The World Crisis

by Winston S. Churchill

  These memorable events have been thus briefly recounted for the purpose of showing their repercussion in the East. The driving of the Russians from East Prussia gave HL the chance to take stock of the position of their southern ally. The Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian armies re-gathering, mutilated, disorganized and discouraged far behind the San, presented a woeful spectacle. Falkenhayn found himself confronted not only with the Austrian demands for help, but with the acrid reproaches of Conrad that the guaranteed aid had not arrived in time. The condition of the Austrian armies and the ever-present danger that Vienna, if deserted, would make a separate peace, added arguments of greater weight than complaints or pledges. Nevertheless Falkenhayn, at first set on reviving the Schlieffen Plan, and later absorbed in ‘The Race to the Sea,’ continued obdurate to the Austrian appeals. He would not at the moment send troops from the west. Any aid to Austria must come from the forces of which Hindenburg and Ludendorff already disposed. Accordingly after some discussions by telephone between the two German Headquarters four corps were withdrawn from the Eighth Army, railed swiftly southwards and deployed in the region north of Cracow. Thus was constituted the new German Ninth Army which should form along the Silesian frontier a force capable of sustaining the Austrians on their northern wing. HL directed the movements of both the Eighth and Ninth Armies and for the time being assumed direct command of the Ninth. So expeditious was the transportation that in the third week of September the Ninth German Army, formed largely of troops who had been fighting in East Prussia a week before and comprising perhaps a quarter of a million men, stood along a hundred-mile line from the south of Posen to the east of Cracow. This army, as the map will show, faced the original gap in the Russian front from the south of Warsaw to Ivangorod, which has been already mentioned. The new thrust was ready, and it was aimed at what might well be a deadly spot.

  Russia in the first shock had experienced chequered fortune upon a gigantic scale. In the south a great victory had been gained by a million and a quarter Russian soldiers. In the north armies of nearly a million had been torn to pieces and hurled in confusion back against the frontiers they had invaded.

  It was in this situation in mid-September that the French Government made formal requests through diplomatic channels that the Russian armies should be brought to the left bank of the Vistula and assembled for the direct invasion of Silesia. This was, no doubt, the shortest path to the heart of Germany. The southern bastion of Galicia and the Austrian armies which defended it were greatly reduced, but the triumphant grip of the German power on the northern bastion of East Prussia still exposed the longed-for operation to deadly peril from the north. The Grand Duke and the Stavka, who had little to learn upon this problem, resented the requests which reached them through their Foreign Office instead of from one Headquarters to another, as an intrusion by the French Government into Russian strategy. They would like nothing better than to invade Germany. This had been their intention from the outset. They were doing their best; but they alone must be judges of the time and the method. The Grand Duke, in rejoinder, asked various questions of Joffre. First, what did he propose to do in France if the Germans transferred the bulk of their forces from the West to the East; and secondly, whether his object was only to clear France and Alsace-Lorraine, or to advance to the Rhine, or indeed to penetrate to the centre of Germany. Joffre replied on September 20 that the German army was in fact already tied to the west by the battles which had been fought and their resulting situation, and that the operations then in progress (i.e. ‘The Race to the Sea’) would have the effect of keeping them there. As for the advance into Germany, it would of course be unlimited. Sazonov returned a reply to the French Government which, though tactfully couched, was by no means encouraging. The French under their stresses became sharply critical, and the Russian Ambassador in Paris (Isvolski) appealed to his Government to make further efforts to reassure them.

  On September 22 the Grand Duke held a conference at Kholm. Here it was decided to re-group the Russian armies in the Polish salient behind the Vistula as a preliminary to a general advance of the Russian centre into Germany in spite of the danger they would run from the north. This must be warded off, and at first it was hoped that Ruzski with the First, Tenth and Second Armies, now ranged behind the Niemen and the Narev, would be sufficient for this purpose. But after Ruzski and Rennenkampf had portrayed the injuries which had been received, their armies were judged unequal to the task. The Grand Duke therefore decided that the Fifth Army (Plehve) should be sent to Warsaw to reinforce the North-West Front, now facing almost north, for its responsible task.

  This having been settled, the assembly in the centre began. By the end of September the Grand Duke had set in motion the immense displacement of his forces hitherto ranged against Austria, and during’ the first fortnight of October three whole armies moving northwards by march and rail filled the front from the confluence of the San with the Vistula up to Warsaw. The Ninth, by march, took the southernmost situation. The Fourth, by road and rail, filled the centre round Ivangorod, and the Fifth joined hands with the Second Army round Warsaw. Thus the Grand Duke drew up four armies comprising one and a quarter million men either to favour the advance into Germany, or to meet an impending German attack aimed at what had hitherto been the weakest part of the Russian line.

  These movements were however only in their early stages when on September 28 the German Ninth Army, drawing with it in its forward movement the First Austrian Army on its right, began its advance eastward and northward towards Ivangorod. Up till now the Stavka had no knowledge of the swift formation of this new army on the Posen-Cracow line and still less of its actual advance. All had passed behind the screen. On September 30 a pocket-book taken from a dead German officer revealed to them the significant fact that only two German corps remained in East Prussia. Where were the other four? Had they come South? This confirmed various nebulous indications which had for some days past reached the headquarters of the South-West front that German troops were being transferred by rail to the south. The Stavka therefore rightly divined that a considerable movement was in progress against them by a German army working closely with the Austrian left. All the dispositions already made were singularly appropriate to this revelation.

  THE CZAR AND THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS AT THE FRONT

  The German advance was swift and steady. Driving back the covering Russian forces in six long marches, the Germans were already approaching the Vistula at the end of the first week of October. The object at which HL aimed was to seize and hold all the crossings of the Vistula from its confluence with the San to Warsaw and, thus protected, strike at the central fortress itself. They knew from the enemy’s wireless, which continued to babble unsuspectingly, that important Russian movements northwards were already in progress; they could not measure their scale. The magnitude of the Grand Duke’s operations, begun quite independently of the German offensive, far exceeded the anticipations of the German High Command. But on October 9 an order found on a corpse near Grojec revealed the plan. Says Hindenburg:

  ‘From the confluence of the San to Warsaw it appeared that we had four Russian armies to cope with, that is, about sixty divisions against eighteen of ours. From Warsaw alone fourteen enemy divisions were being employed against five on our side. That meant 224 Russian battalions to 60 German…. The enemy’s superiority was increased by the fact that as a result of the previous fighting in East Prussia and France as well as the long and exhausting marches of more than 200 miles over indescribable roads our troops had been reduced to scarcely half establishment and in some cases even to a quarter of their original strength. And these weakened units of ours were to meet fresh arrivals at full strength… the Siberian Corps, the elite of the Czar’s Empire! The enemy’s intention was to hold us fast along the Vistula while a decisive attack from Warsaw was to spell our ruin. It was unquestionably a great plan of the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch, indeed the greatest I had known, and in my view it remained hi
s greatest until he was transferred to the Caucasus.’37

  It required, indeed, all the confidence of dazzling victories, all the resources of iron will and cool audacity, to induce HL to press on into the gigantic arms which the Russian bear was spreading for the hug. On they went; few episodes in German military history show a more generous effort to relieve an ally, or a more just measure of their sense of superior quality over the Russians. It was perhaps the most ‘sporting’ operation which has ever been admitted to the spheres of Teutonic strategy. But every precaution was taken for escape in the case of failure. No army ever advanced so resolutely with such complete arrangements for retreat. Bridges and tunnels were mined at the same time as they were repaired. The whole of the communications of the advancing army were organized so as to make the swiftest recoil possible. Thus prepared for the extremes of fortune the Ninth Army, clasping Dankl’s Austrian First Army encouragingly with its right hand, came squarely up against the line of the Vistula.

  The Grand Duke must have been well content to see how conveniently he could convert the combination in progress of all his armies for the invasion of Germany into a trap for the new and—as it must have appeared to him—desperate German offensive. It was with justifiable hopes that the dispositions so forcibly described by Hindenburg were carried into effect. As Hindenburg advanced he found himself opposed by ever-gathering masses, and these masses continued more and more to reach round his left where Mackensen led the XVIIth German Corps. Heavy and continuous fighting developed on this flank, with the usual German tactical successes, captures of prisoners and cannon, but also with a sense of the constantly-growing weight descending upon them. The Second Russian Army irrupting from Warsaw in a south-westerly direction widely overlapped the German left. At the same time the four Russian armies arrayed behind the Vistula sought at many points to force a passage. A Caucasian corps, in which many Armenians served, actually established themselves across the river in the marshes of Koshenice, 10 miles north of Ivangorod. If the foothold could be made good and a bridge built, this passage, together with the permanent fortress bridge-head of Ivangorod, would secure to the Russian the means of debouching on a broad front. A continuous struggle developed in the swamps between the Caucasians striving to advance and the Germans to pin them to the river-bank. ‘The Caucasians,’ says Hoffmann, ‘fought with surprising bravery.’ ‘The Russians’ gun-trails were literally in the Vistula.’ The survivors on both sides sustained a ‘horrible impression’ of this small protracted battle on the brink. Nothing could dislodge the Caucasians. They clung tenaciously to their lodgment; they built their bridge. Meanwhile farther to the south the whole of Dankl’s First Army was gripped and menaced by another Russian army.

  Thus hung the scales on the southward wing when the German left before Warsaw became at once weighed down and outflanked. On October 12 Mackensen’s group of four divisions was within 12 miles of Warsaw, holding an important railway junction almost in its perimeter. But the Russian preponderance of numbers and length of front soon became irresistible. HL at Radom in fairly commodious quarters were now the centre of mental battles not less severe than those they were imposing physically upon their troops. Stubbornly they fought for victory. No general Austrian forward movement against the denuded Russian front across the San developed. The heavy rains flooded the countryside. Imperious demands upon Conrad for Austrian aid met with inadequate response. Dankl, instead of sending Austrian troops to the left, would do no more than lengthen the front of the First Austrian Army and release the right-hand German corps, the XIth, which was immediately transferred to the threatened left. HL with their four army corps were left locked in deadly battle with four whole Russian armies. Here we see with unmistakable plainness the ratios and values already established on the Eastern Front. The Germans fight with army corps and the Russians with armies thrice their number; and the battle is still obstinate!

  But the moment came when flesh and blood could do no more; when the whole German front was racked and strained to within an ace of catastrophe, which nothing but their well-wrought plans for escape could avert. On October 17 HL dared persist no longer, and the orders for retreat were given. The withdrawal was speedy and deft. Through the sleet and slush of a Polish autumn the Ninth Army retired by forced marches upon Silesia, devastating the country and blowing up the roads and railways behind them. This movement was the signal for pursuit by all the Russian armies. From the 19th onwards the whole Russian front from Mlava to the San river was rolling westward with all possible diligence.

  Says Hoffmann:

  ‘I quite agree with the opinion of our eminently capable Quartermaster-General, Privy Councillor Dr. Keber, that the advance of a German army must come to a standstill when it gets about 100 kilometres from the railway. We calculated that by giving the Russians an additional 20 kilometres in consequence firstly of their exceedingly modest requirements, and secondly of their great want of consideration for their horses… we should be able to stop for a time the enemy advance while still on Russian soil to the east of the German frontier.’38

  He reckoned on a halt of several days. This period the Ninth Army would have at its disposal to begin new operations, and the time must be fully utilized.

  His calculation was vindicated. The Germans retreated, with more than one stubborn stand, in six days 60 miles, and by the end of October were, broadly speaking, back at their starting-point.

  ‘At this point,’ says Hindenburg, ‘I cannot help admitting how much the punctual knowledge of the dangers that threatened us was facilitated by the incomprehensible lack of caution, I might also say naïveté, with which the Russians used their wireless. By tapping the enemy’s wireless we were not only able to learn what the situation was, but also the intentions of the enemy…. Yet did it not look as if our final ruin had only been postponed for a time? The enemy certainly thought so and rejoiced. Apparently he considered that we were completely beaten… for on November 1 his wireless ran “Having followed the Germans up for more than 120 versts it is time to hand over the pursuit to the cavalry. The infantry are tired and supplies short.”

  ‘We could therefore embark upon fresh operations.’39

  The recriminations incidental to failure were not lacking. The Germans reproached the First Austrian Army with having exposed their right at a critical moment by a needless retirement. They furthermore complained of the lack of any general advance across the San. Przemysl had, it is true, been temporarily disengaged from Russian investment, but otherwise in the main the spectacle of an energetic German force making head against heavy odds and difficult weather, while the very large armies of the Dual Monarchy seemed to palter with the weakened enemy upon their front, was vividly presented to the German mind and forcibly expressed to Austrian ears.

  But what was the use of finding fault with Austria? For good or for evil, there she was in the War; and the sole first-class ally! The Germans could not afford to quarrel with the Austrians; they could only slave for them, and suffer from them and with them. Nor was this any temporary impatience to be restrained for a while. It had become the enduring condition of German war on the Eastern Front. Whereas the German troops were equal to two or three times their number of Russians, it was obvious that the Austrian armies were incapable of fighting the Russians, man for man.

  No time was wasted in these sterile reflections. The need was urgent to rupture the impending Russian invasion of Silesia. The German Ninth Army had lost 40,000 men in its drive against Warsaw through South Poland. It must without delay strike again. But where? At the Conference at Chenstokhov on November 3 decision was taken. Hindenburg imparted it by a gesture. He raised his left hand. All present understood and assented. The German front which now faced north-east along the frontier from Posen to Cracow must be re-formed facing south-east from the level of Posen to the fortress of Thorn.

  The change was made with almost incredible swiftness. Again the busy railways had to hum. Again the perfect organization for military pur
poses of these lateral communications was proved. Again locomotives, waggons, and sidings enabled Germany to multiply her army by two. Almost as soon as the Russians had exhausted their ardour of pursuit, the Ninth Army had vanished from their front. By November 10 it was deployed anew on a 70-mile front from the fortress of Thorn southwards to the Warta river. The right-handed frontal punch towards Warsaw to the south had failed to revive the Austrian ally. A left-handed flank blow was now to be struck to save Germany herself from invasion. Within less than a fortnight from the end of the retreat in South Poland, the Ninth Army was ready to advance upon a new offensive in a different guise, purpose and direction, while the Russians were still sprawling in pursuit in regions where only ghosts remained.