by Hew Strachan
German hussars cross the River Drina in August 1915. In eastern Europe sloping river banks permitted cavalry to ford rivers easily, in the west the canalisation of rivers made it more difficult The lance was widely adopted by cavalry regiments in Europe before the war
The Russian army destroyed what it could not take with it when retreating in May 1915 In this photograph the Austro-Hungarian oil installations at Boryslaw in Galicia are still smouldering.
The great retreat compounded Russia’s munitions difficulties in two ways. First, the army abandoned massive quantities of equipment. At Kovno, the Germans captured 1,300 guns, 53,000 rounds of heavy-artillery shell and 800,000 rounds of field-artillery shell. With the army falling back, the rifles of the dead and wounded could not be collected from the battlefield. ‘The further we went’, one Russian army commander recalled, ‘the greater became the number of weaponless men, and now we no longer knew how to set about training them.’19 As winter drew in, Prince A. Lobanov-Rostovsky ‘saw infantry companies being formed of four platoons, of which two were armed and two were not. In case of battle the two unarmed platoons were to pick up rifles and ammunition from those who had fallen in front of them.’20 Shortages of equipment in turn affected morale. Second, areas of production were themselves lost. Efforts were made to evacuate businesses, but they were frenzied and haphazard. In Riga firms had fourteen days to dismantle machinery. Once it was loaded on wagons and sent off to the interior, it stayed there, on sidings or even going in circles round the country, rusting in the Russian winter.
All the areas subject to invasion or confronting its threat came under military administration. The principal thought in the mind of the chief of the general staff, Nikolay Yanushkevich, was to scorch the earth, to leave the invaders nothing but wilderness. The effects were not only dire for industry; they were also dire for the civilian population. ‘We were forced to burn our homes and crops, we weren’t allowed to take our cattle with us, we weren’t even allowed to return to our homes to get some money.’21 By the end of 1915 there were about 3.3 million refugees in Russia. Propertied families had been impoverished; industrialised cities had been stripped of their workforce. In Warsaw the entire population was told to leave, on the grounds that the Poles were supportive of Austria-Hungary. In Vilna the same instruction was issued to all men of military age, and then the city was burnt. The refugees carried and spread disease, particularly cholera and typhus, and as they fled they resorted to looting and pillaging to survive, further jeopardising the authority of the state. The fact that as a result the army compounded the difficulties of its own retreat, clogging an already inadequate transport system, suggests that in some cases its response was more ideological than strategic. It took the opportunity to ‘cleanse’ certain areas of what it saw as unreliable elements, particularly German settlers, although many of them had relatives serving in the Russian army, and Jews. ’The complete hostility of the entire Jewish population toward the Russian army is well established‘, one army commander told Yanushkevich.22
That would not have been surprising. Several thousand Jews had been killed in pogroms in 1881 and 1905, and many more had been forced by state-supported persecution to emigrate. However, Yanushkevich’s anti-Semitism was so extreme as to outrage even Russian opinion, particularly those circles anxious to woo the country’s liberal allies, France and Britain. Moreover, the great exodus liberated the Jews from the Pale of the Settlement, the area to the west and south-west to which they had been restricted. The Pale was formally abolished in August 1915, and Jews were free not only to move further east but also to settle in the countryside as well as in the towns. For the Jews of Russia, the war opened doors rather than closed them. In Germany Jews were much more fully assimilated: most saw the war not as an opportunity for Zionism but as a means by which to consolidate their integration in the Reich. Although their alliance with Turkey prevented the Germans from publicly supporting the idea of a Jewish homeland, they did act as the protectors of Jews within the Ottoman Empire. The suspicions of the Russian army, therefore, were not totally without foundation: for Germany’s army in the east, the Jews were indeed potential collaborators. The attractions to Germany of an alliance with Islam to undermine the British found its corollary in an alliance with the Jews of Poland and the Baltic states in order to defeat the Russians. A German committee for the liberation of Russian Jews was set up on 17 August 1914, and as the German armies advanced in the summer of 1915 they used Jews as interpreters and as middle-men in the procurement of supplies and transport.
Many German Jews were, however, repelled by the Jews of the east, who not only dressed and behaved very differently from themselves but also were more fervent in their beliefs. ‘No, I did not belong to these people, even if one proved my blood relation to them a hundred times over,’ wrote Victor Klem-perer, who worked in OberOst’s press section. ‘I belonged to Europe, to Germany, and I thanked my creator that I was German.’23 Klemperer’s reactions were little different from those of most other Germans as they penetrated deeper into Russian territory. First, they realised that the western Russian empire was no monolith, but a hotch-potch of competing and overlapping nationalities and ethnic groupings - including Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, and Ukrainians. Some of these might be potential allies. Second, the massive territories that they overran seemed backward and even primitive, under-cultivated and sparsely populated. As it assumed administrative and economic responsibility for the Baltic states it occupied, OberOst persuaded itself that ‘this area could become a bread basket of wheat and cattle, wood and wool, of the very highest value’.24 Ludendorff set out on a long-term project to civilise and cultivate Kurland, Latvia and Lithuania on the German model and through the in strumentality of the German army. The eastern front became more than an area for operational manoeuvre; now it was also a sphere for settlement and colonisation, a focus for political ambition as well as military.
Although the German army was not free from anti-Semitism, Jews were sufficiently integrated to be able to observe their own traditions, including Hanukkah, the ‘Festival of the Lights’, in Poland in December 1916
The consequences for the population were disastrous. Enlisted in forced labour battalions, they were unable to till their land, and famine struck in the winter of 1916-17. Their resources were plundered to feed both their occupiers and the needs of Germany: Lithuania’s wartime exports were valued at 338 million marks, but its imports at 77 million. To the south, Poland was placed under civilian control. However, that did not stop the army, including in due course Ludendorff, spelling out what they felt should happen to it. They wanted to tap its manpower by creating a Polish legion. A Polish army implied the promise of political independence, a solution which would carry the additional benefit after the war of creating a buffer state between Germany and Russia. But Poland had the potential to create a rift between Germany and Austria-Hungary. The latter regarded Poland, or at least its southern part, as an extension of its own lands in Galicia. Worries about exacerbating the nationality problem within the empire, fostered particularly by the Magyars, held it back from the idea of a full take-over, but equally powerful concerns about its overbearing ally prevented it from endorsing a German solution to the Polish question. On 13 August 1915 Bethmann Hollweg agreed to support an Austro-Polish solution, a self-governing state under the Habsburg crown. However, Germany’s enthusiasm for the scheme became conditional on the understanding that the Dual Monarchy would itself be subordinated to Berlin. The mechanism for this control would be a central European customs union dominated by Germany, a scheme popularised by the liberal Friedrich Naumann in his book Mitteleuropa, published in 1915. These ideas, and their attendant appetites, became firmer as the chances of a compromise settlement with Russia receded: Russia would not negotiate on the basis of Poland’s independence and the Baltic states’ incorporation in a greater Germany.
Russia, given its abundance of manpower, had less cause than most to put under-age soldiers in th
e front line in 1915. This boy was one of about 3 million Russians captured in the war, of whom 70,000 died in captivity.
The hope that Russia might seek terms had proved illusory. All three Entente powers had pledged themselves not to make a separate peace under the pact of London on 5 September 1914, and in March 1915 the Western allies had promised Russia the long-sought prize of Constantinople and control of the straits if the Entente won the war. By the end of September the German advance had reached its logistic limits. The sandy roads turned to mud as the autumn rains began. Russian railways, built on a broader gauge, had to be converted to German specifications. A total of 434 bridges were constructed in the Bialystok-Grodno area alone. The line stabilised as Falkenhayn expected. Yanushkevich was dismissed and his superior, Grand Duke Nikolay, shunted off to the Caucasus. Against the advice of his ministers, the Tsar took over the supreme command himself, as he had wanted to do from the outset. The survival of the regime now depended on its waging of the war. The difficulty for an autocrat was that many - including industrialists and Western allies - believed that Russia could best tap its potential by liberalisation. Russia certainly rallied in an extraordinary fashion in the winter of 1915-16. Shell production for field guns rose month on month despite the loss of territory and plant, doubling between May and July 1915 to reach 852,000 rounds in the latter month, and 1.5 million in November. Total output in 1915 was 11.2 million rounds, in 1916 28.3 million.25 The strength of the field army, which had fallen to 3.9 million men in mid-September 1915, recovered to 6.2 million men by February 1916 and 6.8 million on 1 June. Three days later General Aleksey Brusilov launched an offensive in Galicia which showed that the Russian army, too, could master the techniques of the breakthrough battle, and which confirmed its continuing ability to defeat the Austro-Hungarians when they were not supported by their allies.
ITALY JOINS THE ENTENTE
The renewed stabilisation of the eastern front in the autumn of 1915 changed the complexion of Germany’s debate on its war aims. Bethmann Hollweg had drawn up a programme of objectives on 9 September 1914. Its content - control of Belgium and north-eastern France, and the suggestion of comparable acquisitions in the east and in central Africa - was relatively constant over the rest of the war, but the context was not. In September 1914, the chancellor was confronted with two possibilities: a quick victory, in which case he would need to know the basis on which he was negotiating the peace, or a long war, in which case the coal and iron ore of north-western Europe would be fundamental to the maintenance of the German war effort. In any event, one idea scouted in the September programme - that German trade might be confined to a central European customs bloc, under German domination - made little sense in the long term. For the world’s second largest manufacturer it was a considerable reduction on the pre-war opportunities for trade offered by the open market. However, it reflected two immediate requirements. The first was the expectation that after the war the Entente powers would do their best to close Germany off from world markets. The second was the need to accommodate the ambitions of their allies within an envelope shaped by Germany. As the war lengthened both these pressures increased, while the possibility of a negotiated settlement receded. Therefore war aims hardened and expanded. Given Germany’s weak party structure and its under-developed parliamentary system, they became the vehicle for interest-group politics and divisive public debate. They were also less important for what they said about Germany’s designs on the enemy than for their evidence of Germany’s determination to woo or to appease its allies.
None of the original belligerents in 1914, including Germany, went to war in pursuance of so-called war aims. Most of the war’s later entrants did. They exercised choice, and they sold their services to the highest bidder. Between 1914 and 1916 both sets of allies focused their recruiting efforts in the Balkans, broadly defined, wooing Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania. Of these, the most blatant in its exploitation of the opportunities which the war presented was Italy. In October 1914, its prime minister, Antonio Salandra, characterised its policy as ‘sacro egoismo’. His aim was simple, to gain ‘frontiers on land and sea no longer open to annexation, and [to raise] Italy, in reality, to the status of a great power’.26
The key question for Rome was which side was best placed to deliver what Italy wanted. When General Luigi Cadorna was appointed chief of the Italian general staff in July 1914, following the death of his predecessor, Alberto Pollio, he set about readying the army for war against France. This was entirely in accordance with Italy’s membership of the Triple Alliance, but contrary both to the dictates of its geopolitical position and to the inclinations of its government. Geographically, Italy was a sea power, dependent on maritime trade and vulnerable to British naval pressure. Ideologically, the left favoured the Entente. The Italians had had to expel Austria from their peninsula in order to achieve unification in 1860: the relations of the two powers were more naturally characterised by enmity than by cooperation, and the navies they both built before 1914 were designed for use in the Adriatic, and therefore against each other. Salandra had little difficulty in interpreting the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia as an aggressive act, deeming Italy to be free of its alliance obligations and declaring it a neutral power on 31 July. The German defeat on the Marne confirmed for most Italians the wisdom of his move. But they did not necessarily conclude that this would be the last word. Cadorna began to ready his army for war against Austria-Hungary. Italy was now open to the highest bidder.
Germany was prepared to raise the ante, but at its ally’s expense. About half the population of the Austrian provinces along the frontier with Italy, from Trieste to Tyrol, were Italian. Although they were both privileged and wealthy by comparison with the Slav population in the region, the latter was growing in numbers. The Austro-Italians turned to Rome. After effectively abrogating the Triple Alliance, Italy was free to respond to their call. Germany wanted Austria-Hungary to solve the problem by giving the Trentino to Italy. The Austrians responded that once they made that sort of concession to one national grouping they would be under pressure to do so to all the others, and the empire would collapse. They argued that they could hand over territory in the south-west of their empire only if the loss was offset by gains in the north-east: they demanded more of Poland in recompense. The internal wrangling between the Central Powers ensured that they lagged behind the Entente in the bidding for Italy. When the Austro-Hungarian common council eventually agreed to cede the Trentino on 8 March 1915, the fall of Przemysl two weeks later promptly led Rome to increase its wants. The Entente offered the Dalmatian coastline as well, a gambit Vienna could not match. Most Italian opinion was neutral, but not vehemently so. The neutralists latched on to the former liberal prime minister Giovanni Giolitti as their spokesman. Liberalism in a country that lacked the economic maturity to sustain its aspirations to great power status had shallow foundations. Giolitti was as ready as Salandra to use the war to promote Italy’s expansion at Austria-Hungary’s expense, but he reckoned that it could be done without Italy itself having to fight. Salandra was sufficiently aware of Giolitti’s challenge to his hold on office to ensure that the jockeying for domestic power increased the stakes. Joining the war on the side of the Entente fused nationalism and liberalism, and even appealed to some revolutionaries. Benito Mussolini split with the Socialist Party to call for war: ‘Revolution’, he said, citing Napoleon, ‘is an idea that has found bayonets.’27
On other fronts, heavy artillery could be brought into position by rail, but in the Alps - as in Africa - much motive power was human. Austro-Hungarian troops manhandle a 24cm howitzer up a peak of 7,295 feet.
Italy adhered to the pact of London on 26 April 1915 and declared war on Austria-Hungary (but not on Germany) on 23 May. The Italian army was not fully prepared for war in Europe, and indeed was still heavily committed in Libya. It was short of 13,500 officers. Although it mobilised 1.2 million men, it had equipment for only 732,000. The problems of its war eco
nomy were comparable with those of Russia: it was not a fully industrialised power. In 1912-13, the army had been allocated 47 per cent of state spending, and since 1862 it had received an average of 17.4 per cent. However, Italy’s backwardness meant that the actual sums were small. Its re-equipment with quick-firing field artillery had just been completed, but it was short of heavier pieces and of mountain guns. The latter were particularly relevant, given the battlefield it now faced.