Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (102 page)

THE EASTERN FRONT

Russians pay the price for their commanders’ boldness

THE EASTERN FRONT

Rennenkampf.

Fortunino Matania’s painting of L Battery’s action at Néry.

One of the few apparently authentic photographic images of the retreat: men of the Middlesex under fire.

At home, in every country women were dramatically empowered to fill the places of millions of absent men – here, a Suffolk girl stands proudly at the handle of a Lowestoft tram.

Russian soldiers in bivouac: such men became the revolutionaries of 1917, if they survived so long.

An idealised image of a Russian field hospital. Casualties of all the armies received grossly inadequate care, and often none at all, in the early months of the conflict.

The face of the Western Front, winter 1914: trenches, machine-guns, mud and wire. Except for a posed shot such as this one, no soldier of any army willingly exposed himself above a parapet.

WITNESSES OF CATASTROPHE

1
: Dorothie Feilding;
2
: Edouard Cœurdevey;
3
: Jacques Rivière;
4
: Lt. Col. Richard Hentsch;
5
: Paul Lintier;
6
: Vladimir Littauer;
7
: Constantin Schneider;
8
: Lionel Tennyson;
9
: Venetia Stanley;
10
: Louis Spears;
11
: Helene Schweida and her later husband, Wilhelm Kaisen;
12
: Louis Barthas;
13
: François Mayer.

The war created untold civilian misery, inflicting separation, hunger, destitution and the loss of loved ones upon societies across Europe. Here, one family among millions of French, Belgian, Russian, Polish, Serb, East Prussian and Galician refugees flees a battlefield, while behind them gunners approach it.

British soldiers in Belgium during the winter of 1914 contemplate an environment that would remain essentially unaltered for four years, unless exchanged for a permanent resting place in local earth.

Footnotes

^fn1
The term ‘casualties’ signifies soldiers killed, missing, wounded or captured.

^fn2
Mobilisation dates are confusing, because in all cases preliminary military measures had been adopted earlier, and in most cases heads of state signed the formal decrees after troops began to move.

^fn3
Emphases in original.

Bibliography

Papers, Journals, Documents and Internet Sources

Abschiedsfeier für das Ersatzbataillon des Inf.-Rgts. 75
, Bremen 1914

Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane and Becker, Annette
14–18: Understanding the Great War
Hill & Wang 2002

Becker, Jean-Jacques
La Guerre êtait-elle inevitable?
pp.41–3

—
Les Innovations stratégiques
pp.86–7

—
La Bataille de la Marne, ou le fin des illusions
pp.123, 125–6

Blume, Wilhelm von
Inwiefern haben sich die Bedingungen des Erfolges im Kriege seit 1871 verändert?
[How have the conditions required for success in war altered since 1871?] Vierteljahrshefte für Truppenführung und Heereskunde 5 1908

—
Der Einfluß des heutigen Verkehrs- und Nachrichtenmittel auf die Kriegsführung
[The impact of modern transportation and communication media on warfare] in
Beihefte zum Militär-Wochenblatt
1910

—
Kriegserfahrung
(War experience), in
Militär-Wochenblatt 1908
No. 26 pp.583–90

Brenner, Stefan
Das Kriegsgefangenenlager in Knittelfeld: Eine Untersuchung der Akten des Kriegsarchivs Wien von den ersten Bemühungen Otto Zeilingers zur Errichtung des Lagers Knittelfeld bis zur Umwandlung des Kriegsgefangenenlagers in ein Militärspital
MA thesis Graz 2011