The Eastern Front 1914-1917 Page 15

  Conrad was now desperate to relieve Przemyśl, and could only repeat his offensive, for Kusmanek, commanding the garrison, said he would be starved out by mid-March. Twenty divisions were assembled on Boroević’s front for a new attack, but many of them existed only on paper. In any case, Boroević complained, and had half of the front taken from him, and given to another army commander, Böhm-Ermolli, who could be trusted to be more sparing with recognition of reality. In the mountains, things went much as before. Böhm-Ermoll’s counter-offensive opened on 17th February, but no-one noticed. Ice and snow condemned the troops to passivity, only the guns firing ineffectually at Russian lines. Throughout the latter part of February, troops were driven into piecemeal attacks that won at best a few hundred yards of snow. The main group of Böhm-Ermolli’s force—50,000 men under another general for whom Conrad had a mysterious fondness, Tersztyánszky—sank in a week to 10,000 men—bewildered, frozen, often not understanding what their officers were saying. Kralowetz, chief of staff to one of the army corps, later wrote that the Russians’ counter-attacks succeeded because they encountered ‘men already cut to pieces and defenceless… Every day hundreds froze to death; the wounded who could not drag themselves off were bound to die; riding became impossible; and there was no combating the apathy and indifference that gripped the men’. Some 800,000 men are said to have disappeared from the army’s fighting strength during the Carpathian operation—three-quarters of them from sickness. This was eight times the number of men supposed to be saved in Przemyśl. The Austro-Hungarian peoples paid heavily for Conrad’s inability to confess error.

  Nothing, now, could save Przemyśl. Conrad’s adjutant confessed: ‘There is nothing more the troops can do’.17 Falkenhayn would not send reinforcements—merely remarking that he had always predicted failure. Ludendorff had nothing to spare. Success in the Bukovina was too limited, too remote, to affect the issue. By mid-March, the Przemyśl garrison elected to surrender—making an attempt at a sortie that one British observer described as ‘a burlesque’.* On 22nd March, Kusmanek

  Winter battle in Masuria, early 1915.

  surrendered, with a garrison of 120,000 men. The way was now open for a full-scale Russian offensive in the Carpathians; and the direction of events on the other front, Ruzski’s, now inclined Stavka to take up this plan.

  Late in January, Ludendorff moved his headquarters to Insterburg, in East Prussia. The four new corps, and those of VIII Army, together with troops drawn from the central front, were now to form two armies, in the eastern part of East Prussia—X (Eichhorn) and VIII (Below). There would be another ‘pincer-movement’—X Army from north of the Angerapp Lines, VIII Army from south of them, directed at the Russian X Army. The Germans had fifteen infantry and two cavalry divisions to eleven and two and some artillery superiority—seventy-seven light, twenty-two heavy batteries to 154 and forty-eight. In terms of numbers, the forces were roughly equal, at about 150,000 men. Ludendorff’s plan was bold, and in reality not very sensible. Weather counted against it, the attackers on occasion running into blizzards. No doubt a tactical success could be obtained. But as the two armies moved east, their southern flank would be lengthened, and on this there were substantial Russian forces, capable of acting offensively. But Ludendorff underrated the possibilities of this, and imagined he could force the Russians to evacuate Poland—Germans and Austrians pressing them from each flank.

  The offensive got off to a good start, on 7th February. It led to a considerable tactical success—largely because the Russian X Army produced a repetition of earlier Russian patterns. In the first place, it was strategically isolated. Stavka and Ruzski were busy forming XII Army, to the south-west—six corps, to advance in mid-February against the southern frontier of East Prussia. Only two of its corps were in line, the rest not arriving till some time later—4. Siberian Corps and the Guard at Warsaw, 15. Corps at Gomel, 20. Corps still attached to X Army. Intelligence did as usual report German troop-movements in East Prussia. But the rumours were dismissed: on 6th February, Danilov was still saying that ‘they are probably distributing their forces in the central theatre’; while Ruzski s director of operations, Bonch-Bruyevitch, felt that ‘they will not dare to attempt anything in East Prussia, with XII Army on their flank’. Such alarms as occurred merely prompted acceleration of this new army’s concentration. Consequently, X Army was neglected, with no strategic reserve ready to assist it.

  This would not, maybe, have mattered so much if X Army had been in reasonable condition. The proportions on its front were considerably less in the Germans’ favour than were proportions on the western front in the Allies’ favour; and yet the Allies generally failed to secure tactical victories of any scale, because German defences were sensibly-arranged. A suitable method of defence could, in 1915, cancel out even three-fold superiority in guns, and more in numbers. But X Army did not have a sensible method. It had been disheartened by activities since August 1914—a lion-hearted crossing and re-crossing of the border, at much expense. Commanders had, seemingly, learned little—had even, in the case of Pflug,19 been dismissed for attempting to apply such lessons as had been absorbed. The trench-system was primitive—at best a thin, interrupted, ditch, Over half of the divisions were second-line ones, containing only a tenth of their numbers from first-line troops; and since, in the Russian army, artillery commanders regarded such divisions as barely worth saving, there was always a tendency for guns to be saved at the expense of men. Moreover, the positions had been changed, on the right, shortly before. Following skirmishes further north, the right of the army had been pushed forward; and the expected co-operation of X Army with the offensive of XII had led to an over-extension of the front-line—on the right, to the edges of the Lasdehnen forest, where German troop-movements were effectively concealed. That two of the three divisions on the right had been told to garrison Kovno in case of emergency, did not lend X Army greater weight; while, to hold the newly-extended line, the commander—Sievers—had had to commit virtually all of his reserves to the front line. He warned Ruzski early in February: ‘Nothing can prevent X Army from being exposed to the same fate as I Army in September 1914.’20 These fears were waved aside: XII Army would solve everything. Yepanchin, commanding the right, was similarly told not to bother commanders with his tales of woe.

  The position worsened in the first two days of the offensive, because weather-conditions delayed the German attack, in its full weight; the German movements could be dismissed as ‘isolated groups’ such that the attackers gained much advantage from Russian commanders’ failure to respond. The whole of VIII Army, attacking on 7th February, was dismissed as ‘a small German detachment’. This army encountered, first, a relatively isolated second-line division, that regarded its main task as the protection of the fortress of Osowiec, to the south; the German attack was thought to be an attack on this, not on X Army’s flank. Most of this division disintegrated, though it lost only eight of its fifty guns. By 10th February, VIII Army had advanced some way into the left flank of the Russian X Army. Thereafter, a soldiers’ battle developed, as the Germans split their forces between attacks to south and east—both sets, in the event, held. The true tactical success came with the northern part of Ludendorff’s ‘pincer-movement’. On 9th February the full weight of this was felt, initially by two cavalry divisions on the extreme right. These broke up, ‘disappearing from the horizon’. The three second-line divisions did not much better—suddenly struck, in frozen bivouacs. Yepanchin thought that an attack was being launched on Kovno, which he had been told to protect; and he led his men there, himself allegedly at their head. His divisions, unused to action, disintegrated—again, typically, losing only 17 of 150 guns, as artillery left the ‘cattle’ in the lurch. By 11th February, the Russian right had disintegrated, and German troops were stretched across the centre of X Army—by mid-February arriving in the rear of this centre, which contained three corps, one of which was engaged with VIII Army.

  The central one of thes
e three corps—20. (Bulgakov)—was to be surrounded. X Army command should have ordered retreat in time, but it did not know what was happening. Only on 14th February did Yepanchin announce himself from Kovno, wondering what had happened to his division. Until then, the whole of the German X Army was thought to be ‘about a corps’. Yepanchin’s feebleness was considered responsible for what had happened. In any case, since Ruzski felt that the main German blow was that of VIII Army, towards Osowiec, on 11th February he ordered XII Army to prepare for a counter-offensive with this in mind. The central corps of X Army were told not to retreat, in case they endangered the new manoeuvre. Only on 14th February was a retreat begun—the southernmost corps occupying one road, the northernmost one the other, so that the central one had to stand and fight. By the time it could withdraw, German troops had already penetrated the forests of Augustów in its rear, and controlled the roads. Conditions were such that the Russian groups that did escape were unaware of 20. Corps’s fate, and so did little to help. Four German corps gathered in a circle around Bulgakov’s group, and between 16th and 21st February it was pressed closer and closer—in the end, two divisional staffs being forced to use the same forester’s hut. From battle-casualties and stragglers, regiments ran down to a few hundreds, instead of three thousand men—in the case of 105th Orenburg regiment, to less than a hundred. On 21st February Bulgakov surrendered, with 12,000 men, most of them wounded. This was given out by Ludendorff as a new Tannenberg, and so it appears in his memoirs. There was talk of 100,000 prisoners; in practice, the figure was 56,000 for losses of all types in the Russian X Army, although since most of 20. Corps’s guns were lost, the Germans took 185 guns.21 German losses have not been revealed.

  This was a tactical success like many others in the First World War—barren of strategic consequence. It led the Germans to extend their flank into Russian territory; yet there could be no advance to the east without security towards the south, and much of VIII Army had to be diverted into besieging the fortress of Osowiec (from mid-February to early March). This failed: Osowiec was well-defended, and enjoyed a position of some strength, commanding the few ways across marshes of the Bobr. It provided an object-lesson in the proper rôle of fortresses in the First World War: its various works were not strong and the defenders could not, therefore, have many illusions—they were almost forced to a flexible defence based on field-positions, and the Germans, despite an expenditure of shell calculated to be 250,000, failed to make progress.22 Further west, there were German attacks from East Prussia against the newly-forming XII Army. On 24th February a well-executed manoeuvre against the town of Przasnysz resulted in capture of 30,000 Russians; but an equally-well executed manoeuvre on the Russian side resulted in capture of 30,000 Germans a week later, with sixty guns. Early in March, the pressure of XII and X Armies resulted in a German withdrawal to the frontiers. Tactical successes had balanced each other out, and Ludendorff, with forty-two and a half divisions to sixty-four, decided to abandon further schemes. At bottom, Falkenhayn had been right: the winter offensives had been foolhardy.

  The Russian offensives had also failed to produce much result. Grand Duke Nicholas opposed any further attack on East Prussia ‘where we should simply be exposed to the East Prussian railway-network’. Ruzski was told to take up a good defensive position. He protested, but received word that the Grand Duke’s ‘will’ was ‘unflinching’. What this meant was that Ivanov and Stavka had now taken up a different scheme—a renewed Carpathian offensive. If Ruzski were to be pushed onto the defensive, it would be sensible for him to abandon the more exposed parts of the Russian line in the central theatre. But the Grand Duke would not have this, because it could weaken the south-western position. Ruzski was left holding a front longer than needed, and his troops were committed to it such that few reserves could be created. When Stavka elected to launch a further Carpathian attack, Ruzski’s nerve cracked: he resigned, alleging ‘extreme exhaustion, brought on by general weakening of the organism’. Alexeyev—supposed by the Grand Duke to be more sympathetic to Stavka’s plans—took his place, towards the end of March.

  By then, various factors arose to require a Carpathian offensive, to knock out Austria-Hungary.23 First, there was the simple failure to produce ‘decision’ on the German front. There was also the prospect of an Anglo-French coup against the Dardanelles, an opening-up of the Balkan theatre and the intervention of Italy. It was clear that Russia’s political and military interests ‘powerfully demanded’ concentration against Austria-Hungary: Russians, rather than Italians, or French clients such as the Romanians, should take Budapest. Moreover, this was the Russians’ only way of helping the western Powers in the eastern Mediterranean. The Russian front against Turkey was far to the east, in the Caucasus, and although, here, the Russian army generally had the better part, supply-difficulties prevented any deep penetration of Turkish territory. In any case, most people, German and Russian, assumed that the Dardanelles would be opened up by the British—the Russian Council of Ministers, for instance, ordering coal from England on the supposition that it could be transported through the Dardanelles.24

  Ivanov was therefore instructed, just before the fall of Przemyśl, to complete the ruin of Austria-Hungary. But, typically, he was not given enough force for this. Two-thirds of the Russian army remained frozen on the other front. Alexeyev, far from sympathising with Ivanov, as before, now adopted in redoubled form the policies of Ruzski, and resisted suggestions that he should part with troops. A second-line division was at last extracted from him; and he promised, also, 3. Caucasus Corps—although it took a month to arrive, even then requiring a ‘categorical order’. Ivanov thus had barely over thirty divisions for his Carpathian offensive. To make up, he took troops from his own sector of the central theatre; but, because of a need to impress Romania, they were sent, together with others, to the remote, sometimes inaccessible Bukovina, and spent the next month in forming a new, IX, Army. The troops of February were reinforced, in the Carpathians, only by three second-line divisions, drawn from the former blockading army at Przemyśl; otherwise, III Army could only weaken its right wing, on the Dunajec-Biala positions near Cracow, in order to create sufficient force, for the attack of its left wing in the mountains.

  The Carpathian operation went on in much the same conditions as before—‘a labyrinth of mountains’, with periods of thaw more frequent now, than before. The Russian forces were hardly stronger than the Austro-Hungarian ones, at least in terms of divisions. In terms of morale, there was, however, a great difference. In its March offensive, the Austrian II Army had lost heavily—52,000 men in the week preceding Ivanov’s attack, 17,000 of them from frost-bite. Südarmee had lost two-thirds of its strength. The Austrian IΙI Army, to the west, had also been hard-hit. Windischgrätz, Austrian liaison officer with German troops, said that 10. Corps was ‘no good at all’; in II Army ‘the mood is very bad’; in Teschen, Conrad’s headquarters, the mood was ‘below zero. The chief never stops grumbling’.25 Russian attacks came in a series of short jabs through the valleys, broken off for lack of force after they had won initial successes. This, in mountain-conditions, was an excellent way of proceeding, for the Russians completely confused Austrian reserves without, themselves, running into insuperable supply-difficulties. Yet the Austrian commanders could not afford the general retreat that might have saved things: once they lost the mountains, they thought, they would be pushed back on Budapest. Their armies stayed in the mountains, losing thousands of prisoners. An attack on III Army produced crisis; appeals went from Conrad to Ludendorff and Falkenhayn; by 6th April a new German force—Beskidenkorps, under Marwitz—was made up of troops from Ludendorff’s front and Südarmee (two and a half divisions). Its intervention, together with the problems of supply brought by the Russians’ advance, brought the Carpathian offensive to a halt. On 10th April, Ivanov stopped it, explaining: high losses, exhaustion, thawing of the roads that produced impassability, and snow had brought things to a halt; even the most essen
tial supplies could be brought up ‘only with the greatest difficulty’. He also complained, not wrongly, that inactivity on the rest of the front had allowed the Germans to send in reserves. Even so, the operation should be renewed. More troops must come; and the new IX Army, assembling on the Dniester, would bring decisive results. In this way, mid-April found the south-western command in a mood to capture Budapest.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Austro-Hungarian Emergency

  In January 1915 Ludendorff had told Falkenhayn, ‘Austria’s emergency is our great incalculable’; and by spring, with the fall of Przemyśl, the Habsburg Monarchy appeared to have reached the limit of its endurance. The Austro-Hungarian army was small, badly-armed, badly-led; the Carpathian front brought an uninterrupted tale of woe. Cramon, German liaison officer, reported to Falkenhayn that the Austrians were ‘exhausted, rotten’. II Army had lost two-thirds of its men; ‘then there is the business of the unreliability of some nationalities’. It became more and more difficult for the army leaders to count on Czech or Ruthene troops in battle against Russia. Slav troops ran through their commanders’ hands and, after the Carpathian campaign, it became clear that the Austro-Hungarian army could only survive with German help. The Beskidenkorps of early April could only be a stop-gap, for the imminence of Italian entry into the war would make the Habsburg Monarchy’s military position impossible.