War, Famine, and Epidemics: Déjà Vu
The inconclusive First (1912) and Second (1913) Balkan Wars had shown that the Balkan states were neither inclined to unite under a common flag, nor live peacefully as independent neighbors. Not everyone learned that lesson, however, and in June 1914, Archduke Ferdinand (heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones) and his wife were assassinated by a radical student. The young man wanted to persuade the world that there would be lasting peace in the Balkans only when all the contentious states, with all their disagreements, willingly became part of an independent Serbia. In other words, there would be peace only once everyone got peaceful. Instead of his message of peace, headlines now reported bloody combat -- but soon a different type of grim news also began to bubble up to the front pages.
The war had begun in harvest season and now, north from Greece to the Danube, harvesting had all but stopped, because farmers were not in their fields: they had been called up into the army. Many doctors had been drafted, and the most critical medicines had been allocated to the military. Obviously, when essentials like food, doctors, and medicine become unavailable, people grow weak, they get sick more easily and more acutely, and mortality increases. And so, epidemics began to appear in Greece and in the Balkans, spreading among both civilians and soldiers. People who tried to outrun the disease inadvertently brought it with them. Roads and cities overflowed with sick refugees.
During World War I, more people were killed by disease than by weapons. On the Eastern Front alone, 1.5 million soldiers died of malaria (!), and several million – the number cannot be nailed down precisely – died of typhus.
