Only two continents did not see organized conflict during World War One.
Here are a few images from a three-volume account of the war which was published in 1921.
They include aspects of the war, its theatres and its technologies which are beyond the usual images of the Western Front.
Don't you just hate all these AI-slop images?
Statues and painted portraits generally called on the talents of accomplished artists.
However, most of the people who see the enduring work never knew the subject personally.
As long as the subject's face - as seen in historical images - matches the painted, sculpted or cast visage of the art,
the artist has all kinds of latitude in their portrayal of the body.
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These before and after sets were popular during the war.
As the backdrop seems to be the same building, and we know they would not have taken their work clothes overseas,
it seems likely this is a postwar photograph taken in Canada.
Second Ypres marked the first use of poisonous gas in war. The Germans had tried tear gas against the Russians in today's Poland, but cold weather prevented it from being effective.
At Ypres (22 April 1915), the Germans released 168 tons of chlorine gas on a four-mile front. The Canadians were fighting in their first engagement and held, preventing a break-through of their lines. The Canadians faced a similar gas attack two days later.
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In adapting old newspaper images for the book, the scale is not precisely preserved across the spine.
Here is our first look at a 'railway' used to transfer heavy items.
This seems to be a particularly small submarine.
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You can see the various sea routes used to reach Britain. Submarine service in the Great War (at least within the Royal Navy) was seen by traditionalists as being a sneaky endeavour which was largely without honour.
Most submarines in the conflict used Rudolf Diesel's oil motor on the surface and batteries while submerged. Diesel travelled widely before his disappearance/death, so the technology was by no means a secret held solely by Germany.
While the German submarine fleet menaced the approaches to Britain ... by the war's end ... it was the Royal Navy's blockade of Germany which caused the failure of their economy and agricultural production. The blockade-created loss of ... Chilean nitrates for fertilizer and munitions ... and rubber from South America and Asia ... are obvious examples. Civilians starved and the Kaiser's war machine lacked essential armaments and supplies.
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In the past, it was the cavalry which darted around to obtain information on enemy positions. Once the war settled into the trenches on the Western Front, the cavalry was generally obsolete. This was the first major war in which both sides rose into the air to observe each other. Another important use of eyes at altitude was to direct artillery fire.
Hydrogen balloons and observation aircraft (some performing early aerial photography) were soon confronted by the first gun-equipped fighter aircraft. Then fighters defended against fighters and rudimentary bombers as they sought to dominate the sky over their own territory.
German Zeppelins were sometimes used as night terror weapons over parts of Britain, but effective strategic (city) bombing would wait until another war came along.
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The artillery made short work of traditional observation points such as church steeples,
or a site familiar to the Canadians: the tower of the Cloth Hall at Ypres.
This interesting novelty was probably operated by the soldier perched part-way up on that seat.
The large lens at the end of the cone would be raised into position and, I guess, the light would enter that cone
and travel via mirrors down the centre of the telescoping shaft to the operator.
This apparatus would be a hard target for enemy artillery to see and hit ...
with the added advantage of being easy to move out of danger.
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British artillery would sometimes rage for a week before a major offensive. The term 'drumfire' was coined to describe a rapid, unceasing barrage that sounded like a drum being struck with regularity. Eventually, the infantry would have to advance across the area 'prepared' by artillery. As the image above suggests, the 'preparation' made the over-ground travel more difficult.
Besides wiping out the opposing soldiers (mainly using air-burst shrapnel shells), a goal of high explosive shells was to clear the barbed wire entanglements ... which were placed in front of the enemy's trenches to obstruct the progress of the infantry. These entanglements were also designed to stream the advancing infantry through points in the wire which were well-covered by machine guns.
One would expect there would be no resistance left after such long and intense artillery barrages aimed at the enemy. However, advancing infantry often found German troops greeting their arrival with rifle fire, intersecting arcs of machine gun fire and as many grenades as the Germans could throw.
You can see the reason below ...
Ignore the fact that the Germans left a mess when they retreated. Except for a small rotating contingent left to maintain a watch on the surface, the majority of the German forces were protected from the preparatory barrage within the deep, well-designed bunkers the Germans built.
When the barrage ceased, most of the soldiers (those who were not PTSD casualties after an intense barrage lasting hours or days) would run up the stairs and resume their defensive positions. This happened time and again with the British staff officers being apparently very slow to accept how their extravagant use of artillery was having little effect.
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World War One was the last major war in which so many heads of state were kings, emperors ... and a czar and a sultan. This was the last great war of the European empires.
For Canada, the Balfour Declaration (1926) opened the door to a new status for Canada and the other British dominions ... and the Statute of Westminster (1931) gave it legal force.
The term 'Empire' was often used by the diehard British imperialists in World War Two to refer to both its world-wide Commonwealth ... and centralized plans like the 'Empire Air Training Scheme'. However, in 1939 Canada had the legal ability to declare war itself and it substituted its BCATP title for the British EATS.
From the south to the north of Africa, and into today's Middle East, the empires fought each other. Germany lost its African colonies at the end of World War One. None of Africa's citizens really won freedom as a result. The colony just changed ownership to another European country.
The demand to return the German African colonies was one of the concessions Hitler sought as he bullied, bluffed and threatened the European countries with war in the late 1930s.
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The title spans the book's spine, while the text of Page 472 is read first, before Page 473.
Otherwise, this technology is completely interpreted!
Invented as a supplement to livestock fencing in France in the late 1800s, then perfected in the US and Germany, it was uncoiled all over the globe in war. The effectiveness of barbed wire in war had been demonstrated in the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War.
Germany had included barbed wire in its extensive tactical doctrine before World War One and possessed substantial pre-war inventories of it.
The ergonomic wooden carrying handles are a thoughtful feature. Another little railway for transporting heavy loads.
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If you believe that ethnic minorities and those at the bottom of the social pyramid were 'always', and will 'always' be brutally exploited in war ... throughout Russian, Soviet, and Russian (again) history ... you are probably correct. This was certainly the case for Imperial Russian soldiers on Germany's eastern front during the war.
Unarmed soldiers waited to 'inherit' rifles from others who were killed. Good footwear, winter clothing, and artillery shells were rare commodities. However, disease epidemics, very poor medical care, and incompetent aristocratic leadership were available in limitless abundance.
Just as the term "Die Damen aus der Hölle" was probably not coined by the Germans for those fighting in kilts ... the "Battalion of Death" was probably also self-referential public relations.
It worked!
They made it into this blogpost!
No more humour, this story is grim ...
The "1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death" "1-y Zhenskiy Batal'on Smerti" (if you want to get a rough sound of it in Russian) was formed after some lobbying by Mariia Bochkareva (1889-1920). Although there were a number of other units set up along similar lines within the Imperial Russian Army, Bochkareva certainly earned ownership of the trademark.
Concisely: these units were intended as shock troops to lead attacks ... and particularly to shame Russian male soldiers into fighting.
Bochkareva narrowly escaping death after Bolsheviks captured this unusual, determined, brave soldier of the Imperial Army. There was no doubting her dedication to 'Russia'. Probably, there are few things as brutal as a civil war.
In the summer of 1918, Bochkareva sought the support of the US and Britain. She travelled from Vladivostok to San Francisco, Washington (meeting with President Woodrow Wilson), dictated her autobiography in New York, and continued to Britain where she had an audience with King George V.
Back in Russia, she was again captured by the Bolsheviks ... who questioned her loyalty to their particular ideology ... and eventually executed.
This link at archive.org takes you to the dictated autobiography of Mariia Bochkareva (1889-1920),
and ends as she departs for the US.
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Map of Mesopotamia and Persia.
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The US sold and exported approximately $7-8 billion worth of goods to Britain, France, Russia and Italy between the beginning of the war, and the US entry into World War One on 6 April 1917. Converted for inflation, this is over US $182 billion in 2026 US dollars.
In 2025, the US exported US $190 billion of goods to those four countries.
Total US goods and services exports to these four countries in 2025 was about US $350 billion.
I miss the old steam fantrips ... don't you? ...
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Back to the Middle East ...
It seems there's always someone who doesn't actually live here ... complaining about the sea routes.
In the end, we are pleased to find some agreement between the nations.
