, ostensibly in recompense of Britain's seizure of two ships being built for Turkey in Britain. Goeben became the Yavuz Sultan Selim, Breslau, the Midilli,. Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commander of the squadron, was given command of the Ottoman fleet.Both ships were superior to any Russian ship in the Black Sea, but the battle cruiser Goeben, displacing five times the tonnage of the light cruiser Breslau, and with a crew thrice as large, threatened British and French ships in the Mediterranean. The two ships were able to control the Black Sea and threatened Russian exports of food and imports of war materiel. When Turkey joined the Central Powers, a critical sea lane was closed, and traffic between the western Allies and Russia was more heavily dependent on a land route through the neutral Balkan nations of Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania.Midilli was mined and sunk during the Battle of Imbros on January 20, 1918.
Breslau is a battleship.
