The Great War - 1914-1918

@Walter Hinteler,

According to today's (01.12.14) Daily Telegraph, Kaiser Wilhelm fulminates against the English whilst his cousin visits the troops in France.

More interesting in the same paper:

But all is fine - as long as you have a clean flag and drink English

(From same date and same paper)

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Many of the photographs of the front were posed, re-enacted, since the new type of warfare with long-range artillery and the no man's land between the fronts made photographing very difficult.

A point worth remembering. Most of the iconic combat photos and films that we associate with World War I- including the famous photo of a Canadian soldier thumbing his nose at the Germans while supposedly going over the top at Vimy Ridge - were either staged or were taken during pre-war maneuvers.

http://www.thecanadaguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/vimyridge.jpg

Photos taken during actual combat are exceedingly rare. I've seen many WWI documentaries that include footage from films such as All Quiet on the Western Front (made in the 1930s), without ever alerting the viewer that the footage was a Hollywood reenactment.

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Many papers in France and England report that the French Government issued a "Yellow Book" (livre jaune) which claimed to prove that the Kaiser was bent on war with their country a year before.

Online:
The French Yellow Book

related: The Belgian Grey Book; The German White Book; The Russian Orange Book; The Serbian Blue Book; The Austro-Hungarian Red Book

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@Walter Hinteler,

At the second 'War Session' of the German Parliament (Reichstag)on December 2, 1914, the Social Democrat Karl Liebknecht voted against the war budget as the only member of the Reichstag so to vote.
He also handed in an explanation of his vote, which the president of the Reichstag refused to allow to be read - it wasn't printed in the parliamentary report either. (The president banned it on the pretext that it would entail calls to order.)
The document was sent to the German Press, but not a single paper published it.

The full text of the protest was (illegally) published as a pamphlet, internationally received by way of Switzerland.

Quote:

"My vote against the War Credit Bill of to-day is based on the following considerations. This War, desired by none of the people concerned, has not broken out in behalf of the welfare of the German people or any other. It is an Imperialist War, a war over important territories of exploitation for capitalists and financiers. From the point of view of rivalry in armaments, it is a war provoked by the German and Austrian war parties together, in the obscurity of semi-feudalism and of secret diplomacy, to gain an advantage over their opponents. At the same time the war is a Bonapartist effort to disrupt and split the growing movement of the working class.

"The German cry: `Against Czarism!' is invented for the occasion – just as the present British and French watchwords are invented – to exploit the noblest inclinations and the revolutionary traditions and ideals of the people in stirring up hatred of other peoples.

"Germany, the accomplice of Czarism, the model of reaction until this very day, has no standing as the liberator of the peoples. The liberation of both the Russian and the German people must be their own work.

"The war is no war of German defense. Its historical basis and its course at the start make unacceptable the pretense of the capitalist government that the purpose for which it demands credits is the defense of the Fatherland.

"A speedy peace, a peace without conquests, this is what we must demand. Every effort in this direction must be supported. Only by strengthening jointly and continuously the currents in all the belligerent countries which have such a peace as their object can this bloody slaughter be brought to an end. "Only a peace based upon the international solidarity of the working class and on the liberty of all the peoples can be a lasting peace. Therefore, it is the duty of the proletariats of all countries to carry on during the war a common Socialistic work in favor of peace.

"I support the relief credits with this reservation: I vote willingly for everything which may relieve the hard fate of our brothers on the battlefield as well as that of the wounded and sick, for whom I feel the deepest compassion. But as a protest against the war, against those who are responsible for it and who have caused it, against those who direct it, against the capitalist purposes for which it is being used, against plans of annexation, against the violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, against unlimited rule of martial law, against the total oblivion of social and political duties of which the Government and classes are still guilty, I vote against the war, credits demanded.

KARL LIEBKNECHT.
BERLIN, December 2, 1914.

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@Walter Hinteler,

The humorous Austrian (sic!) weekly, Die Muskete ("The Musket", like other humorous magazines founded at this time, combined the work of young, local artists with the work of young Austrian writers. At the same time, the magazine laid great emphasis on the artistic design and content.
At the beginning of publishing, until 1918, the satirical treatment of the civil service, the army and the clergy were in the magazine's focus.
The magazine first was a "funny soldiers paper" or a "made-up art magazine" until it transformed in the late 1920's to a forerunner of today's men's magazines.

The frontpage of December 2, 1914: "In the sign of the cross"

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Many papers in France and England report that the French Government issued a "Yellow Book" (livre jaune) which claimed to prove that the Kaiser was bent on war with their country a year before.

The publication of official diplomatic documents was an innovation that had never been done before. Each government printed selected documents that were meant to throw blame on the other side for the events leading up to the war. On this side of the Atlantic, the publication of the rival documents merely heightened the common belief that secret diplomacy, as conducted by all sides, was at the root of the problem, and led to calls for "open covenants openly arrived at." That would later form the basis for the first of Wilson's Fourteen Points.

After the war, the governments of the belligerent powers raced to open their diplomatic archives in an attempt to bolster their respective positions on the "war guilt question" (Kriegschuldfrage). Germany, with the most at stake, published the greatest volume of material (stretching back to 1871), but the UK, France, Italy, and Austria all published their own collections of diplomatic documents. The motivation, however, came mostly from Russia, where the Bolsheviks, even before the war ended, had ransacked the archives of the Tsarist foreign ministry and had published secret diplomatic documents that exposed many of the secret deals among the Entente powers. The result was a boon for historians, but the question of who was responsible for starting the war remained unresolved.

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2 DECEMBER 1914

BALKAN FRONT: Austro-Hungarian troops, after two failed offensives, finally take the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The invading forces, under the command of General Oskar Potiorek, waged a bloody two-week campaign that ultimately forced the outnumbered Serbs to retreat. Potiorek grandiosely offers Belgrade as a present to the emperor, who is celebrating the 66th anniversary of his reign. The Serbs, however, are already preparing for a counter-offensive.

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Austro-Hungarian military and government officials were focused on what they would do with Serbia after the army took Belgrade. It was assumed by all that the Serbian capital, situated directly across the Danube from Hungarian territory, would easily fall to the vastly superior Austro-Hungarian forces. That, however, didn't happen. The Serbs were proven fighters, and the forces of the Dual Monarchy were badly supplied and incompetently led. It would be almost a year before forces of the Central Powers could take and hold Belgrade.

http://www.peterenglund.com/Images/1vk-Lemberg.jpg

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@joefromchicago,

Many Austrian newspapers issued an Extra-Blatt/Extrablatt about this ("Special Bulletin", literally 'extra sheet' - and it was, indeed, just one sheet, printed on one side) with just the news and a copy of the telegram send by the commanding general of the 5th army to "his imperial and royal majesty" [the wording sounds as if it was done as a kind of birthday present.]

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@Walter Hinteler,

Liebknecht's statement is truly remarkable.

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@panzade,

This established in the later month the so-called Luxemburg-Mehring-Liebknecht section of the party (SPD). which became known as the ‘Internationale Group’ and led to the founding of the USPD in 1916.

As an aside: his father had been a co-founder of the SPD and all the predecessor-parties. When he was baptised (Protestant/Evangelical, in Leipzig's world-famous St. Thomas Church), his godfathers were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

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@Walter Hinteler,

On December 3, 1914 the editorial of the Bergische Arbeiterstimme asks: Was sollen unsere Kinder jetzt lesen? ("What should our children read now?")

Bergisch is the adjective of "Berg", (Country of Berg, east of Rhine river, south of the Ruhr). Arbeiterstimme means literally "workers' voice". It was a daily [Social-Democratic, later USPD, later Communist] newspaper from Solingen.

Summary: Of the children want to read what engages our thoughts and moves our hearts: the war. There's already a lot of trash published and many adults like to read it. This nonsense can easily be sorted out (colourfull pictures, ceap in print and price, toe-curling stories) because our children shouldn't read such.
It's not so easy to sort out the 'better nonsense'. But this kind of literature isn't any good for our children either: they get the wrong picture of the war - the time passed is too short as if someone could write really good reports about it.
If the children want to read about heroes and war - there are a lot of good books dealing with the Medieval Ages and earlier periods in the bookshops. And if they want something to read about the current war, then only that what really happened. And this can be found in letters from the front, the short official army notices or the longer reports by military experts.
"Therefore, parents, it let your children read quietly the newspaper. If you educated them pretty well, they will be content to read what you have selected as suitable for them."

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@Walter Hinteler,

Besides this war, there was "another" in Africa: Gen. Christian De Wet, the South African rebel leader is reported in today's papers to have been captured

(Chicago Tribune)

(The Daily Telegraph)

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@Walter Hinteler,

On December 4, 1914, HMS Caroline was launched and commissioned.

wikipedia wrote:

HMS Caroline is a decommissioned C-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy that saw combat service in the First World War and served as an administrative centre in the Second World War. Caroline was launched and commissioned in 1914. At the time of her decommissioning in 2011 she was the second-oldest ship in Royal Navy service, after HMS Victory. She served as a static headquarters and training ship for the Royal Naval Reserve, based in Alexandra Dock, Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the later stages of her career. She was the last remaining British First World War light cruiser in service, and she remains the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland still afloat. She is also one of only three surviving Royal Navy warships of the First World War, along with the 1915 Monitor HMS M33 (in Portsmouth dockyard), and the Flower-class sloop HMS President (1918), (formerly HMS Saxifrage) moored on the Thames at Blackfriars.

Cammell Lairds Ship Yard Birkenhead 1914

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@Walter Hinteler,

Where Belgium greeted Britain, 4 December 1914 (subtitle: The meeting of King George V and Albert I, King of the Belgians, at Adinkerke, then the last remnant of Belgian territory, on 4 December 1914.)

(UK, London, Government Hospitality, Lancaster House)

A really interesting brochure about the situation during WWI at the Belgian coast by the Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee...

... can be read (as pdf-data) >here<

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@Walter Hinteler,

From the diary of December 5, 1914, by a German soldier in Flanders, as [url0http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/erster-weltkrieg-tagebuch-als-historisches-echtzeit-blog-a-983953.html]published @ spiegel-online[/url]

Quote:

Nothing new this morning. There are rumours, we might change our position.

Six shots fired at the enemy battery in the afternoon: we have document our raison d'être after all.

In the evening, there are 150 home-made and excellent Berliner [Berlin pancakes] for the signalmen. Cost point 1.80 Mark for 1 litre of oil and 0.83 Mark for a pound of sugar (from Lille) - flour from the big flour sack.

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@Walter Hinteler,

In today's issue of the Austrian Neues 8-Uhr Blatt ("New 8 o'clock paper") - a kind of tabloid of those days - was on the frontpage a report that Russia should annex Spitzbergen (Svalbard). It had always been Russian, and an invasion would stop Scandinavian approach to the coal there. - This Russian newspaper report caused stir in Sweden, the Austrian paper wrote.

[Norwegians are believed to have visited the archipelago between the 9th and the 14th centuries. What is known is that in 1596 the Dutch Willem Barents (re)discovered the islands and found large schools of whales in the region. Consequently, whalers from several countries came to Svalbard for the whale hunt until in the middle of the century, the whales had almost completely disappeared from the region. Since Svalbard’s (re)discovery, the kingdom of Denmark-Norway had laid claim on the islands but the end of the Napoleonic Wars put an end to Denmark’s union with Norway. The status of Svalbard remained unsettled; it was no-man’s-land and of no great interest to any country until large coal deposits were found in the area. Three international conferences on the status of Svalbard before the First World War brought no clear settlement and it was only after the War that Norway’s sovereignty over the islands was agreed. (The Svalbard Treaty, also known as the Spitsbergen Treaty, was signed at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1920.)]

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@Walter Hinteler,

After several days of fighting in northern Poland, Lodz is taken by German troops finally on December 6, 1914.The Russians are forced to retreat to Warsaw. Attempts by the Russians to get their beleaguered armies in the north to the aid of South poles are rejected at Petrikau.

A French base at Malancourt (east of Varennes) is taken by the Germans.

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