RUSSIA MOVES
The first month of the war in the West had coincided more nearly with
German plans than with Entente hopes, but both Germany and the Western
Allies agreed in miscalculating Russia. The great Moltke had remarked
early in his career that Russia had a habit of appearing too late on
the field and then coming too strong. The war was to prove that to be
a fault of democracy rather than of autocrats, and Russia intervened
with an unexpected promptitude which was to be followed in time by an
equally unexpected collapse. The forecasting of the course of wars is
commonly left to military experts, and military experts commonly err
through ignoring the moral and political factors which determine the
weight and distribution of military forces. The soldier, so far as he
looks behind armies at all, only looks to the numbers from which those
armies may be recruited, and pays scant regard to the political,
moral, social, and economic conditions which may make havoc of armies,
evoke them where they do not exist, or transfer them to unforeseen
scales in the military balance. Russia appeared to the strategist as a
vast reservoir of food for powder which would take time to mobilize,
but prove almost irresistible if it were given time. Both these
calculations proved fallacious, and still less was it foreseen that
the reservoir would revolt. The first misjudgment deranged the German
plans, the second those of the Allies, while the third upset the minds
of the world.
The outbreak of war found Russia with a peace-strength of over a
million men, a war-strength of four millions, and reserves which were
limited not by her population but by her capacity for transport,
organization, and production of munitions. Her Prussian frontiers were
guarded by no natural defences, but neither were Prussia's. Nature, it
has been said, did not foresee Prussia; Prussia is the work of men's
hands. Nor had Nature foreseen Russia, and men's hands had not made up
the deficiency. Mechanical means had remedied the natural defects of
Prussia's frontier, but not those of the Russian; and Russia's defence
consisted mainly in distance, mud, and lack of communications. The
value of these varied, of course, with the seasons, and the
motor-transport, which atoned to some extent for the lack of railways,
told in favour of German science and industry, and against the
backward Russians. Apart from the absence of natural defences, the
Russian frontier had been artificially drawn so as to make her Polish
province an indefensible salient, though properly organized it would
have been an almost intolerable threat alike to East Prussia and to
Austrian Galicia. But for her preoccupation in the West, Germany could
have conquered Poland in a fortnight, and Russian plans, indeed,
contemplated a withdrawal as far as the line of Brest-Litovsk. As it
was, the German offensive in Belgium and France left the defence of
Prussia to the chances of an Austrian offensive against Lublin, a
containing army of some 200,000 first-line and 300,000 second-line
troops, and the delays in Russian mobilization.
Two of these proved to be broken reeds. Russian troops were almost as
prompt in invading East Prussia as German troops in crossing the
frontiers of France and Belgium, and by the end of the first week in
August a flight to Berlin had begun. The shortest way from the Russian
frontier to Berlin was by Posen, and it lay through a country peopled
with Poles who were bitterly hostile to their German masters. But it
was impossible to exploit these advantages at the expense of deepening
the Polish salient with its already too narrow base, and the flanks in
East Prussia and Galicia had first to be cleared. Under the supreme
command of the Grand Duke Nicholas, who in spite of his rank was a
competent professional soldier, and the more immediate direction of
Rennenkampf, one of the few Russian officers to emerge with enchanced
reputation from the Japanese War, the Russians proceed to concentrate
on East Prussia (see Map). On the east Gumbinnen was captured after a
battle on the 20th, and the important junction of Insterburg occupied
by Rennenkampf, while on the south Samsonov on the 21st turned the
German right, threatened Allenstein and drove the fugitives, as
Rennenkampf had done, into the lines of Königsberg. East Prussia lay
at Russia's feet, and something like a panic alarmed Berlin. The
Teutonic cause was faring even worse in Galicia and Poland. Austria
had a million troops in Galicia, but her offensive under Dankl towards
Lublin only produced a strategic Russia retirement, while Ruszky and
Brussilov overran the eastern borders and menaced Lemberg.
Fortunately for the Germans their own right hand proved a stronger
defence. The incompetent General von François, who had been driven
into Königsberg, was superseded by Hindenburg, a retired veteran of
nearly seventy, whose military career had made so slight an impression
on the German mind that his name was not even included in the German
"Who's Who." Nevertheless he had commanded corps on the Prussian
frontier, and even after his retirement made the study of its defence
his hobby. He knew every yard of the intricate mixture of land and
water which made up the district of the Masurian Lakes, and had,
unfortunately for Russia, defeated a German financial scheme for
draining the country and turning it into land over which an invader
could safely march. Within five days of Samsonov's victory,
Hindenburg, taking advantage of the magnificent system of German
strategic railways, had collected some 150,000 men from the fortresses
on the Vistula and concentrated them on a strong position stretching
from near Allenstein south-west towards Soldau, his left resting on
the railway from Eylau to Insterburg and his right on that from Eylau
to Warsaw. In front of him were marshes with the ways through which he
was, but Samsonov was not, familiar; and the railways enabled him to
threaten either of the enemy's flanks.
Samsonov was practically isolated. Rightly ignoring the strong
defences of Königsberg but wrongly getting out of touch with
Rennenkampf, he had pushed on, thinking there could be no serious
resistance east of the Vistula and hoping to seize the bridge at
Graudenz. Hindenburg made a feint on his right, but pushed his real
outflanking movement along the railway on his left. But the feint was
enough to outflank Samsonov's left and close the retreat towards
Warsaw. It also diverted his reserves from his centre and from his
right, which on the 27th was cut off from a possible junction with
Rennenkampf. A gallant attempt by Gourko to relieve him on the 30th
came too late. The only exit was along a narrow strip of land between
the marshes leading to Ortelsburg, and here between the 28th and the
31st the Russian forces were almost annihilated. Less than a third
escaped, and the loss of guns was even greater. Over eighty thousand
prisoners were taken, and the Germans who had missed their Sedan in
the West secured a passable imitation in the East. Samsonov perished
in the retreat. The Russian censorship suppressed the news, and what
was allowed to come through from Germany was treated in Entente
countries as a German lie. For more than a fortnight little was known
of a victory which, save for Allenby's four years later, was the
completest in the war. The relief in Berlin was immense; Hindenburg
became the popular idol, Field-Marshal, and Generalissimo of the
Teutonic armies in the East; and a little village, which lay behind
Hindenburg's centre, was selected to give its name to the battle and
to commemorate a national revenge for that defeat at Tannenberg five
centuries before when the Slavonic kingdom of Poland had broken the
power of the Teutonic Order in Prussia.
Russia, however, was a different power from the Teutonic Order, and
Austrian generals were not Hindenburgs; Ruszky and Brussilov, too,
were better leaders than Samsonov, and though Rennenkampf had to
evacuate East Prussia before Hindenburg's advance, the Austrians were
driven like chaff before their enemies in Galicia. The object of
Russian strategy was to straighten the serpentine line of the frontier
for military purposes. Hence, while pushing forward her wings in East
Prussia and Galicia, she would merely stand on guard or withdraw in
the Polish centre, and the Germans encountered little opposition when
they seized Czenstochowa and Kalisch and pushed towards the Warta, or
the Austrians when they advanced by Zamosc towards the Bug. The
advance in East Prussia was also represented as a chivalrous attempt
to reduce the pressure in France by a threat to Berlin, and the real
Russian effort was the sweep westwards from the eastern Galician
frontier, where the Second Russian army under Ruszky and the Third
farther south under Brussilov were already threatening the envelopment
of Lemberg (or Lwow [Footnote: Pronounced and sometimes spelt Lvoff.])
and the Austrians under Von Auffenberg. Ruszky, formerly like Foch a
professor in a military academy, was perhaps the most scientific of
Russian generals; Brussilov showed his strategy two years later at
Luck; [Footnote: Pronounced Lutsk: the Slavonic "c" = "ts" "cz" = "ch"
and "sz" = "sh."] and Radko Dmitrieff was a Bulgarian general, now in
Russian service, who in the Balkan wars had won the battle of Kirk
Kilisse and helped to win that of Lule-Burgas. There was not an abler
trio in any field of the war.
By the end of August Brussilov had captured Tarnopol and Halicz and
forced the successive rivers which guarded the right flank of Lemberg
and Von Auffenberg's forces and protected their communications with
the Carpathian passes; and on 1 September the battle for the capital
of eastern Galicia began. It lasted for nearly three days, and was
almost as decisive as that of Tannenberg. Brussilov's outflanking
movement was continued with success, but the coup de grâce was given
here, as at Charleroi and the Marne, by isolating a central group and
thus breaking the line. Thrusting forward his right, Ruszky outflanked
Lemberg and interposed between Von Auffenberg and the Austrian army in
Poland. On the 3rd Lemberg was evacuated, and the retreat, which was
for a time protected by the entrenched camp at Grodek, gradually
became more disorderly. Over 70,000 prisoners were taken, mostly, no
doubt, Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs who had more sympathy with the
Russians than with their Teutonic masters, and masses of machine guns
and artillery. The victory was brilliantly and promptly followed up.
While Brussilov pressed on to Stryj and the Carpathians, Ruszky and
Dmitrieff beat Von Auffenberg again at Rawa Ruska near the frontier on
the 10th, and Ivanoff, who had taken command in Poland, drove Dankl
and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand from the line they held between
Lublin and the borders. The whole of the Austrian forces fell back
behind the Vistula and the San, Von Auffenberg finding safety in
Przemysl, and others a more temporary refuge at Jaroslav, while the
van of the retreating army did not stop short of Cracow. The German
detachments in Poland had to conform, and by the middle of September
Poland had been cleared as far as the Warta, and Galicia was
defenceless, save for invested Przemysl, as far south as the
Carpathians and as far west as the Dunajec. The days of the Marne were
even more sombre for the Central Empires on the Vistula and the San.
Their gloom was relieved by the halo which shone round Hindenburg's
head. Rennenkampf was gone and all the faculties of the University of
Königsberg conferred degrees on the victor to celebrate its escape.
Reinforcements were sent to the frontier, and on 7 September Russia
was invaded. The object of the offensive is not clear except on the
assumption that Hindenburg's strategic acumen was defective, and that
he thought he could turn the Russian right by an advance across the
Niemen. But the difficulties were insuperable and the distances were
vast. Even if he got to Kovno it would need far greater forces than he
possessed to cover and control the illimitable land beyond; and
between him and success lay swamps more extensive then the Masurian
Lakes and the heavily fortified line of the Narew. He was, indeed, in
his turn falling into Samsonov's error, and seems to have been saved
from his fate mainly by the prematurely successful Russian defence. He
was allowed to reach the Niemen at various points between Kovno and
Grodno, but was unhappily prevented from committing his fortunes to
the eastern bank by the Russian artillery, which repeatedly destroyed
his pontoons as soon as they were constructed. Lower down on his right
an attempt on the fortress of Ossowiec proved equally futile, because
the Germans could find no ground within range solid enough to bear the
weight of their artillery. The inevitable retreat began on the 27th,
and it was sadly harassed by the pursuing Russians, especially in the
forest of Augustowo, where Rennenkampf claimed to have inflicted
losses amounting to 60,000 men in killed, prisoners, and wounded. By 1
October the Russian cavalry was again across the German frontier, and
Hindenburg was called south to attempt in Poland to frustrate the
Russian advance on Cracow which his turning movement in the north had
failed to check.
The call was urgent, for the conquest of Galicia portended disaster to
the Central Empires. Cracow was a key both to Berlin and Vienna; its
possession would turn the Oder and open the door to Silesia, which was
hardly less vital to Germany than Westphalia as a mining and
manufacturing district. It would also give access to Vienna and
facilitate the separation of Hungary, and all that that meant in the
Balkans, from the Teutonic alliance. Even without the loss of Cracow,
that of the rest of Galicia was serious enough; her oil-wells were the
main sources of the German supply of petroleum, and her Slav
population, once assured of the solidity of Russian success, would
throw off its allegiance to the Hapsburgs and entice the
Czecho-Slovaks on its borders to do the same. These prospects were not
visionary in September 1914. Jaroslav fell on the 23rd and Przemysl
was invested. Russian cavalry rode through the Carpathian passes into
the Hungarian plain, and west of the San patrols penetrated within a
hundred miles of Cracow. In her own interests as well as in those of
her ally, Germany was compelled to throw more of her weight against
the Russian front. The German and Austrian commands were unified under
Hindenburg, and having failed on the north he now tried to stop the
Russians by a blow at their centre in Poland. Here Ruszky was now in
command, while Ivanoff with Brussilov and Dmitrieff as his two
lieutenants controlled the armies in Galicia.
Like every German general Hindenburg believed in the offensive being
the best form of defence, and like all Germans in the advantage of
waging war in the enemy's country. His plan of attack was a concentric
advance on Warsaw along the three railway lines leading from Thorn,
Kalisch, and Czenstochowa, combined with an effort to cross the
Vistula at Josefow while the Austrians kept step in Galicia, relieved
Przemysl, and recovered Lemberg. There was even a movement southwards
from East Prussia which captured Mlawa, but it was only a raid which
did not hamper the Grand Duke's contemplated counter-offensive. Warsaw
had obvious attractions; Josefow was selected because it was far from
Russia's railway lines but near to Ostrowiec, the terminus of a line
which led from the German frontier; and the object of crossing the
Vistula was to take in the rear the great fortress of Ivangorod lower
down, and then to get behind Warsaw. The Grand Duke had divined these
intentions, while he concealed his own by misleading the Germans into
a belief that he proposed abandoning the Polish salient and retiring
on Brest. His real plan was to stand on the east bank of the Vistula
save for the defence of Warsaw which lies upon the west, and to
counter-attack round the north of the German left wing under the guns
of the great fortress of Novo Georgievsk. Rennenkampf was brought down
to command this movement, while Ruszky took charge of the defence at
Josefow.
On 10 October Hindenburg's centre moved out from Lodz and on the 15th
the battle was joined all along the Vistula. Warsaw was vigorously
defended by Siberian and Caucasian troops, aided by Japanese guns. The
battle raged from the 16th to the 19th, when the planned surprise from
Novo Georgievsk forced back the German left and threatened the centre
before Warsaw. Ruszky was still more successful with his stratagem at
Josefow. The Germans were suffered to construct their pontoons, cross
the river, and make for the railway between Warsaw and Lublin. Then on
the 21st the Russians came down upon them with a bayonet charge, and
not a man is said to have escaped across the river. Next day the
Russians also crossed at Novo Alexandria lower down, and a general
attack drove the Germans back to Radom on the 25th and thence from
Kielce on 3 November. Threatened by Rennenkampf on the north and
Ruszky on the south, the German centre had to abandon Skierniewíce,
Lowicz, and then Lodz, destroying every vestige of communication as
they withdrew and lavishly sacrificing men in rearguard actions to
protect their stores and their equipment.
Ironically enough the chief success of Hindenburg's offensive was
achieved by the Austrian subordinates he had come to help. Ivanoff was
a bad substitute for Ruszky, and Dankl temporarily retrieved the
reputation he had lost the previous month. Jaroslav was recovered,
Przemysl was relieved and abundantly revictualled for a second and a
longer siege, and an attack on Sambor bade fair to put the Austrians
once more in Lemberg. But the German defeat in Poland compelled an
Austrian retreat in Galicia. Przemysl was reinvested and the Russians
resumed their march with quickened pace on Cracow. This time they
threatened it first from the north of the Vistula, and on 9 November
their cavalry, pursuing the Germans, was at Miechow, only twenty miles
from Cracow. Moving more slowly through Galicia while Brussilov
occupied the Carpathian passes, Dmitrieff pushed his cavalry into
Wielitza south-east of the city on 6 December, and on the 8th he
fought a successful action in its outskirts. Farther north the
Cossacks had occupied Nieszawa, a few miles from Thorn, on 9 November,
and on the following day a Russian raid across the Silesian frontier
cut the German railway from Posen to Cracow. It was high time that the
Germans turned the weight of their offensive from the Flanders front
and the Channel ports to parrying the Russian menace on their East.
Austria was in no happier case. Her invasion of Serbia which had
opened the flood-gates of war had been almost submerged in the
torrent, and the punitive expedition she had planned had brought
punishment mainly upon herself, and that not merely at the hands of
Serbia's powerful patron, but at those of the little people who were
to be chastised. The early fighting was of a desultory character, and
Austria's two first-line corps having been withdrawn to meet the
Russians, the Serbs and Montenegrins made a combined effort on 12
August to invade Bosnia and capture Serajevo. No great progress was
made, and on the 16th the Austrians retaliated with the capture of
Shabatz in the north-west corner of Serbia. But next day the Serbs
routed a large Austrian force in the neighbourhood, and the Crown
Prince Alexander followed up this victory by another on the 18th
against the Austrians on the Jadar, who were seeking, in co-operation
with those at Shabatz, to cut the Serbs off from their base. The
result was that by the 24th the Austrians were practically cleared out
of the country, and Vienna announced that the punitive expedition,
which had cost 40,000 casualties and fifty guns, had accomplished its
object.
A second attempt to achieve it was, however, provoked by the invasion
of Bosnia with which the Serbs had supplemented their victory, and by
their capture of Semlin in order to stop the Austrian bombardment of
Belgrade. On 8 September the Austrians launched an attack across the
Drina which forms the boundary between Serbia and Bosnia, and the
battle raged till the 17th. Again the Serbs were victorious, though
they made no impression on Serajevo and the Austrians retained a
foothold on the eastern bank of the Drina; and for six weeks Serbia
was left in comparative peace. But at the end of October the entrance
of Turkey into the war and the relief afforded to Austria's troops
farther north by the increasing activity of Germany in Poland and
Galicia encouraged another effort; and under General Potiorek the
Austrians began a more ambitious campaign. The Serbian frontier
constituted a sharp salient which was indefensible against a superior
force, and the Austrians exploited this advantage by extending their
front of attack from Semendria on the Danube right round to Ushitza
beyond the Drina. Their object was to envelop the Serbs and seize,
firstly, Valievo, their advanced base, secondly, Kraguievatz the
Serbian arsenal, and, finally, Nish, to which the Serbian Court and
Government had withdrawn.
The only chance the Serbs had of success was to shorten their line by
withdrawing to the semicircular mountain ridge which lies south and
south-east of Valievo, and even so their prospects were gloomy. Two
wars had already depleted Serbia's manhood and her munitions, and her
numbers were sadly inferior to the Austrians. But individually her
troops were far better fighters than their opponents, and the Crown
Prince, Marshal Putnik, and General Míshitch, the commander of the 1st
Serbian Army, quite outclassed Potiorek in tactics, strategy, and
knowledge of the terrain. By 10 November the Austrians were in
Valievo, and Potiorek was inclined to rest on his laurels. For a fatal
fortnight he did nothing, and even detached three of his corps to
serve in the Carpathians against the Russians who were there doing
Serbia the service they had done in East Prussia to the Allies on the
Marne. In that interval Greek and other munitions were conveyed in
spite of Bulgar and Turkish intervention to the hard-pressed Serbians;
King Peter, old, blind, and deaf, came from Nish to make a stirring
appeal to his troops; and when on 1-3 December Potiorek once more
advanced to the ridges of Rudnik and Maljen, he encountered a
re-munitioned army, skilfully posted in strong positions and pledged
to death or victory. Victory was its guerdon all along the line; the
Austrian left centre and centre were broken on the 5th; at night their
right was shattered near Ushitza; and on the morrow the whole army was
in retreat, which soon became a rout. There were 80,000 casualties
before, on the 15th, the fugitives were back in their own land across
the Drina, the Danube, and the Save, leaving Belgrade once more in the
hands of the heroic Serbs.
Austria had, however, acquired a strange new friend in the Turk, who
had thrice besieged Vienna, and with whom she had waged an
intermittent warfare of the Crescent and the Cross for some four
centuries; and the blood-stained hand of Turkey was stretched out to
save its "natural allies"--to quote Bernhardi--at Buda-Pesth and
Potsdam. There was, indeed, a bond of sympathy, for in each of the
enemy capitals a ruling caste oppressed one or more subject
nationalities. Prussia stood for the Junker domination of the German
tribes; Austria, for Teutonic government of Czechs, Slovaks, and
Poles; Hungary, for Magyar dictation to Jugo-Slavs and Rumanes; and
Turkey, for the exploitation or extermination of Armenians, Greeks,
and Arabs. The Young Turk, who had dispossessed Abdul Hamid in 1908,
only differed from the Old in being more efficient and less of a
gentleman, and in seeking his inspiration from Krupp's guns and
Treitschke's philosophy instead of from the Koran. He was a Turk
without the Turk's excuse, and the adventurer Enver, who inaugurated
the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress by assassinating his
rivals, was willing to give Germany control of the Berlin-Baghdad
route in return for a free hand with the subject nationalities of the
Ottoman Empire. Russia was the common obstacle to both ambitions; but,
Russia finally crippled, the Balkan States would become Turco-Teutonic
provinces, and the Near East a German avenue into Asia, while Egypt
might be recovered for the Sultan and made a base for German
penetration of Africa.
Millions of German money had already been invested in this scheme, and
the Kaiser's versatile piety had assumed a Mohammedan hue in the East.
He had proclaimed himself the friend of every Mohammedan under the
sun, and had carefully refrained from wounding the feelings of the
authors of the Armenian massacres. The defeat of his Turkish friends
in the Balkan Wars had been almost as great a blow to him as to them,
and he had seen in the subsequent discord of the victors a chance of
crushing them all. Rumania, he thought, was tied to his chariot-wheels
by its Hohenzollern king, and Greece by its Hohenzollern queen; and
Bulgaria could be won through its hatred of the successful Serbs.
Serbia conquered, the corridor would be complete; but Serbia could not
be permanently crushed while Russia remained intact, and Turkey would
be a useful ally in the Russian campaign. There were millions of
Mohammedans under Russian rule, and a Turkish invasion of the
Caucasus, even if it did not stimulate insurrection in Russia, would
keep hundreds of thousands of Russian troops from East Prussia,
Poland, or Galicia.
Apart from the vulgar bribes which affected the Young Turk politicians
there were other motives to move the populace. A Jehad against the
Christian might stir the honest fanatic; well-to-do Turks had invested
some of their savings in two Turkish Dreadnoughts under construction
in England which the British Government had commandeered; and two
German warships, the Goeben and the Breslau, had arrived at the Golden
Horn to impress or to encourage the Ottoman mind. Such were some of
the straws which finally broke the back of sober resistance to the
warlike gamble of Enver and Talaat; but the substantial argument was
the chance which was offered for Turkey to get back some of what her
inveterate Russian enemy had seized in the course of a century and her
inveterate British friend had pocketed as the price of her protection.
On 29 October a horde of Bedouins invaded the Sinai Peninsula while
Turkish torpedo boats raided Odessa, and on 1 November the British
ambassador departed from Constantinople. The two Central Empires had
enlisted their first ally, and the war had taken another stride
towards Armageddon.