The Great War, early January 1915

 The Great War, early January 1915

The year 1915 began with the blood ruling non-stop. On the Serbian front, in early 1915, typhus affected soldiers of both the Austrian and Serbian army. As a gesture of support, British volunteers brought over a hundred tonnes of hospital supplies and medicines to Serbia.

For Britain, the year 1915 began with a naval disaster: the sinking of the battleship Formidable by a German submarine, in which 547 sailors were drowned. On the Western front, trench warfare left large armies unable to move more than a few hundred meters without suffering heavy casualties. 

Near Perthes-en-Gâtinai, in Champagne, after twelve attacks and twenty counterattacks, French troops advanced less than a kilometer and a half. In Xon, south of Metz, where they lost the high ground, though they later recovered it, the French official statement announced: “We found corpses belonging to five different regiments. ”

The struggle over the trenches, slopes, forests and woodlands seemed to offer a never-ending perspective of breasts against bullets. However, in London, Asquith received a letter from a colleague who claimed that “it would be quite simple to equip in a short time a number of steam tractors with small armored shelters, which could be mounted men and machine guns and which would be bulletproof.” 

They could be used at night and artillery fire would not affect them at all. The caterpillar system would allow them to easily penetrate through trenches and the weight of the device would destroy all barbed wire.” The letter, written by Winston Churchill, constituted the first step in the practical evolution of the tank chariot.

All belligerent states were looking for new allies and new war zones. On January 5, Lord Kitchener told the British War Council that, as stated in the official minutes of the meeting, “the Dardanelles seemed the most appropriate target, since a joint attack with the fleet could be carried out there” which, if successful, would restore communication with Russia, it would solve the issue in the Middle East, involve Greece and perhaps Bulgaria and Romania and release wheat and shipments trapped at sea black Secretary of the War Council, Colonel Hankey, went above and beyond.

 The triumph in the Dardanelles, he said, “would provide us with the Danube as a communication channel for an army that would enter the heart of Austria and allow us to exercise our maritime might in the middle of Europe.”

The powers of the Entente hoped to incorporate into their orbit not only Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, but also Italy. Germany and Austria were also seeking allies, especially against Russia. A small but active group, hoping to be courted, were the Russian Bolsheviks, many of whose leaders were exiled in Switzerland. The Bolsheviks did not count on the Austrian nor the German government to show affinity with their revolutionary cause, but politicians, both in Berlin and Vienna, were willing to support the spread of Bolshevism with the hope, not completely headless, that this political system would undermine the government stable he had in Russia and would end the combat ability of the Czar.

Source: Martin Gilbert's "World War I"