Eastern front (1914-18). The German elite accepted war in 1914, in part because it feared the long-term build-up of Russian military strength. The pretext for escalating from a local war to a European one was the Russian decision to mobilize in support of Serbia. German war aims, evolved in the autumn of 1914 and realized in the spring of 1918, stressed annexations at the expense of the Russian empire. The Schlieffen plan strategy, however, was to defeat France quickly and only then turn to the east. The calculation was disrupted when, at the urging of the hard-pressed French, the Russians advanced into East Prussia earlier than they had planned or the Germans had anticipated. While this succeeded in distracting the Germans, the price was appalling and the northern Russian armies were destroyed at the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August-September by the team of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Simultaneously, Russian arms were far more successful against the Austro-Hungarians, who were distracted by the failure of their initial offensive into Serbia and badly directed by Conrad von Hötzendorf. The Russians occupied much of Galicia (then a region of north-east Austria-Hungary inhabited by Poles and Ukrainians, now part of western Ukraine), inflicting terrible casualties.
The eastern front, 1914-17.
(Click to enlarge)
The western front settled down by November 1914 into trench warfare. By contrast a war of movement continued in the east for another year, partly because of the expanse of the theatre of operations: the western front was only about 450 miles (720 km) in length, whereas the front line in the east was over twice as long. Despite the ambivalence of the new COS Falkenhayn, Berlin temporarily reversed its grand strategy and tried to win victory in the east. After inconclusive or unsuccessful offensives elsewhere on the front Gen Mackensen won a critical victory in May 1915 in the area of the Galician towns of Gorlice and Tarnow. The local breakthrough, achieved with the aid of operational surprise, a concentration of fresh German troops, and a heavy artillery bombardment, shattered the whole Russian line. By the end of September the Russians had abandoned most of Galicia and all of Russian Poland, retreating up to 250 miles (402 km). The defeat, did not, as Falkenhayn had hoped, force St Petersburg to the peace table, but these battles, on top of those of 1914, saw the destruction of the Russian pre-war regular army. Another fateful result of these reverses was that Emperor Nicholas II replaced Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich as supreme commander of Russian forces.
A second, more static period began in 1916, with a situation superficially similar to that on the western front. Without the Polish salient the eastern front was now only 700 miles (1, 126 km) long, running roughly north-south from Riga on the Baltic to the foothills of the Carpathians at the eastern tip of Galicia, along the western edge of today's Belarus and Ukraine; with Moscow over 450 miles (720 km) in the rear. Compared to what happened in 1812 or 1941, the Russian heartland was not threatened. The Germans again turned their attention to the west, with the dual pressures of Verdun and Somme battles, and the Austro-Hungarians had heavy commitments in the south after Italy entered the war in May 1915. The Russians achieved one successful offensive in June 1916, through a combination of surprise, innovative tactics, and Austro-Hungarian demoralization. The Brusilov offensive, also called the battle of Lutsk, pushed the Austro-Hungarians back up to 40 miles (64 km) along a 250 mile (402 km) sector between the Pripet marshes and the Carpathians. However, the Germans were able to use a superior railway system in the race to concentrate forces, and by mid-September the Russian drive had stopped. It was nevertheless a debacle for the Austro-Hungarians, who from then were confirmed as at best the very junior partners in the Central Powers alliance. The Russian success also encouraged Romania to enter to the war, but a combination of delay and the low quality of the Romanian army meant this turned out to be of little value. Romania was overrun that autumn, and in effect the eastern front was lengthened 300 miles (483 km) from the Carpathians to the mouth of the Danube.
The onset of the March 1917 revolution in Russia (see Russian Revolutions) was influenced by the war, but the provisional government, far from being defeatist, was committed to prosecuting the fighting more effectively than the Tsar had. The revolution started among civilians and rear garrisons, and the front-line Russian army was disrupted but not disbanded. The Central Powers, for their part, adopted a passive strategy. The Russian attempt under the socialist war minister Kerensky to regenerate fighting spirit took the form of another offensive in Galicia in July 1917, but this made little progress before a German-led counter-attack pushed the Russians back beyond their starting point. The last episode was the loss in August 1917 of the Baltic port of Riga, the northern anchor of the Russian line. Although this attack featured a concentration of German artillery, a more important factor was Russian demoralization.
A strange third period of the eastern front began with the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. A December armistice was followed by peace negotiations, and when these failed the Central Powers attacked against Russian trenches emptied by self-demobilization. The Bolsheviks capitulated in March 1918 at the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, and the Central Powers were able to occupy vast (non-ethnic Russian) territories including the Baltic provinces, Belorussia, Ukraine, and Transcaucasia. Russia's erstwhile allies could only intervene on the periphery (at Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Baku, and Vladivostok) to head off further German advances.
In terms of general history the eastern front was of profound importance, as it doomed the tsarist Russian and the Austro-Hungarian empires. In terms of military history the raising of huge new armies was striking, but although the Germans developed some of their concentrated artillery tactics against the Russians there was less qualitative military innovation here than on the western front. Probably the unique development was the use of political subversion as a weapon. The German ‘sealed train’ for Lenin achieved momentous results, although the tsarist government also played with fire with such instruments as the Czech Legion of anti-Habsburg nationalists. On the face of it the Germans achieved as decisive a victory as anyone ever has against Russia. Of the three major armies involved theirs was the most effective at an operational and tactical level. The weaknesses in the leadership, morale, equipment, and supply of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies were clearly displayed.
The Russians could not mobilize their economy and society to the same degree as the British, French, and Germans, but they did fight as total a war as they could, albeit of an extensive rather than an intensive kind. They could have held out had the military planners adopted a defensive strategy throughout, but they rarely refused requests to put pressure on the Central Powers with offensives. These were costly and, against the Germans, ineffective, at least in the short term. The Tsar's armies suffered, partly as a result, the heaviest combat fatalities: 2.3 million Russians, compared to 2.0 million Germans, 1.9 million French, and 0.8 million British. It is irrelevant that Russian per capita losses were lower. In the end the defeat of all three major eastern front combatants clouded the issue. The eastern front had a decisive impact on the course of WWI, although it was the western Allies who benefited.
Bibliography
- Hergwig, Holger, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary (London, 1997).
- Lincoln, W. Bruce, Passage through Armageddon (New York, 1986).
- Rutherford, Ward, The Tsar's War 1914-1917 (Cambridge, 1992).
- Showalter, Dennis E., Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (Hamden, 1991).
- Stone, Norman, The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (London, 1975)
— Evan Mawdsley
