The Eastern Front 1914-1917

by Norman Stone

  But these inevitable consequences of the age were made much more serious for the Russian army because of its peculiar structure. The civil war that had gone on within the army before 1914 resulted in absence of a real plan for war: troops were frittered away between different operations, since there was no single authority to impose its will on the army. Moreover, when war broke out, that single authority did not emerge even when an ostensible supreme command (Stavka) was appointed. Stavka, in the early phase of the war, was a helpless victim of circumstances. The pre-war conflicts between soldiers who wanted to concentrate against Germany, and soldiers who wanted to concentrate against Austria-Hungary, had not been resolved. Instead, the army was split into two groups, and set to conduct separate operations. There were two separate ‘fronts’ or army groups: the north-western front, under Zhilinski, with three armies, to face Germany, and the south-western front, under Ivanov and Alexeyev, to face Austria-Hungary, with four armies. The construction of these separate groups was not undertaken because army leaders recognised that strategic handling of large armies needed army groups. Rather, it followed from men’s recognition that compromise was impossible; better have two different operations. Real power was held by the separate army groups, and not by Stavka.

  The supreme command itself was botched together at the last moment. Sukhomlinov, as war minister, had been expected to assume the supreme command. But he calculated that Stavka would remain powerless—as indeed, in a short war, would have been the case—and no doubt also foresaw defeats, in the first period of the war, because of Germany’s rapid mobilisation. With a show of patriotic endeavour, he offered the post to the Tsar.12 The Tsar calculated much as Sukhomlinov did. There was need of ‘a great poster’ to fill the post; and on 2nd August, it was offered to Grand Duke Nicholas, who had been expecting only the command of VI Army, along the Baltic coast. He knew neither the plans nor his subordinates. Yanushkevitch, translated from his post in Saint Petersburg to be chief of staff to the new commander-in-chief, went to see him at his estate. The other officers met him only at field-headquarters in Baranovitchi. Stavka itself was scraped together at the last moment. Yanushkevitch, the ostensible chief of staff, was a figurehead—chosen in the usual Sukhomlinov way to prevent anyone dangerous from taking over the job, and surviving in it from sheer force of characterlessness. The real force in Stavka was Danilov, who, despite his title (‘Quarter-Master-General’) was effective director of military operations. It was characteristic that Danilov took over the only suitable building in Baranovitchi, with his staff of fifteen officers, while Yanushkevitch had part of a railway-carriage, and a single adjutant. The Grand Duke himself was still more of a figurehead than Yanushkevitch. He entertained foreign military representatives, signed orders, and surrounded himself with aristocratic aides-de-camp, among them his brothers (whom he referred to as ‘my sleeping-pills’). In important matters, he was silent: at a conference of the front-commands late in September, for instance, he stayed in a different room from the generals ‘so as not to get in their way’. Foreigners were quite impressed with him, and his men are also supposed to have had much affection for him—though, since they saw him only once, this is difficult to account for. A few other officers were tacked on to make up numbers—Ronzhin was named as head of field transport, while Kondzerovski, who had been secretary of the ‘attestation commission’, dealing with senior promotions, was told at the last moment to join Stavka as adjutant-general (dezhurny general). He and Ronzhin shared a carriage, and neither had any staff to speak of. If Stavka had been a real supreme command, these conditions would of course have been laughably inadequate. But it was a mere shadow; and the number of officers, though far too small to discharge the duties of a supreme command, was also large enough in comparison with the officers conception of their duties. None of them seem to have had much difficulty in composing voluminous diaries, or in writing long, daily letters to their wives; they spent long hours at the table—Kondzerovski having arranged for meals to be prepared ‘by the Tatar K. with one of the best restaurant-cars in Russia, and a full complement of well-trained personnel’. Ronzhin made a collection of the Grand Duke’s cigar-bands; Kondzerovski was always busy with the intrigues of senior promotions-matters; Yanushkevitch developed his taste for pornography.*13

  Baranovitchi was chosen as headquarters town because of the universal idea that headquarters would have to be mobile. It lay on railway-lines to north and south, east and west, and Stavka put up with the various discomforts in the name of mobility. In much the same way Kondzerovski bought himself binoculars, a revolver, a saddle, a map-frame and a cloak. His only visit to the front occurred in fact by the Stavka Rolls, the driver of which had to lend him gloves. There was not even, in the first weeks, any convenient way of communicating with the front commands. Six men operated a morse-coding machine (capable of 600 words per hour) until the end of September, when some mechanics arrived from Minsk, at the behest of the ministry of posts and telegraphs, to instal links to Rovno and Cholm; even in October, the Council of Ministers were being asked for 161,000 roubles to help equip Stavka with the required cable. Baranovitchi, though not much more than a collection of huts and railway-carriages, became headquarters of the Russian army for the next year of war. But in August 1914, no-one imagined that the war would last for very long, or what it would be like.

  In these circumstances, Stavka was in no position to enforce a plan, even if it had had one. It took over the compromise-arrangements haggled over between Danilov and Alexeyev, with a supporting-chorus of Postovski, Klyuev, Dragomirov and the rest, between 1910 and 1914. In theory, the front against Germany should have been considered the main one, since the war would be decided only by Franco-Russian victory over Germany. But various modifications had been made to this, and in 1912 the plan was changed: twenty-nine and a half infantry divisions against Germany, forty-six and a half against Austria-Hungary. In this way, the army was set two different operations, and there was little contact between the two army groups leading them. Even so, there seemed to be sufficient strength on the north-western front, for intelligence established, quite early on, that there were at most four German corps and some reserve divisions in East Prussia: enough for the nine corps of I and II Armies to deal with. Zhilinski was told to invade East Prussia.

  In reality, the plan to invade East Prussia needed more force than it was given. Ostensibly, the province was a good target for attack, since Russian armies could be launched from two directions, south and east. But the province was also well-set for defensive action by the Germans. It had lakes, forests, small hills and defiles, which gave excellent cover for defenders and severe obstacles for attackers. The railway-links on the Russian side were poor, on the German side sufficient for a flexible defence. When the two Russian groups came across the border, they would, just at the point where they would be most tired from marching, become separated by about a week’s march by the line of lakes known as the Angerapp-Stellung, difficult to force without powerful siege-artillery. The two groups would have to move north and west of this position, exposing their outer flanks to attack, in the one case from the fortress of Königsberg, in the other from that of Thorn. It would be possible for the Germans to attack one group, relatively free of worry for the other, provided they used their communications properly. The Russians appreciated this; and Joffre regarded East Prussia as ‘an ambush.’ In reality, the plan made sense only if there were two whole armies protecting the outer flanks of the main ones—which Danilov had intended in the first place. But the structure of the army told against him, and only two armies plunged ahead into East Prussia.15

  Stavka weakened this plan still more, because it thought up a third operation. The East Prussian route was not, after all, the shortest road to Berlin, and the French had quite often wondered why Russians neglected to make their most obvious manoeuvre—an attack from the Polish plains. Attack from west of Warsaw, direct towards Berlin, would strike the Germans hardest, and just before the war
French representatives were keen on urging it. Russian confidence grew as railways were improved in this region—as a precaution against German invasion, this had been neglected before 1912. In 1914, Yanushkevitch decided that armies would be sent to the Warsaw region as a prelude to invasion of Germany by this most direct route. On 7th August he told the front commands that a new army, IX, would be set up here, and as new army corps arrived from the interior, they would form a further army, X, also to be assembled near Warsaw, for invasion ‘in depth’ of Germany. As things turned out, this plan was not put into effect, at least for the moment. But its existence meant that the East Prussian operation was weakened, and a third operation mounted instead.16

  It was later said, notably by Golovin, the best-known writer on the subject, that the Russian invaders of East Prussia had been considerably inferior to the Germans, each of whose divisions was said to be worth one-and-a-half Russian divisions. There was not much truth in this. The Russian army ought to have been able to send overwhelming forces against Germany—it had sixty-seven first-line and thirty-one second-line infantry divisions, with thirty-seven and a half cavalry divisions and 5,800 guns against thirteen German infantry divisions (half of them second-line) and one German cavalry division in East Prussia, and some forty Austro-Hungarian infantry divisions in Galicia. Subtractions for the Austro-Hungarian front and for the new IX Army reduced the forces at the disposal of Zhilinski, commanding the front against Germany. Even so, there was a respectable superiority on the Russian side; the north-western front commanded twenty-nine and a half infantry divisions, the German VIII Army in East Prussia only thirteen.17

  On the field, this superiority was whittled down. In the first place, the Russian commanders had little faith in their own second-line troops, whose divisions had more than two-thirds of their complement made up of reservists, not serving soldiers. The training of these reservists was thought to be too primitive for them to count as first-line soldiers, and the first-line elements in such divisions were alleged to be overwhelmed by the poor material surrounding them. I Army went to war with six and a half infantry divisions; but there were six more second-line divisions in its rear, disingenuously said ‘not to have taken part in initial operations’18—in other words, left kicking their heels in Grodno and Kovno. Similarly, the various fortresses of the area were thought to require large garrisons—Novogeorgievsk in particular—and the field army lost many men and guns in an unnecessary attempt to hold these various artillery-museums. All this was in strict contrast to German behaviour: the Germans used their second-line and even third-line troops to the full, and ruthlessly stripped their fortresses (Königsberg, Graudenz, Posen) of mobile guns. Of their thirteen divisions, only six were first-line and four second-line; the other three were a composite of four Landwehr brigades (made up of men in their late thirties and early forties) and two garrison, Landsturm brigades, containing in some cases men who had not been trained at all; moreover the seven non-first-line divisions were actually weaker in artillery than average Russian divisions, although, in the legendry of the time, this was not given prominence. The forces that actually reached the field in East Prussia were therefore less unevenly-matched than they might have been; and it is certainly true that, for the circumstances of East Prussia, the Russian army would have needed a more comfortable superiority. As things were, the German VIII Army contained thirteen infantry divisions, one cavalry division and 774 guns,

  Tannenber.

  usually in batteries of six—in all, 158 battalions and seventy-eight cavalry squadrons. The Russian I Army had six and a half infantry and five and a half cavalry divisions, or 104 battalions and 124 squadrons, with 492 guns, usually in batteries of eight; the Russian II Army had fourteen and a half infantry and four cavalry divisions, or 304 battalions and III squadrons, with 1,160 guns. But, after an exercise in the non-bringing of troops to the decisive point that out-did the finest exploits of the Austro-Russians at Austerlitz, II Army was reduced to nine and a half infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions or 188 battalions, seventy-two squadrons and 738 guns; and it was this force that fought Tannenberg. The Tsarist army was not crippled by its inferiority in artillery or men; it was crippled by its inability to use its superiority.

  The affairs of the north-western front were also bedevilled by an element of mistrust among senior officers that, in this first, confused, phase of the war mattered more than it did later. The leading personnel had been chosen from different cliques of the army—friends and enemies of Sukhomlinov, plebeian infantrymen on the one side, aristocratic cavalrymen on the other. Lord and peasant stared resentfully at each other across the staff-maps. As Grand Duke Nicholas’s Stavka came into existence, it could insist on key appointments, to cancel those made by the War Ministry. Zhilinski, commanding the front against Germany, was a Sukhomlinovite; but Rennenkampf, commanding I Army, was a notorious enemy. Samsonov, commanding II Army, was a Sukhomlinovite appointment, but their chiefs of staff, Mileant and Postovski, reversed the pattern—Rennenkampf communicated with Mileant only in writing throughout the East Prussian campaign, and refused to act on information given first to Mileant. For IX Army command in Warsaw, Sukhomlinov had named ‘the coarse Siberian’, Lechitski; Grand Duke Nicholas appointed as chief of staff one of his favourites, the ‘gentleman’, Guliewicz, an aristocratic Pole. The two men ended by addressing not a word to each other, after Lechitski refused permission for Madame Guliewicz to live in headquarters.19 Communications, particularly between Zhilinski and Rennenkampf, were confused to the point where Zhilinski, nominally commander of the front, sometimes barely knew what was happening. The communications from I Army were so insultingly laconic and infrequent that Zhilinski, had to ask Stavka to intervene. Five messages were sent to Rennenkampf, and an adjutant of the Grand Duke himself—Kochubey—to remind him that he should let his seniors know what the army was doing.20 In reality, the front command was almost as much of an illusion as was Stavka itself. The armies were merely allotted their forces and told to get on with their jobs. There was no real command-structure, merely a continual jostling between and within the great command-groups, as men strove to defend their spheres of competence, or in Zhilinski’s case, incompetence.

  The Russian I Army was set to march west into East Prussia, while II Army came up from the south. In theory, this would catch the German defenders in a ‘pincer-movement’: the Germans’ flanks would be rolled up on either side of the Angerapp-Stellung, and they would be forced to retreat. This was a reasonable plan, but it depended on co-operation of the two armies involved. They would be separated by at least sixty miles as they encountered the main German positions, and an agile defence could attack first one, then the other. The Russian planners had been aware of this. But they chose inadequate methods of coping with the problem. They decided that the greatest danger would be an attack on the western flank of II Army—which could also affect the formation of the new IX Army near Warsaw. It was decided, therefore, to leave one corps of II Army virtually at a standstill, guarding this flank, and other troops—second-line divisions and cavalry—were given much the same task. In the same way, I Army worried about its open flank on the Baltic: maybe the Germans would organise a descent on the coast. A further group was detached as ‘Riga-Schaulen group’ to guard against this. Finally, to ensure that the inner flanks of I and II Armies kept together, one corps of II Army was kept between the two armies, and another pushed some way to the east, where it would be less effective. In this way, it was the Russians and not the Germans, who suffered from excessive concentration on their flanks. This reflected old-fashioned views of warfare. In earlier days, to have an enemy on the strategic flank was to risk all manner of tactical disadvantages—the enemy cavalry could cut communications with ease. Now, with cavalry so greatly reduced in serviceability, this danger was not so great. None the less, Zhilinski behaved as if the flanks were-all important. As a result, the attacking group of I Army was reduced to six and a half infantry divisions, that of II ar
my to nine and a half; and the two groups would be at least six days’ march apart. Both were inferior to the German VIII Army, which would therefore have a chance to knock out first one, then the other. Tannenberg did not illustrate Russia’s economic backwardness. It merely proved that armies will lose battles if they are led badly enough.

  The German VIII Army more or less had its plan laid out for it. One of the Russian armies must be held by a weak screen, and the rest of the Germans’ forces sent against the other army. It was not clear, to begin with, which of the two armies must be attacked; it would depend on circumstances. There would be some advantage in attacking the Russian II Army from the west—here there were good railways. But the tactical circumstances decided against this plan. The Russian I Army crossed the border on 15th August, from the east; II Army, struggling up from the south, reached the border only five days later, and did not make serious contact with German troops until 22nd August. Moreover, almost as soon as I Army crossed the border, it was engaged by German troops. The German VIII Army suffered from something of the same general problems as the Russians did. But it was much smaller than Zhilinski’s forces, more easily-controlled and supplied, and in the present case it had sense almost imposed on it by the nature of its task. Just the same, there was a problem with rebellious subordinates—in this case General von François, commander of 1. Corps, who arrogantly decided that he alone knew East Prussia, that the Russians could be defeated before they had even crossed the border. He engaged the Russians, to mutual bewilderment, in a set of flanking operations just after they came over the border. Both sides acquired a first experience of the deadly effect of enfilading gunnery; but nothing was decided. The German commander, Prittwitz, saw at least that large Russian forces were coming from the east, and he elected to attack these before those coming from the south could enter the battle. Tactically, he acquired a favourable position, since, as the Russians moved forward, they would have to divide their forces as they encountered the great heath of the river Rominte, and would perhaps leave their northern flank open.