It looks like a fanciful poster from a travel brochure.
Calm ocean waves lap green and russet seaside cliffs.
A steamship glides past on the distant horizon.
It's an idyllic seascape lit by a blue sky filled with
fluffy white clouds, a biplane,
and one gigantic dirigible airship.
Who wouldn't want to go there for a summer break?
A steamship glides past on the distant horizon.
It's an idyllic seascape lit by a blue sky filled with
fluffy white clouds, a biplane,
and one gigantic dirigible airship.
Who wouldn't want to go there for a summer break?
Except that this picture was advertising war.
This is the second of a two part series which I started last weekend.
I recommend reading The Art of War – Aerial Assaults, part 1
to pick up this history on the postcard art
I recommend reading The Art of War – Aerial Assaults, part 1
to pick up this history on the postcard art
that promoted the first aerial assaults of World War One:
Graf (or Count) Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838–1917) was a German general who designed and produced the first successful lighter-than-air rigid dirigibles that became eponymously known as Zeppelins. His first airship, the LZ-1, made its first flight over Lake Constance on 2 July 1900. It carried five people to an altitude of 410 m (1,350 ft) and managed to cover a distance of 6.0 km (3.7 mi) until mechanical problems forced to land after 17 minutes aloft. But Zeppelin doggedly persisted despite the inherent obstacles to building a flying machine that could overpower the laws of gravity.
In 1906 his third airship, LZ-3, proved that a lighter-than-air dirigible powered by petrol engines had viable commercial and military uses. The LZ-3 successfully demonstrated controlled flight in all directions, at different altitudes, and for a significant distance. In 1908 the Imperial German Army bought it and ordered another airship. The following year the Wright brothers were demonstrating their iconic aeroplane in France, Germany, and the United States. Aeroplanes and airships quickly became the next important topic for military planners along with battleships and artillery.
In 1908 Ferdinand von Zeppelin founded a company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, which would manufacture his airships. And in 1909 his company established DELAG, an acronym for Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft, the world's first commercial airline. By July 1914 at the the start of World War One, Graf Zeppelin had built 25 airships since his first one had flown above Lake Constance. Over 34,000 passengers had already traveled on DELAG's Zeppelin fleet for 1,588 commercial flights that altogether covered 172,535 kms over a spam of 3,176 hours of flight time. Zeppelins were no longer an experimental aircraft. To the German people Zeppelin was a great visionary who advanced the new German Reich into the forefront of modern aviation.
The portrait above was painted by a very skilled artist but his signature is unclear and the only caption on the back is just: Zeppelin. The postcard was sent 12 April 1916, 11 months before Zeppelin's death on 8 March 1917 at age 78.
I've written several stories for this blog about early postcards of Graf Zeppelin's airships, The Art of Zeppelins, Zeppelin Kommt!, and At, on and over Lake Constance. Not surprisingly his airships were as inspiring to artists as well as to the general public.
Zeppelin's face, his walrus mustache, and his gentle grandfatherly appearance made him the subject for many portraits, so his likeness was well known. This second postcard is typical of his portraits but it includes a wartime element of seven menacing airships ascending into the dark sky behind him. This postcard was printed in half-tone for the Deutscher Luftflotten-Verein, a.k.a.:
German Air Fleet Association
for the creation of a strong German air fleet
and promotion of the aviation school!
Annual membership fee: including the association magazine
"The Air Fleet" at least 3,— Marks.
The card was sent by a soldier on 24 January 1916 using the free military post.
By this year Zeppelin's airships were no longer just a wonder of aeronautics. They had become intimidating monsters of war.
This picture depicts a group of Catholic monks standing outside their abbey watching as a zeppelin drops bombs on the Belgian city of Liege in 1914. A caption in the upper corner reads:
Mönche beobachten die furchtbare
Wirkung der Beschickung Lüttich
durch ein Zeppelin Lüftschiff.
~
Monks observe the terrible effect
of the bombing of Liège
by a Zeppelin airship.
Wirkung der Beschickung Lüttich
durch ein Zeppelin Lüftschiff.
~
Monks observe the terrible effect
of the bombing of Liège
by a Zeppelin airship.
Like the previous card, this one was also produced by the Deutscher Luftflotten-Verein. Such huge conflagrations were beyond the ability of cameras of this time, but skilled artists were adept at using their imagination to reduce a complex event into an illustration that conveyed the turmoil, noise, and horror of this new warfare of aerial assaults.
The back of the card shows that the picture was "supplied bu the Ministry of Information, Design No. 6, Passed by Censor, Printed in England" and was a "War Bonds Campaign Post Card issued in connection to the National War Savings Committee's Campaign." Breaking some rules, a message was carefully written across the dividing line:
DEAR DADDIE, MANY HAPPY RETURNS
OF YOUR BIRTHDAY. AND WE HOPE YOO
WILL SOON BE BETTER. LOVE FROM
HUGHIE AND KATHLEEN.
OF YOUR BIRTHDAY. AND WE HOPE YOO
WILL SOON BE BETTER. LOVE FROM
HUGHIE AND KATHLEEN.
 |
| A drawing of the downing of LZ 37 on 7 June 1915 over Ghent, Belgium by the pilot, Flight Sub-Lieutenant Rex Warneford, originally published in The War Illustrated, Vol.2, № 44 Source: Wikipedia |
As military commands on all sides began using aircraft to observe combat operations, it did not take long before airplanes and airships were weaponized. Initially this was for air to ground attacks but it quickly changed into aerial battles between airplanes. When Zeppelins were used for bombardment of cities they were also armed with machine guns to defend against enemy fighter planes.
The thrilling picture above shows a Zeppelin exploding in air after being attacked by a mono-wing airplane. It's a rare example of a scene recreated by the man who actually experienced it. He was Reginald (Rex) Warneford (1891–1915), a Sub-Lieutenant and pilot in the British Royal Navy. He made this sketch in June 1915 shortly after he succeeded in destroying the German airship LZ-37 as it was returning to its homebase in occupied-Belgium after a bombing raid on England.
The sketch appeared in a British magazine, The War Illustrated, a few days later on 19 June 1915. The caption reads:
The Great Aerial Exploit of Lieut. Warneford: For skill and daring the magnificent exploit of Flight Sub-Lieut. Warneford, V.C., has rarely been equaled. While flying at a great height between Bruges and Ghent he encountered a Zeppelin. Quickly rising above it, he swooped down and launched bombs on the massive airship. A loud explosion followed, and the Zeppelin caught fire and fell to earth. The explosion caused the British machine to turn several somersaults, during which the petrol escaped from the rear tank and the pilot had to descend in the German lines. He managed to refill the empty tank, restart his engine, soar again into the air, and return safely to the British lines. Within thirty-six hours after his heroic deed the King had conferred the Victoria Cross on the young aviator.
Tragically on 17 June 1915, just hours after Lt. Warneford received the Légion d'honneur from General Joffre, the French Army Commander in Chief, Warneford and a passenger died in an accident during a routine flight tp transfer an airplane to another aerodrome. A wing collapsed, causing a catastrophic failure of the airframe. Warneford was just 23 years old.
This postcard offers a similar frightening scene. High above a city and a river two dirigibles pass each other. The higher and larger Zeppelin uses a searchlight to illuminate the other airship which has just burst into flames. A caption reads:
Unsere Gefürchteten.
Zeppelin im Kampf mit einem
feindlichen Luftschiff.
~
feindlichen Luftschiff.
~
Our Feared Ones.
A Zeppelin in Combat with
an Enemy Airship.
an Enemy Airship.
As far as I can determine this kind of airship vs airship action is a fantasy, as it never occurred. The smaller airship is a semi-rigid dirigible, likely a British airship, which was used for daytime reconnaissance. In this early age of aviation, night flying for airplanes was particularly dangerous as pilots could only navigate by sight.
Zeppelins encountered the same problem, too, but they were also very large and relatively slow so they were very visible in daylight. This problem was more difficult to solve, so, instead, these behemoths of the air staged nighttime bombing raids when a dark sky would give the best concealment, allow better observation of bomb explosions, and also inflict the most terror on civilians.
It did not take long before cities in France and Britain mandated blackout restrictions in their cities. This created another problem for Zeppelin navigators. Maps were useless if you could not see the ground. Most of the first raids resulted in lost Zeppelins that never got close to their targets. In this illustration we get a view captioned: In der Zeppelin-Gondel ~ In the Zeppelin's Gondola, though to be accurate the view is not inside but outside and more like what a passing seagull might see. The crew use searchlights to ascertain their position. A Zeppelin might reach an altitude of 10,000+ feet but determining a factory from a school, in the dark, with binoculars, and while in motion was extremely difficult. Not surprisingly, the accuracy of a Zeppelin's bombs was very imprecise.
After the first raids ground searchlights and anti-aircraft guns were quickly developed by the allied forces. Though airships were very vulnerable to incendiary shell fire igniting their hydrogen lifting-gas, they were more at risk from ordinary bullets tearing small holes in the gas cells. The loss of even a small percent of gas would cause the airship to quickly lose height and steering control. Many Zeppelins during the war never made it back to their home airfield.
In this postcard an artist creates a colossal armada of six Zeppelins and four naval ships heading across the English Channel. The caption reads: Nach England! ~ To England! This was another postcard put out by the Deutscher Luftflotten-Verein with a postmark of 18 February 1915 from Erfurt, Germany. This was just one month from the first aerial assaults on the night of 19/20 January 1915.
The plan had been proposed in August 1914 just as the war began. The Zeppelin force was under the command of the Imperial German Navy. Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz supported the plan and wrote:
The measure of the success will lie not only in the injury which will be caused to the enemy but also in the significant effect it will have in diminishing the enemy's determination to prosecute the war.
In fact this first raid only used two Zeppelins which were to attack targets near the Humber estuary, 170 miles north of London. However strong winds forced the German airships southward where they dropped bombs on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn and surrounding Norfolk villages. Four people were killed and 16 injured. The damage was estimated at £7,740 (equivalent to £860,700 in 2024). Two British fighter aircraft took off but failed to find the airships in the dark.
This dramatic picture depicts two Zeppelins high in a dark sky seen from a dock at a harbor. There is fire, smoke, explosions, anti-aircraft shells, and searchlight beams on the airships. According to a printed caption on the back the painting is by A. Hubert and titled Luftangriff auf Londoner Hafenanlagen ~ Air Raid on London Port Facilities. It was produced as a "Welfare Card for Members of the Imperial Navy, for the Purposes of Family Support and the Recuperation of Personnel on Leave". It cost 10 pfennig with 3 Pfennig going to the charity.
When Germany first began bombing Britain in 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm II initially prohibited any attacks on London for fear it might harm his relatives in the Royal Family. (The Kaiser's mother was Victoria, Princess Royal (1840–1901), the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.) But by Spring he expanded bombing targets east of the Tower of London and on the night of 31 May 1915 the airship, LZ 38, struck the capital. Two months later in July 1915 authorization was granted to target the entire London metropolis.
This cartoon shows a another pair of Zeppelins flying over London's Trafalgar Square. Like so many ants, people flee in all directions, hide under umbrellas, or leap from double decker buses. We may not see explosions but we can see fear, and it is not amusing.
Because of the wartime blockade and censorship the German public had practically no news about the war since all military information was controlled by the German government. Postcards like this that promote strategic bombing were propaganda used to reassure Germany's citizens.
This censorship and restraint on casualties and damage caused by aerial bombing was also applied to news reports in Britain, France, and later the United States. The truth was deemed contrary to recruitment, military and labor morale, and considered potentially provocative of civil unrest.
This scene is similar to the German card taunting Londoners but this cartoon comes from a defiant French perspective. It shows two Zeppelins (the one on the left is viewed from its tail) attempting to carry away one of the celebrated symbols of France. The caption reads:
Enlèvement de l'arc-de-triomphe de l'étoile
par le Zeppeli K.K.100
~
~
Removal of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile
by the Zeppeli K.K.100
It is plainly silly which must have given many French people a brief smile or laugh. The card was sent from Paris on 4 August 1915.
tu vois d'ici le
continuel danger
que nous courerons
ournellement dans
la Capitale
Sincères Salutations
E. Bedutson
~
You can see from here the
continual danger
that we will run
daily in the Capital
Sincere Salutations
E. Bedutson
The preceding transcription and translation of the message on this postcard
was provided by Claude.AI which was given only an image of the message's French text and the year, 1916. It provided this note:
was provided by Claude.AI which was given only an image of the message's French text and the year, 1916. It provided this note:
**Notes:** This is clearly the closing portion of a longer message — the text begins mid-sentence. Written during wartime Paris (1916), the writer's reference to "continual danger… daily in the Capital" almost certainly alludes to German Zeppelin and Gotha bomber raids on Paris, which were a source of real anxiety for Parisians during the war. The signature *E. Bedutson* may be a foreign name (possibly Scandinavian), which would explain the slightly non-native French phrasing — *courerons* is an archaic/dialectal future form of *courir* ("to run/face"), and *journellement* is an uncommon adverb meaning "daily."
The last aerial assault on London by Zeppelins took place on the night of 19 October 1917, over 12 months since the last Zeppelin raid. The latest German airships were larger and had increased their ceiling altitude to be above the reach of aeroplane fighters. That night eleven Zeppelins approached London from the north using the prevailing wind to carry them silently across the city without using their engines. The British commander of the London Air Defense Area, Lt-Col. Alfred Rawlinson, recognized the German strategy and ordered all of London's searchlights to be turned off, since they would otherwise 'give the game away' and reveal the geography of the city.
Though a few bombs hit near the city, Rawlinson's deception to stay dark worked and London avoided up to 200 bombs which fell outside the metro area. Later that night an unexpected gale blew the Zeppelin squadron off course as they tried to return to their home bases in Jutland. Not one of the eleven airships made it back. One was shot down by French anti-aircraft guns near the German frontier at Luneville. Another was forced to land in western France by pursuing aeroplanes. Two Zeppelins were destroyed by fire in south-west France. Three more were taken out to sea and lost with all hands in the Mediterranean when their fuel ran out.
Following this failure the German military decided that airships were incapable of achieving their mission goals. Each Zeppelin cost the equivalent of several million dollars. The fatality rate for Zeppelin crews in WW1 was an appalling 40%. Of the roughly 80–90 airships deployed, over 30 were lost to enemy action or accidents during operations, resulting in the deaths of over 400 flight crew members.
So the Imperial German Army command withdrew Zeppelins from attacks on Britain and France and instead placed their bet on their Gotha heavy bombers.
 |
| French postcard illustration, circa 1917 of Imperial German Gotha G. heavy bomber Source: Wikimedia |
 |
| British recruiting poster from 1915 Source: Wikipedia |
According to the Wikipedia entry for German bombing of Britain, 1914–1918:
Airships made 51 bombing raids on Britain during the war in which 557 people were killed and 1,358 injured. The airships dropped 5,806 bombs, causing damage worth £1,527,585. Eighty-four airships took part, of which 30 were either shot down or lost in accidents.Aeroplanes carried out 52 raids, dropping 2,772 bombs of 73.5 long tons (74.7 t) weight for the loss of 62 aircraft, killing 857 people, injuring 2,058, and causing £1,434,526 of damage.The German bombing has been called, by some authors, the first Blitz, alluding to the Blitz of the Second World War. The defense organization developed by the British foreshadowed the ground-controlled interception system used in the Second World War.
The First World War supposedly ended 108 years ago on 11 November 1918, but that was just the date for the Armistice, a cessation of hostilities. It would take another seven months to conclude the official peace treaty, the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on 28 June 1919. That document divided the old European empires into many new sovereign nations, while retaining other vast regions of the world in colonial subjugation. It would take decades and an even more terrible world war to change that dynamic.
Wikipedia has a page, of course, on the last day of WW1. Under the section "Last casualties" of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 is this short report about what happened in the last minutes before the 11th hour of the 11th day:
Many artillery units continued to fire on German targets to avoid having to haul away their spare ammunition. The Allies also wished to ensure that, should fighting restart, they would be in the most favourable position. Consequently, there were 10,944 casualties, of whom 2,738 men died, on the last day of the war.An example of the determination of the Allies to maintain pressure until the last minute, but also to adhere strictly to the Armistice terms, was Battery 4 of the US Navy's long-range 14-inch railway guns firing its last shot at 10:57:30 a.m. from the Verdun area, timed to land far behind the German front line just before the scheduled Armistice.
My purpose in collecting these grim examples of the Art of War was partly because I'm fascinated by the way early aviation was depicted in its time. What did people think when they first saw a Zeppelin airship or Wright brothers' Flyer? In this collection I sought to answer a different but related question. What did people feel when those airplanes and airships first dropped death and destruction?
I'm sure that Wikipedia has a very, very long list of all the wars that have occurred since those final shots on 11 November 1918. It is depressing and disturbing to me that mankind seems to have learned nothing in all those years. What pictures will artists paint about our time in 2026?
This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone, except me,
is singing along in perfect harmony.
