THE WORLD FAMOUS HISTORY AND PAST EVENTS

Woodrow Wilson and the Fourteen Points On January 8, 1918, in a speech addressed to the United States Congress, President Wilson laid out a peace program for Europe based on fourteen different points, with an essentially democratic and liberal perspective. In the future, for diplomacy and for drafting treaties, it would always be proceeded “frankly and in the view of the public.” The freedom of navigation on the sea would be guaranteed. Economic barriers would be removed and “equal trading conditions” would be established among all nations. Naval armament would be reduced. In matters of colonial sovereignty, “the interests of the relevant populations should weigh equal weight as the equal claims of governments whose right is to be determined.” Germany should evacuate all Russian territory. Belgium was supposed to be “evacuated and restored”. All French territory was to be liberated and “the harm done to France by Prussia in 1871”, in relation to Alsace and Lorraine, was to be “repaired...

German soldier in equipment and 'flowers' before leaving for the front, ca. 1914. Pic belonging to 'Paranoid_ Womb' on Flickr and colourised by In Colore Veritas  The following is Danish-German soldier Hemming Skov's account of going over-the-top on the Eastern Front on January 5, 1915, today 109 years ago. Translated by myself:    ⠀⠀ "On the night of January 5th our platoon commander reported to us what this day would bring - a frontal assault. After being given such an upsetting message, anxiety looms over one, which would be unbearable if one didn't have faith in destiny. You degenerate into deep carelessness. You don't think anymore, can't think. In silence and patience, one anticipates the pure dread. The silence utterly dominated. No one said a thing. Truly a condition where fear is the dominant force - for a moment, you're paralyzed with fear. You stiffen, can't even turn your head. You feel yourself as a lump of living terror. The mo...

German pilot testing a Parabellum MG-14/17 machine gun from his aircraft, 1917.  During WWI on the Western Front, the losses of German aircraft rose to 27,637 for all causes, compared to 35,973 British and 52,640 French aircraft. As for pilots themselves, about 1/5 of the 22,000 British pilots who completed flight training died, compared to just over 1/4 of all German pilots. In total, there are an estimated 50,000 airmen and crews killed in WWI in all armies. Pilots would only receive a dozen hours of training before being sent to the skies. For this reason, a WWI pilot's life expectancy was only a matter of weeks. In 1916-1917 for the British Royal Flying Corps, the life expectancy of a new combat pilot was just 20 minutes, which earned them the tetric nickname the "20 Minute Club". 

On 10 January 1915, the 11th AIF Battalion participated in an extraordinary event.  The West Australians posed for a photograph at the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The officers positioned themselves in the front rows and the ranks higher up upon the stone ledges.  The desert’s dry atmosphere helped the photographer capture an image of remarkable sharpness. Yet despite its sharpness, it’s impossible to discern any single individual.   That’s why in ‘The Nameless Names’ I have purposely drawn out one person’s story.  Kneeling on one knee, shirtsleeves rolled up and wearing a weathered slouch hat, Lieutenant Mordaunt Reid gazes intently toward the camera (eighth from the left; second row).  His pale-blue eyes offset a face tanned by the desert sun. Unlike the stern-faced officers surrounding him, Mordaunt flashed a grin.  And why was Mordaunt smiling?  Perhaps he revelled in the unique setting — 704 soldiers from a land 7,000 miles away, assembled on a t...

(Staged) Fallen Ottoman soldier who froze to death during the Battle of Sarikamish, 1914. Today 109 years ago, on December 22, 1914, the Battle of Sarikamish (Sarıkamış) began, the bloodiest battle on the Caucasus Front, between the Ottomans and the Russians. Having entered the war with the Central Powers in November 1914, Ottoman Minister of War Enver Pasha sought to recapture Ottoman territory lost to the Russians in the war of 1877 - 1878, most notable the cities of Kars and Sarikamish. An offensive against the Russians would also help the Germans and Austro-Hungarians on the Eastern Front. A Russian defeat would have disastrous consequences, and the Germans supplied the Ottomans for this offensive. The problem was the territory the Ottomans had to cross; cold, rocky mountains in the winter, with roads difficult for transporting resources and troops. Nevertheless, the offensive was carried out. On December 22, 1914, the Ottoman 3rd Army of 118,000 soldiers, split into the 9th, 10th ...

French soldier posing for a photograph with a skull in a trench following an artillery bombardment, ca. 1916. Photograph acquired from @combatpix and @the_amateur_historian. Today 109 years ago, on December 20, 1914 the First Battle of Champagne began on the Western Front between the French and German armies. Following the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914, the Western Front had stabilised into a trench stalemate. The French and British enjoyed a numerical superiority in troops against the Germans and wanted to exploit it as much as possible. The French planned a large-scale offensive on the recently formed Noyon Salient in Champagne and Artois, with smaller supporting attacks elsewhere. The British would also attack in Wytschaete and Givenchy in Flanders. Although the French lacked sufficient amounts of artillery, equipment and ammunition, reports that 6 German Army Corps were being transferred to the Eastern Front forced the French to attack to help their Russian allies.  On...

 Austro-Hungarian soldiers posing in their trench, Galicia front (Ukraine) 1916.  The First World War would lead to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They suffered an estimated 5.5 million casualties with up to 2 million of those being killed, military as well as civilians. Austria-Hungary was an important contributor to the war on the Italian Front (also known as the Alpine Front), and in Balkans Unlike New Zealand and British troops, Austro-Hungarian soldiers were allowed to wear their medals on their field tunics in the front line. The danger of course was that the medals could easily be lost, damaged or, as in this instance, almost certainly 'souvenired' by the enemy if the owner was taken prisoner. The Austro-Hungarian Army started issuing German type steel helmets to its troops in late 1916. These included the Austrian made 'Berndorfer' version as well as helmets imported directly from Germany. The fierce intensity of alpine trench warfare on the Italian...

  "Trench Raid 1917" by Peter Dennis, depicting a British soldier holding a German soldier at gunpoint with a "Pritchard-Greener Revolver Bayonet". The "Pritchard-Greener Revolver Bayonet" was exactly what it sounds like; a revolver with a small bayonet attached, although the concept was never realized on a large scale during the First World War. The concept behind the gun was developed in late 1916 by British Captain Arthur Pritchard of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment. Captain Pritchard theorized, that in the close-quarter combat of trench raids a British soldier equipped with a revolver might not have the time to reload, leaving him defenseless against the German soldier opposing him. Captain Prichard thought that a short stabbing blade attached onto a revolver could be extremely useful, even life-saving, in such situations. He designed a prototype on blueprint, attaching a shortened bayonet of 8 inches from the outdated M1874 French Gras rif...

  German soldiers posing for a photograph with their equipment in the snow, Winter 1916. Photograph belonging to 'Wooway1' on Flickr. The following is excerpts of Danish-German soldier Søren P. Petersen's account of his experiences on the Western Front near Loretto in November 1915. Translated by myself:  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ "After two days we were ordered to the railway line. While we stayed here we had to carry supplies to the front. Two trips each night. It was almost worse than being in the frontlines. We pushed forward through the churned earth in pitch-black darkness, with barbed wire, planks, ammunition, bags with more. We had strapped our boots to our legs, but then they got stuck in the slush, and it was hopeless to get them out of there. It was favourable to have a strong and labour-seasoned comrade for these trips. For some time I had a comrade who was a doctor. He was a marvelous human being, but not at all used to the intensive labour. He was killed later on.  On...

 End of the Battle of the Somme On November 18, 1916 the Battle of the Somme officially ended on the Western Front, having begun on July 1, 1916. While he didn't decide war in 1916, he changed the fate of an industrialized war of attrition in favor of the Allies. The German army suffered a lot and suffered losses it could not afford. He probably suffered more than 500,000 casualties in addition to those in Verdun (figures still being discussed) and suffered a serious morale crisis. The British suffered 420,000 casualties and the French suffered 202,000 casualties. The battle gave Allied leaders confidence that they now had the tactics and operational methods with which they could eventually defeat the German army. He also gave his troops confidence that they could do it. Fighting on the Somme continued on a reduced scale through the winter before the German army retreated in the spring to the new defensive position of the Hindenburg Line. The Australian Corps entry into Bapaume on ...

 British Mustard Gas victim Sergeant Sawyer Spence being tended to by a nurse, August 1918. Today 105 years ago, on July 12, 1917, the Germans deployed Mustard Gas through shells on British forces at Ypres for the first time in the First World War. Since the second half of 1916 and more or less all of 1917 for the German Army on the Western Front would be spent defensively against relentless Allied offensives, the Germans began the devoloment of a new gas designed as a defensive agent. Dichlorodiethyl sulfide (C4H8Cl2S) was the result, best known as Mustard Gas for its pale brown-yellow colour and distinct sweet and mustard-like odor. Though the substance wasn't actually a gas in itself, but tiny condensed liquid droplets, which evaporated in sunlight. Exposure to Mustard Gas caused blisters on skin, sore eyes which could lead to blindness, victims would vomit, suffer respiratory damage and suffer external and internal bleeding. Dying from Mustard Gas was an extremely painful proce...

Klava Nazarova was hanged in 1942 and is one of the three women who were later made Heroes of Soviet Union. The other two were Zoya and Maria Kislyak. Klava was born in 1918 and was 24 when she died. She was said to be quite an attractive girl. Klava was a Komsomol member and when the Germans occupied her town of Ostrov in Russia in 1941, she and her friends organised an underground resistance squad. On November the 7th 1942, Klava and another girl, Nura Ivanova with two young men, Nikolai Mikhailov and Konstantin Dmitriev, and the parents of another organisation member, husband and wife Nadezhda and Ivan Kozlovskiy, were all arrested. After torture, they were each sentenced to death. The Nazis made a big show of the hangings to intimidate the town's people. On December the 12th 1942, a wooden gallows was erected in the town square of Ostrov and the townsfolk were forced to watch the proceedings. The executions were carried out in three parts. Klava and Nura were first to suffer. T...

The Great War, November 6-7, 1918 Upon his return to Spa, on November 6, after spending four days at the front, General Groener warned the Kaiser himself and the Chancellor by telegram that he had to sign an armistice, no later than Sunday 9. “Even Monday will be too late,” Groener warned. His report on the situation, drawn from his own experiences of the last few days, was disheartening: the fleet had mutinated, the revolution was imminent, and the government's authority had fallen so low that troops refused to fire on the revolutionaries. The next day, November 7, in the morning, the German delegates for the armistice will meet in Spa. The leader of the Center Party, Matias Erzberger, a member of Prince Max's government, had agreed, albeit very reluctantly, to lead the delegation, t hereby signing his own death sentence. So uncertain it was that Erzberger would really have the courage to enter French lines that a virtually unknown officer, General Von Gündell, had been ordere...

Japanese soldier kneels by a fallen comrade during the Siege of Tsingtao, 1914. Today 109 years ago, on October 31, 1914, the Siege of Tsingtao began, the only major Japanese land operation of the First World War. The city of Tsingtao (Qingdao), located on the Shandong Peninsula in China by the Yellow Sea, had been a German colony since 1898, which they'd built into the base of the German East Asiatic Squadron of their Navy. When war broke out in August 1914, the British viewed this German presence in Asia as a threat to their colonial empire. They requested Japan to seize Tsingtao, whom the British had been allied with since 1902. On August 15, 1914, Japan issued an ultimatum to Germany to surrender Tsingtao with a week's notice. Captain Meyer-Waldec, the German Commander of Tsingtao, rejected the ultimatum on August 23, prompting Japan to declare war on Germany. Japan began planning for a landing on the Shandong Peninsula to take Tsingtao by force, an operation which would be...

Fallen Italian soldiers at Tolmin following the Battle of Caporetto, November 1917. Today 106 years ago, on October 24, 1917, the Battle of Caporetto began, also called the 12th Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Kobarid/Karfreit. The 10th and 11th Battles of the Isonzo earlier in 1917 had inflicted upwards of 200,000 casualties on the Austro-Hungarians, who demanded reinforcements from the Germans, as they didn't believe they could withstand another Italian offensive. The Germans formed a new 14th Army and sent it to the Italian Front with the task of conducting a limited-scale offensive to stabilize the situation. The Germans had experimented with Stormtrooper tactics and sought to put them to use here, and chose to attack at the village of Caporetto on the Isonzo river. On October 24, 1917, the Austro-Germans launched a gas attack on the Italian trenches at Caporetto, soon followed by an intense 4-hour long artillery bombardment of 2,200 guns. In protection of thick fog, Ger...

The Face of War  The orderlies rushed the patient into the casualty clearing station. The admissions doctor must have flinched when he saw the soldier’s bloodied and pulped head. He simply scrawled ‘smashed face’ on his medical file.  Captain Herbert Foxton was wounded on the Somme in July 1918, when a high explosive shell exploded close to him. His prospects of survival were considered slim.  Yet, although blinded, unable to speak, and with a gaping hole where his face had once been, Herbert managed to pull through.   Herbert transferred to a hospital in England where he underwent 25 operations. Although his face was painstakingly rebuilt, his sight could not be restored. In 1920 Herbert transferred to St Dunstan's Hostel, where he learned how to read braille, and use a typewriter.  Herbert was repatriated to Australia in 1921 but was unable to continue his pre-war occupation as a watchmaker.  Herbert returned to England in 1923 for further reconstruc...

The Canadian soldier was posing for a photograph in a German bunker after the Paschandel's fight in November 1917. On October 26, 1917, Canadian soldier Thomas Holmes silenced a German bunker for which he found the Victory Cross, making him the youngest Canadian to receive the award. Thomas William Holmes was born on October 14, 1898, in Montreal, Canada. He worked as a chicken collector for the butcher before entering the 31st grey regiment at the age of 17 on December 20, 1915. He reportedly lied about his age saying he was 18. Thomas arrived in England on November 20, 1916 after training. In February 1917, his unit was dissolved and shifted to the 4th Battalion, the Canadian Mounted Rifle Regiment, with which he fought in the Battle of Wimi Ridge in April 1917. On October 18, 1917, the Canadian Corps was transferred to the Battle of Paschandel in Flanders and was given the task of capturing Paschandel Ridge. On October 26, Canadians became aggressive and on this day it was that ...

Walter Thomas Edwards Corporal Service number 33051 Older brother of Charles who featured in my previous post. Walter was working as a station hand at Matawai in the Gisborne area of New Zealand's North Island, when he signed up for service in the NZ Expeditionary Force. He was 27 years old when he took his army medical on the 29th of July 1916, standing not far off 5 feet 6 inches tall with blue-grey eyes and black hair. He entered Trentham Military Camp for initial training, he was struck down with Influenza in August 1916 but continued his training later boarding ship for overseas service. Leaving New Zealand with the 19th Reinforcements on the 15th of November 1916, which were carried aboard the ships Maunganui and Tahiti. Walter after a long journey disembarked in Devonport England on the 29th of January 1917 with his reinforcement and later marched into Sling Military Camp to continue his training. Walter was later moved to Codford Military Camp to help form the new NZ 4th In...

"Father, we must have a higher pile to see Verdun", by Dutch artist Louis Raemaekers, published on April 6, 1916. The following passage appeared in the British 'Wipers Times' magazine in February 1916 with the heading: "Proof That We Are Winning The War, by Belary Helloc". It's a satirical reference to Hilaire Belloc, editor of the pro-war magazine 'Land and Water', which was notorious for its inflated estimates of enemy casualties and unbounded optimism: "In this article I wish to show plainly that under existing conditions, everything points to a speedy disintegration of the enemy. We will take first of all the effect of war on the male population of Germany. Firstly, let us take as our figures, 12,000,000 as the total fighting population of Germany. Of these, 8,000,000 are killed or being killed, hence we have 4,000,000 remaining. Of these, 1,000,000 are non-combatants, being in the navy. Of the 3,000,000 remaining, we can write off 2,500...

Corpse of a German soldier who fell in Flanders during the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914. Photograph taken in 1915. Today 109 years ago, on October 19, 1914, the First Battle of Ypres began on the Western Front. In October 1914, the Race to the Sea culminated in Flanders, with neither side being able to out-flank the other. The Germans planned a major offensive to reach the English Channel ports and continue their Schlieffen Plan. For this, they had to conquer the city of Ypres, a major transportation hub, and enjoyed a superiority in both troops and artillery.  The Germans attacked the Belgians in the Battle of the Yser on October 16, 1914, and the British and French at Langemarck near Ypres on October 19, marking the beginning of the First Battle of Ypres. The fighting was characterized by bitter confusion in primitive trenches, with high casualties to artillery, as the British and French went on the counter-offensive at Ypres too. The Germans suffered high losses advanci...