Railroad and occupied territory map of western and central Europe, northern Africa, and Turkey. A German postcard map postdating the taking of Riga on the Baltic Sea on September 3, 1917 but before the German advance in February, 1918. The inset shows the Western Front and French-occupied territory in Alsace, then German Elsass.
Von uns besetzt 603000 qkm.Vom Feind besetzt 14000 qkm.Gebiet der SeesperreFestungenEisenbahnenNeutraler SchiffswegUnser Front im Westen.We occupy 603,000 square kilometers.The enemy occupies 14,000 square kilometers.Area of blockadefortressesrailwaysneutral shipping routeOur front in the West.Reverse:Reverse:Europa im Weltkrieg.(Zugelassen vom Ministerium des Innern.)No. 15. Druck u. Verlag v. Felix Grosser, Dresden-A.1.Europe in the World War.(Approved by the Ministry of the Interior.)No. 15. Printing and Publishing bu Felix Grosser, Dresden A.1.
"The fate of the [Black Sea] fleet became worrisome to the Allies after the armistice, and the situation turned critical when German and Austrian troops marched into the Ukraine to secure the wheat fields. . . .The Germans continued to the east and then turned southward to the Crimea. They were in front of Sebastopol by 1 May [1918]. What would happen to the Black Sea Fleet? The commander in chief was now Vice Admiral N. P. Sablin, but his authority was extremely tenuous and no one could be certain what the sailors would do. The Bolshevik government, now in Moscow, ordered Sablin to sail to Novorossisk on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. Sablin managed to get fourteen destroyers and torpedo boats to sail on the 13th, but the two dreadnoughts and four destroyers remained behind. They finally sailed on the night of the 14th, just as German patrols entered the city."
The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the armistice that quickly followed in December, and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between Russia and the Central Powers in March all occurred as ethnic groups within Russia and Europe's remaining empires increasingly called for independence. In the last days before the signing of the Treaty, a newly independent Ukraine signed its own treaty even as the Ukrainian and Russian delegations debated whose forces controlled Kiev, the new capitol of the new state.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 256, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
1918-05-14, 1918, May, Black Sea, Sebastopol, Crimea, Turkish Empire, Central Powers rail and occupation map
