Context

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In 1915, the Rockefeller Foundation War Relief Commission released a report on a typhus outbreak in Serbia so severe that it had far-reaching implications for European security.  After the outbreak of World War I,  the previous year, Serbia became the focal point of the eastern front.  Serbia, allied with Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and later the United States, was invaded by the axes powers, including Germany, Austria-Hungary, and later, Bulgaria. The typhus epidemic in Serbia, was a health crisis that was costing Britain, in particular, an ally. British Foreign Ministers commented that if the epidemic was not soon under control, Serbia would lose its ability to act in its own defense, and the Eastern Front could be lost. Additionally, with typhus running rampant, Allied forces could not be sent to the region to be sacrificed to the disease for the protection of Serbia.

Throughout World War I, funds were raised by civilian groups in both Britain and the United States for Serbian Relief.

In reaction to the Rockefeller report, and the intelligence gathered by the British Ministers, civilian relief agencies raised funds, and sent armies of doctors, nurses, and sanitation workers to the region to clean, fumigate, and care for the sick.  After the War, their efforts were applauded throughout the Balkans as heroic and absolutely essential to the Allied effort in the Eastern Front. However, their work was cut short by the invasion of Bulgaria, which led to questions about how international relief workers were to be treated by the forces of enemy combatants.  This digital journal seeks to explore the treatment of relief workers in the Serbian Front, and the early invocations of the Geneva Conventions,  that sought to protect such workers.

The Balkans