While, in the early days of August, the bulk of the German Army was
moving westward, not more than ten army corps were available for the
campaign against Russia. To them and to the Austrian armies fell the
task of laying the basis for the offensive contemplated for a later
date. The plan of campaign was to draw the Russians into the Polish
bag and tie it up. It was based on the knowledge that Russia's
principal strategic aim must, under all circumstances, be Cracow, the
gateway to Vienna and Berlin.
The enemy was to be allowed to reach it through Poland, while the
Germans should hold on to East Prussia and the Austrians to Galicia,
to flank the Russian advance from the north and south in preparation
for a campaign against the Russian lines of communication. This scheme
of bagging the enemy has governed all strategic moves of the campaign
against Russia to this day.
But the Muscovites were on their guard. They paid little attention to
the few German divisions that were thrown into Poland in August, in
order to attract a Russian offensive, and began hammering at the
Teutonic flanking positions along the East Prussian frontier in the
north and the line Lublin-Tarnopol in the south.
While the Russian offensive in East Prussia came to grief at
Tannenberg, it was most successful against Galicia, and the eighth
week of the war already found the Russian invasion west of the San,
Przemysl besieged, and the Austrian right wing flanked by vast bodies
of cavalry, which had penetrated the Carpathian passes and reached the
region of Munkacs.
To relieve the pressure exerted on their Allies and give them a chance
once more to establish themselves in north-eastern Galicia, four
German army corps invaded Poland and advanced toward Radom and
Ivangorod. This counter move was successful. Menaced in their right
flank, the Russians quickly took back their army beyond the San. The
Austrians followed, raised the siege of Przemysl, and drove the
invaders from Hungary and straightened out their line from Sandomir to
Czernowitz.
Meanwhile heavy Russian reinforcements had been brought up from
Ivangorod and were gradually put in action against the Germans east of
Radom. On Oct. 24, as soon as the Russian superiority became alarming,
the four German army corps, having, temporarily at least, accomplished
their purpose of re-establishing the Austrian campaign, beat a hasty
retreat toward Silesia, during which the second purpose of their
invasion, to draw into the Polish bag great masses of Russian troops,
was successfully achieved, the Russians having been led to believe
that they were pursuing a great German army.
Simultaneously, though, with their advance in the path of the German
retreat in Poland, the Russians once more concentrated vast forces
against the menacing projection of the Austrian battleline in Galicia,
and the early days of November witnessed the second invasion of the
Austrian province. At the same time a new drive was made on East
Prussia, and the Germans were forced back into the region of the
Masurian Lakes.
The retirement of the entire Teutonic battleline before the Russians,
who toward the end of October had reached the maximum of their
strength, marks the end of the first phase of the eastern campaign. It
had not accomplished all that had been expected of it. The enemy had
been drawn far into South Poland, but the base of operations for the
general offensive against his communications in the north had not been
established just where it should have been, and the Russian frontier
fortifications had been found better prepared for resistance than
those of Belgium, while in the south the Austrian base of operations
was entirely in the hands of the enemy.
The second phase of the eastern campaign was therefore opened from a
new base--Thorn, where the main army had been gathered ever since Oct.
27, when the Russian danger had become alarming, and the offensive in
the west had been abandoned. It was suddenly launched with
irresistible force on Nov. 12, and rolled back numerically inferior
Russian armies, whose task it had been to protect the right flank of
the Russian advance on Silesia.
Recognizing the danger to their operations in South Poland and
Galicia, where they had meanwhile approached the line of the Warta,
Cracow, and Neu Sandec, the Russians threw troops into North Poland
from all sides and succeeded in temporarily detaining the German
advance there, while they were continuing their supreme efforts to
break the Austro-German line south of Cracow. But the line held. At
the same time the German drive in North Poland was making steady
headway.
On Dec. 6 the Germans took Lodz, and further north advanced on Lowitz,
and the Russian offensive in the Cracow district was given up. While
all troops that could be spared were sent northeast to support the
prepared lines of the Bzura and Rawka Rivers, the Russians in the
south fell back behind the Nida and Dunajec, joining with their right
wing their northern army in the region of Tomaschew, and extending
their left through the region of Gorlitz and Torka toward the Pruth.
In this line the Teutonic advance was checked. A new German drive on
the road from Soldau to Warsaw could likewise make no headway beyond
Mlawa, while on the other hand in East Prussia the Russian offensive
had been brought to a standstill.
A siege warfare, like that in France, seemed imminent, except in the
Bukowina, where Russian forces during January were driving Austrian
troops before them. The Russian invasion of that province, however,
so distant from all strategically important points, was but a
political manoeuvre.
The first movement of any consequence to occur was a desperate attempt
of the Austrians early in February to push forward with their right
wing in the direction of Stanislau, chiefly to bring relief to the
garrison of Przemysl. Simultaneously they began sweeping the Russians
out of Bukovina. The latter undertaking was successful, but the
advance on Stanislau was thrown back toward Nadworna.
While the Austrian offensive was under way, General von Hindenburg
unexpectedly launched a vigorous attack in East Prussia, which
resulted in the destruction of the Russian East Prussian Army in the
region of the Masurian Lakes. Once more a successful drive at the
Russian "bread line" from the north seemed at hand. Already the armies
pursuing the Russians were hammering at the Russian fortifications
along the Niemen, Bobr, and Narew when the surrender of Przemysl, the
siege of which had uninterruptedly gone on behind the Russian lines
since November, on March 22 again presented to the Russians an
opportunity to break the Austrian battleline.
To check the onslaught of the reinforced Russian armies against the
Carpathian passes early in April, troops must be drawn from General
von Hindenberg's armies, and the consequence was another deadlock in
the north. Meanwhile the reinforced Teutonic troops were hurriedly
concentrated for the counter-attack against the Russian offensive in
the Carpathians, and a great drive began against the Russian positions
on the Dunajec line, east of Cracow, early in May. Breaking all
resistance, it swept on toward Jaroslau and Przemysl on a sixty-mile
front.
Threatened in their right and left flanks, respectively, the Russian
lines on the Nida and in the Carpathians fell back rapidly, while
reinforcements were sent to stem the Teutonic advance along the San.
But the Russian efforts were in vain. The momentum the Teutonic
offensive had gained carried it across the river, while further south
the Austrian right wing cleared the entire Carpathian front of the
enemy, hotly pushing his retreat.
Przemysl was recaptured, the third Russian line of defense from
Rawa-Ruska to Grodeck and the Dniester was broken, and the end of June
saw Lemberg once more in the hands of the Teutons, and the Russian
line on the defensive and sorely pressed along a front extending from
the Bessarabian frontier along the Dniester to the mouth of the
Zlota-Lipa, and from there along the Zlota-Lipa and the Bug, well into
Russian territory, leaving the river southeast of Grubeschow, and
continuing from there in a northwesterly direction to the region of
Krasnik.
Here it joined hands with the left wing of the Russian Army of the
Nida, which had retired before the Austro-German advance in a
northeasterly direction, intrenching along a line from Krasnik across
the Vistula and through Sjenno and Jastrshob (about fifteen miles
southwest of Radom) to the region of Tomaschew on the Pilitza.
While this great Spring offensive from the Dunajec line was well under
way, small German forces invaded the Russian province of Courland.
Finding at first little resistance in the path of their unexpected
advance, they took Libau and established themselves on the
Dubissa-Windau line. During July the operations in Courland steadily
assumed greater proportions.
Two bases for the campaign against the Russian lines of communication
have thus been firmly established in the flanks of the Russian Armies
west of the Vistula, both protruding far into their rear. Drives
against the Dunaburg-Warsaw line from the north and the
Minsk-Ivangorod line from the south will open the second year of the
eastern campaign. The first year of the incessant struggle has brought
the aims of the German strategy, the bagging of the Russian Armies,
within sight of its realization.