The World Crisis

by Winston S. Churchill

  The eastern frontiers of the combatants seemed to be devised to set the hardest problems to the generals. The reader who gazes on the map—and if he will not gaze, he should not read further, for he will comprehend nothing—will readily discern the governing factor of the Eastern Front. The Polish salient, a bulge of territory 230 miles long by 200 miles wide, thrust itself deep into the structure of the central allies. Its western edge abutted upon the highly-important industrial and mining areas of Silesia. At its extreme point Russian territory was only 180 miles from Berlin. No natural frontiers, no broad rivers or mountain chains or desert tracts separated the Slav and Teutonic Empires. Painted wooden posts, notices in different languages, a change of gauge in the railways, the military and political decisions of bygone generations, the history of warring races, alone divided the three great Powers.

  Diagonally across the salient flows through a sunken bed the broad, deep, sluggish, muddy current of the River Vistula. In the middle lay the city and fortress of Warsaw. This extensive, fortified region was the greatest repository of Russian military supplies and establishments. It was a city of eight hundred thousand persons, replete with barracks, hospitals and magazines, guarded by a circle of forts nearly as wide and as highly reputed as those of Antwerp. After Moscow, it was the second railway centre of Russia with six main lines of railway, several of them double, radiating from it. To this point all the military strength of the Russian Empire through Kiev, through Moscow, through St. Petersburg, could, if necessary, be drawn.

  Russian Poland is ‘The Land of the Plain.’ West of the Vistula it is an open, undulating expanse of poor soil, 300 to 400 feet above the sea-level, nourishing the sugar-beet industry and a sprinkling of industrial towns. To the southward, upon the plateau of Lublin, wheat and orchards abound. East of the Vistula the country becomes increasingly marshy and wooded, until seventy or eighty miles east of Warsaw an invader is confronted with the 300-mile barrier of the Pripyat Marshes. Here is a region as large as Scotland of primeval bog and forest. The roads, few and far between, are causeways, and villages rise as separate islands amid bottomless, impassable swamps. The Pripyat Marshes, the cradle of the Slav race, the last sanctuary of the Aurochs, have now in the orientalization of Russia become the dividing gulf between Europe and Asia. The Polish salient is flanked on the north by the projecting tongue of East Prussia, stretching along the Baltic shore. Its western face fronts Silesia and Posen. On the south it is embraced by Galicia. Each of these regions requires a separate view.

  East Prussia, reaching beyond the Niemen River, is a land of lakes and marsh, of forest and woodland, a country of soft though monotonous beauty, but cultivated, drained and roaded by Prussian industry to a degree far above that of Russia or Russian Poland. The main military feature of East Prussia was the chain of lakes and fortifications known in this war as the ‘Angerapp Line,’ thirty miles within the frontier and running north and south for nearly sixty. This strategic obstacle, held together by the minor fortress of Lötzen in its middle, formed an impenetrable shield. It could not be pierced: it could be avoided by a Russian march along the Baltic shore towards the port and fortress of Königsberg, or by an upward thrust from Warsaw in the direction of Danzig at the mouth of the Vistula.

  The Angerapp Line and East Prussia generally was but an outwork in Germany’s eastern defences. Their main rampart lay along the Vistula from Danzig to the fortresses of Graudenz and Thorn and thence, quitting the Vistula, by Posen and Breslau. These last three strong places all carried powerful local garrisons, rising to thirty or forty thousand fortress troops apiece on mobilization. All were elaborately prepared military centres, able to act as bases for armies. All were linked together and to Central Germany by a magnificent system of commercial and strategic railways, second in efficiency only to those of the Western Front. Upon the German eastern frontier, therefore, the reader must bear in mind the following factors, which will frequently play their part in this account: First, the projecting tongue of East Prussia, with its Angerapp Line, parting a wave of invasion like a breakwater; secondly, the crescent of the four fortresses and entrenched camps of Königsberg, Thorn, Posen and Breslau; thirdly, the German Vistula dividing the beloved outwork of East Prussia from the main homeland; and lastly—and most important of all—the reticulation of the German railways joining the fortresses to the Fatherland and to each other, and enabling great numbers of men to be moved in the shortest time from north or south, from one end of the crescent to the other.

  On the south the Polish salient is flanked by Galicia, which is a wooded, rolling, well-watered region from 700 to 1,200 feet above sea-level. The Austrian frontier indents upon the salient in a wide 330-mile arc. Across the chord of this arc from Cracow to the Roumanian frontier run the Carpathian mountains from 4,000 to 8,500 feet high, crossed by six lines of rail and several easy passes, and descending on their northern slopes by numberless terraces and spurs to the great plains of Russia. Owing to the general level of the plateau from which they rise, the Carpathians are hardly recognizable on the spot as a mountain range. The three principal cities of Galicia—Cracow, the heart of Polish nationalism and culture; Przemsyl, the military, and Lemberg, the cosmopolitan and commercial centre—were all fortified and formed a line of strongly defended bases and depots facing north, and a strategic structure for the counter-invasion of the Polish salient by forces of the greatest magnitude.

  In these surroundings the defence of the Russian salient against an Austro-German attack was a problem of the utmost difficulty. Indeed it was realized that the defence of its western extremity was impossible. All the Russian forces deployed west of Warsaw were exposed to being struck from the north and the south in flank and rear by Teutonic armies marching towards each other from well-prepared military areas at opposite points of the compass. Even more impracticable, as we shall see, was a Russian invasion of Silesia so long as East Prussia and Galicia remained under German and Austrian control. The Russians had therefore sought to protect themselves by an elaborate defended line withdrawn at all points a long way within their own frontier. Their fortress system extended from Kovno, through Warsaw to Dubno. This system comprised four distinct groups of fortresses. In the north opposite East Prussia the fortresses of Kovno, Olita and Grodno defended the line of the River Niemen. Next in order Osovets, Lomja, Ostrolenka, Rojan, and Pultusk defended the line of the River Narev. In the centre lay the triangle Warsaw, Ivangorod, Brest-Litovsk, with its subsidiary system Warsaw, Novo Georgievsk, Zegrzie. To the south facing Galicia was the smaller Volhynia triangle formed by the fortresses of Lutsk, Dubno, and Rovno. Of all these strong places, Warsaw, Novo Georgievsk, Ivangorod and Kovno were at the outbreak of the war in the course of being modernized. The remainder were out of date and many indeed largely dismantled.

  To sum up, the Russian frontier stretching 900 miles from Memel on the Baltic to the Bukovina was in the highest degree vulnerable by combined Austro-German invasion. Unless in such a war the Russians successfully took the offensive or evacuated Poland, they must expect to be continually attacked and invaded from deadly and unexpected directions. On the other hand, no general advance was possible for them until they had first of all conquered East Prussia in the north and reached the summits of the Carpathians in the south. Until their armies stood in one line from Danzig to Cracow, and also held the passes of the Carpathians, no advance into Germany or Austria was possible. To gain this line by overwhelming numbers and thus straighten their front was the first indispensable Russian objective. To hold East Prussia and Galicia and thence to grip and harry the Polish salient constituted the obvious strategy of the Teutonic Powers.

  All the opening events in the East were dominated by German strategy in the West. In his plans in 1890 for a ‘war on two fronts,’ the first Moltke intended to stand on the defensive against France and throw the main strength of Germany against Russia. There has recently been published upon the authority of the Reichsarchiv, the German official history department, a mos
t important memoir drawn up by the second Moltke, undated, but certainly written after February 1913. The nephew, already Chief of the German Staff, explains why the plan of his uncle could no longer be followed. In the twenty-three years that had passed Russia had improved her communications and quickened her mobilization. The French army was much stronger and better trained. It was by no means certain that a French offensive, if made, would be towards Alsace-Lorraine. Germany could not relinquish all initiative and offensive in the West. The invasion of Russia would be frustrated by the retreat of the Russian armies into the depths of their country. The war would therefore be a long one. If the offensive were taken against France on the other hand, both armies would be close to the frontier and a ‘decision would be rapidly reached.’ If Germany were successful, the German armies would soon be free to turn eastward.

  These were the main grounds which led Count Schlieffen to reverse the strategy of the first Moltke. He drew up the celebrated ‘Schlieffen Plan’ in which the whole strength of Germany was to be directed from the outset with the utmost rapidity upon France by means of a wheeling movement through Belgium. This would avoid the long system of fortifications which guarded the French frontiers from Switzerland to Verdun, and would lead directly into the heart of France. If the superior numbers of the Germans were used in this way, the French armies would be defeated and driven south or actually caught and destroyed within six weeks. Count Schlieffen developed his scheme with ruthless logic. Every sacrifice should be made and every risk accepted in order to ensure the overpowering weight of the German advance through Belgium. If Alsace-Lorraine were invaded, if East Prussia and even Silesia were overrun, if Belgian neutrality were violated and England brought in as a hostile force, still everything should be staked upon a single, simple, vast operation which if successful would end the war with France almost as soon as it had begun.

  All this has long been well known; but it was not until the publication of the 1913 memoir of the second Moltke that anyone realized to what extreme conclusions Count Schlieffen was prepared to press his thought. He proposed literally that ‘the whole German army should be deployed in the West and nothing left against Russia.’ The second Moltke continues:

  ‘The Field-Marshal (Count Schlieffen) states that in 1866 Prussia left nothing to oppose France and directed the whole of her force upon Austria. Similarly in 1870 Germany left nothing opposite Austria. First Prussia in 1866 against Austria, and then Germany in 1870 against France, by employing superior forces achieved rapid and brilliant successes; and France in the first case, and Austria in the second did not dare to cross the frontiers thus left open.’

  Having thus given absolute effect to the clarity of his conceptions, Count Schlieffen died.

  The German General Staff adopted his plan and cast aside the work of the first Moltke. France in 1866 and Austria in 1870, they observed, were neutral states free to await the result of the opening battles before committing themselves to the war. But Russia is now

  ‘bound beforehand by treaty to take the part of France and will mobilize at once, before a decision has been reached. Thus it is not clear how Russia would be prevented from crossing over our open Eastern frontier by German successes in the West.’

  ‘Austria too… if left unassisted by Germany, would in view of Russia’s great numerical superiority remain on the defensive, and give Russia complete freedom of action. If the Russians were marching on Berlin, France, even if heavily defeated, would be spurred on to an extreme effort and finally German forces would have to be recalled to defend the capital.’

  These reasonings seem sound; but they constitute the first inroad upon the integrity of the Schlieffen plan.

  Time passed; the first Moltke was dead; Schlieffen was dead; and the second Moltke addressed himself to the facts of 1913.

  ‘It is not pleasant,’ he wrote, ‘to begin a campaign by violating the territory of a neutral neighbouring State. But when it is a matter of the existence of our State, all regard for others must drop into the background.’

  He saw no hope of coming to any diplomatic arrangement with Belgium for permission to cross her territory. He stated definitely

  ‘the violation of Belgian neutrality will also make England our enemy…. Even if Germany gave the most solemn assurances that she would voluntarily evacuate Belgium after a successful campaign against France, no single person in England would believe such assurances.’

  The provocation to Great Britain was not however deemed important,

  ‘as England will actively take part in the war on the side of our adversaries, whether we march through Belgium or not… for she fears the German hegemony and true to her policy of maintaining European equilibrium will do all she can to hinder the increase of German power. We shall have therefore to reckon England among the number of our enemies.’

  He continues:

  ‘No help from Italy is to be expected. She was to have sent 5 corps and two cavalry divisions to the Upper Rhine but in the late autumn of 1912 she declared that, hindered by the occupation of Libya, she could not send this army.’

  Lastly he weighed the consequences of marching across the narrow strip of Dutch territory called in the pre-war discussions of the British General Staff ‘the Limburg appendix.’

  ‘Dutch neutrality would be violated and Holland also would join our enemies. The disadvantage of this is not so much that we should have to reckon with four Dutch divisions, about 70,000 strong, as the following: In a war of the Triple Alliance against the Entente, not only the German coast would be blockaded, but more or less the Austrian and Italian. Import of provisions would be extremely difficult for Germany. So long as Holland remains neutral, importation through that country under the American flag will be possible. If we make Holland our enemy we shall stop the last air hole through which we can breathe.’13

  If the first principle of the Schlieffen plan was NUMBERS, the second was SPEED. From this arose a feature which governed German military thought, and when the crisis came paralyzed all efforts to prevent war. The turning movement through Belgium could not begin effectively till the city of Liége had been captured and its four lines of railway put in working order under German control. Liége guarded the bottle-neck through which two whole German armies must pass before they could deploy fan-wise and then swing round to the Southward. Its railways were the only means by which they could live once they were in action. Everything therefore turned upon the seizure of Liége immediately upon a declaration of war with France. The mobilization of European armies took weeks. Liége was a question of days counted in hours. Its capture could not wait for mobilization. Six brigades of infantry and a mass of artillery with cyclists and motor-cars had therefore been held year after year near the German frontier on a peace footing of permanent readiness to strike. Nearly three weeks before the main shock of the armies could begin, these six German brigades must storm Liége. It was this factor that destroyed all chance that the armies might mobilize and remain guarding their frontiers while under their shield conferences sought a path to peace. The German plan was of such a character that the most irrevocable steps of actual war, including the violation of neutral territory, must be taken at the first moment of mobilization. Mobilization therefore spelt war. None of the Governments except the German and French, and none of the Sovereigns seem to have understood this; nor have historians yet brought it home to the public in any country. We shall see in the next chapter how powerless were the efforts set on foot in the closing days of the crisis to avert the catastrophe. Here was the cause.

  Surveying the scene the second Moltke decided to adhere to the Schlieffen plan with modifications. He left an army in East Prussia besides strong garrisons of second-line troops belonging to the German eastern fortresses. In this, no doubt, he was justified. He proceeded however, from motives of so-called prudence, to alter the proportions of the German troops who were to face the French fortress line and those who were to invade France through Belgium. He added approximately on
e-fifth to the strength of the defenders of Alsace-Lorraine and reduced by one-fifth the forces of the Great Invasion. But this was not the Schlieffen plan any more. It was a compromise which defaced and in the event destroyed the original conception. Had the shade of Schlieffen risen before the second Moltke’s table and given his counsel, he might well have said: ‘Unless you succeed in your invasion through Belgium, you will have lost the war. Unless you are prepared to stake overwhelming strength upon it, do not call it my plan. If you are not going to follow my plan, had you not better go back to the designs of your uncle? Let the French break their strength upon the German fronts. Avoid ranging Belgium and probably England in the ranks of your enemies. Establish yourself and your ally Austria victoriously in the East. Gather to you Bulgaria, Roumania and Turkey. Hold Italy to her engagements by the strength which you will have given to Austria; and later on we will make a fresh plan for France.’

  Although these various alternatives were present in the mind of the French and Russian staffs, they could only guess which would be adopted, and with what emphasis in any quarter. But Austria was Germany’s ally. In the conversations which Conrad had held with Moltke (we have now finished with his uncle) in Berlin in March 1909 it had been agreed that Austria should withstand the Russian offensive while Germany marched against France in so-called accordance with the Schlieffen plan. Conrad expected, however, that seven or eight German army corps would be left in the East, and that the Germans would be strong enough to aid him by a considerable offensive from the north into the Polish salient. Both in conversation and in correspondence the name of Syedlets, a town a hundred miles to the east of Warsaw, recurs. This name played a persistent part in Conrad’s thought. He imagined a Napoleonic scheme in which the Russians in millions would be massed in the Polish salient, while he, Conrad, would advance northwards from Galicia and joining hands with the Germans near Syedlets cut the whole lot off. This was his dream and prepossession.