The World Crisis

by Winston S. Churchill

  On June 3 High Conference at Pless! O.H.L., HL and A.O.K.; Falkenhayn, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Hoffmann, Mackensen, and Conrad; and over all the Kaiser! The whole situation was reviewed by the three or four chief captains with their principal officers within call. Italy had entered the war. Six or seven hundred thousand fresh troops already pressed against the Austrians upon the new fronts they had been forced to form along the Isonzo River and in Tirol. By September the Italian forces actually in the line would certainly be nearly a million strong. Conrad, voicing the sentiment of Vienna, wished above all to strike at the renegade ally, his hated foe who (in his view), after the basest blackmail, had stabbed a struggling neighbour in the back. He wished to withdraw Austrian divisions from Galicia to nourish an offensive against Italy. The Germans demurred. Falkenhayn was still preoccupied about the Dardanelles. The battles on the Gallipoli Peninsula burned fiercely. The Turkish losses were enormous. The assailants, though never strengthened sufficiently to win, were constantly fed with reinforcements. It was rumoured that an entire new army was being prepared in England for a further descent. At any moment, moreover, the British fleet, which still lay idle, might resume its attack on Admiral von Usedom’s unreplenished batteries. Hostile Serbia; neutral, doubtful Roumania still barred the passage of the vital munitions. The Serbs had sunk a ship carrying an ample cargo along the Danube. To crush Serbia, to rally Bulgaria and open the through route to Constantinople and the Dardanelles, filled the mind of the chief of the German General Staff.

  But beneath all this lay always the supreme anxieties of the Western Front. Already there had been weighty French attacks from Arras and La Bassée. The French armies were re-gathering their strength after Foch’s disastrous, prodigal spring offensive in Artois. Some potent enterprise must be expected from them in the autumn. The British army and artillery grew steadily in strength. The 30 or 40 divisions which had been raised from the eager volunteers of 1914 were now organisms of nine months’ training. The wealth of Britain with the whole world at her disposal and all the seas and oceans under her control was surely equipping these new hosts with all they might require. The munition factories in England and America, adapted or expanded at the beginning of the War, would now begin to discharge an ever-broadening stream of rifles, cannons and shells. Falkenhayn must prepare himself to resist in the autumn efforts hitherto unequalled, and he wanted to withdraw immediately four German divisions from the Eastern Front. Lastly HL had their point of view. The Twin Brethren were still united. Their opinions and methods were unchanged. They had been amazed by the results of Gorlice-Tarnow. These had exceeded their hopes. They saw in what had happened the possibility of a super-Tannenberg embracing in its sweep the main mass of the whole Russian army. Amid these varying schemes one plain question stood forth. Should Mackensen with the ‘spear-head army’ go on or stop?

  Falkenhayn wished to stop. He wished to disengage his divisions. But to stop might not have that result. If the German forces in Galicia were seriously weakened, the Austrians would not be able even to remain stationary. They could not dispense with the full German aid. Until the Russians were beaten much lower, the German divisions must stay. If they stayed, must they not achieve something? Time was fleeting; if they were to advance, they would require further reinforcements. In the end it was decided, so far from weakening Mackensen, to reinforce him with four and a half divisions drawn from the north and rear of the Eastern Front. A general re-grouping of the armies was ordered. The Austrian Third Army was broken up, part being sent to Italy and the rest merged in the other armies. The Second and Fourth Austrian Armies on either side of Mackensen were placed under his command. With this great mass he would continue for the present to march East. These changes and the necessary replenishment of the armies were not completed till the middle of June. Mackensen was able to resume his advance on the 19th, and on the 22nd Lemberg passed into German hands.

  After Lemberg, what to do? Falkenhayn posed the incessant question to O.H.L. ‘How far do we mean to penetrate Russia? Where are we going to find a decision?’ At this moment General Von Seeckt, Mackensen’s Chief Staff Officer and professional guide, proposed that the whole of the Eleventh Army should wheel from the east to the north and should march due north between the Vistula and the Bug in the direction of Syedlets and Brest-Litovsk. Falkenhayn approved. The ‘spear-head army’ turned through a quarter-circle, and advanced over that same ground towards Lublin and Kholm across which only a year ago Dankl and Auffenberg had hopefully wended. In short, Conrad’s original plan was renewed. But what was to be the co-operation from the north? Where was the other side of the pincer to be applied? In the south all was well; the Russian armies were staggering and mutilated; the upward thrust was to be made by German troops instead of Austrian. What would be sent to meet it from the north, and bite off the Polish salient? But here there were differences of view. On June 29 Falkenhayn wrote to Hindenburg that Mackensen had been ordered to advance between the Bug and the Vistula attacking the enemy ‘wherever he found them.’ This pressure, he said, would soon help Woyrsch (still forging slowly eastward along his original course). Now was the time for HL to move too. Obviously the Ninth German Army west of Warsaw could be depleted and its force used either from the south or the north. If from the north then surely the south-eastward thrust from Osovets and across the Narev would be the most effective. Thus Falkenhayn revived Conrad’s first ideas.

  But HL had more ambitious views. They sought a far wider sweep. They were sure that the Russian masses around Warsaw would escape a mere south-eastward scoop across the Narev. The fatal encirclement for the enemy lay in their judgment between Kovno and Grodno cutting the vital railway through Vilna and Dvinsk to Petrograd. Thereafter the northern German armies should turn southward and march between Brest-Litovsk and the Pripyat swamps, thus entrapping all foes at once. Falkenhayn had no mind for this far-flung operation. He had Serbia and the Western Front to consider. He resisted. Ludendorff proceeded to find all sorts of difficulties in the proposed more modest advance through Osovets. The swamps on either side of the little fortress would be embarrassing; the condition of the ground at this season of the year prohibitive. The resistance of Osovets would certainly be obstinate. HL could have no hopes of overcoming it. ‘With the deepest regret I felt myself unable to agree to such an offensive even at the suggestion of General Headquarters.’ In love with their gigantic conception HL riddled with solid technical criticism the more modest alternative.

  Again high conference; again the Emperor. The same group minus Conrad; this time at Posen. HL and O.H.L. now face to face. Clash of argument, clash of wills, clash of interests, even—for the most noble military figures sometimes fall to the level of ordinary mortals. But the Kaiser ranged himself with Falkenhayn. Brought in as he often was to give a decision, as one might spin a coin, he ordered that the northern attack should be made between and across the Narev and not across the Niemen. Deference however was shown by way of compromise to General Ludendorff’s objections to the advance by Osovets. Thus neither HL nor O.H.L. had their way. The front of the north attack was shifted further to the south and west. It therefore became less ambitious than even Falkenhayn had desired. But the decision had been taken; the All-Highest had pronounced it, and General von Gallwitz, who had hitherto commanded an army group or detachment, was placed at the head of a newly-combined Twelfth German Army.

  HINDENBURG, THE KAISER, AND LUDENDORFF

  On July 13 he struck with 12 divisions south-east towards the Narev through a town called Prasnish, which had already witnessed bitter fighting in the spring. In a week Gallwitz driving in the Russian front had reached the Narev and three days later his army had crossed it after overcoming the resistance of the minor fortresses of Pultusk and Rojan. At the same time the Niemen army made a further advance towards Mitau and Shavli, thus gripping the Russians on its front. Meanwhile Mackensen advancing from the south stood on the line Lublin and Kholm. The fall of Warsaw gleamed upon the German and glared up
on the Russian headquarters. Even Falkenhayn scraped two more divisions from the Western Front to strengthen General von Gallwitz. At this stage the requests of HL, even though Hindenburg wrote direct to the Kaiser, that these two divisions should be sent to the Niemen army, and that further troops should be railed round from Mackensen’s army to the same destination, were unceremoniously rejected. The blood of O.H.L. was roused. The hunt was keen.

  But the Grand Duke was not caught. He retreated in good time. Warsaw was evacuated by the Russians on August 5. The cutting-off movement degenerated into a mere stern chase. The whole line of the Vistula was abandoned by the Russians; but they withdrew their armies in an orderly manner. The only fortress which the Grand Duke allowed himself to defend was Novo-Georgievsk. That he should have done so was an error: why he should have done so is a mystery. Novo-Georgievsk was the guardian of Warsaw. If Warsaw was to be abandoned, its significance was destroyed. Five years before the War, there had been an agitation in Russia to modernize the fortresses of the Vistula and the Narev. The Government had recognized the importance of this step. In order to lay down the new forts around Warsaw, they had swept away the old. The War had come before the new had been constructed! Novo-Georgievsk at least retained the defences of 1891, somewhat improved during the war period. It contained a garrison of over 90,000 men, only militia but still armed every one of them with a precious rifle. Perhaps to delay the German advance, the Grand Duke left these behind, and the siege of Novo-Georgievsk began.

  For this task HL assembled some 80,000 men of various second-line formations; and they were furnished from Germany with a large part of the siege train including the Austrian howitzers which had previously demolished the outlying forts of Antwerp. Six 16-inch and nine 12-inch howitzers forming the ‘very heavy artillery’; 44 8-inch howitzers with a few 9-inch and 8-inch guns and two companies of 10-inch mortars, together with a respectable concourse of medium pieces, swiftly arrived upon the scene. General von Beseler, ‘the hero of Antwerp,’ took charge of the siege. The investment was completed on August 10 and the heavy batteries opened a few days later. The task of the attackers was lightened by good luck. The Chief Engineer of the fortress driving out to reconnoitre with all its plans in his motor-car had the misfortune to run into the advancing Germans and was duly captured with his documents!

  The method of attack consisted in the destruction by overwhelming cannon-fire of one single sector of the defence, the ruins of which fort by fort were then to be stormed. But the militia men, ‘bearded men going into action, pale with the thoughts of their wives and families,’ developed a field position in front of the gap, which had first of all to be reduced. Thereafter six German battalions stormed fort XV.a and seven fort XV.b; and although eleven battalions were repulsed with much slaughter from fort XVI.a, the assailants were generally established in striking distance of the inner line by August 19. At 4 a.m. on August 20 Novo-Georgievsk, after slaughtering its horses and burning its stores, surrendered unconditionally. It had held out for thirty days from the first approach of the besiegers. 90,000 prisoners, including 30 Russian generals, over 700 guns and many rifles were taken with the place. This may well prove to be the last defence of a first-class ring-fortress deprived of the support of a field army.

  The general retreat of the Russian armies was accompanied by the flight of enormous masses of the inhabitants. Terrified by tales of German cruelty, millions of people fled from their homes dragging what belongings they could save along with them in vehicles of every kind. The roads were submerged by these slow-flowing streams of misery. The main current was between Warsaw and Brest-Litovsk. The Russian troops, whether in retreat or advancing to sustain their rear-guards, had no choice but to thrust these pitiful crowds from the highways often into the marshes which flanked them. Ludendorff says significantly on this subject: ‘Many scenes in the Russian campaign have been indelibly imprinted on my memory.’ The veteran General Gourko rejoices that he was not called upon to witness them as his duty lay in Galicia. But he writes:

  ‘Still, men who had fought in several wars and many bloody battles told me that no horrors of a field of battle can be compared to the awful spectacle of the ceaseless exodus of a population, knowing neither the object of the movement nor the place where they might find rest, food and housing. Themselves in an awful condition, they increased the troubles of the troops, especially of the transport who had to move along roads filled with this disorganized human wave. Many a time our forces had to stop and fight a rear-guard action just to allow this crowd to make room for the troops…. God only knows what sufferings were endured here, how many tears were shed and how many human lives were given as victims to the inexorable Moloch of war.’

  The crisis of the campaign was now over. The Russian armies were clear of the Polish salient on which they had counted so dearly, and for which they had sacrificed so much. Their situation was simplified. After August 18 when Kovno fell, the Eastern Front ran almost due north and south through Riga, Kovno, Grodno and Brest-Litovsk till it trailed along the Galician border to Roumania. In the year’s campaign the Germans had killed or wounded nearly a million Russians, and had taken three-quarters of a million prisoners. But all chance of a mass encirclement had passed. HL’s dreams of a super-Tannenberg were ended. There was still a month’s more fighting before the weather broke, and the steady advance of the whole German line pushed the Russian front and the fugitive population another 100 to 150 miles to the eastward. The final line at the end of September lay through Dvinsk along the Dvina, due south to the Pripyat marshes and thence through the southern corner of Galicia to the Roumanian frontier.

  It was at this moment that the Czar indulged the wish he had so long cherished. Against the warning and appeals of his ministers, but with the ardent support of his wife, he assumed personal command of his Armies, and on September 5 took up his abode at the Stavka where he lived a quiet frugal life much preoccupied with the health of his young son. General Alexeiev conducted the war. The Grand Duke Nicholas was relegated to the command against Turkey in the Caucasus.

  These tremendous events were watched by the western Allies with sorrow that they had happened, and with relief that they were no worse. The hopes of the French command and the anxious attention of their British ally were centred upon the impending great offensive in Champagne and at Loos, due to be launched on September 25. Marshal Joffre’s attack in Champagne in which 50 divisions were to take part was confidently expected by the French, to rupture strategically the entire German front in the west, and to carry with it the consequences of Gorlice-Tarnow on three or four times its scale. These hopes were not to be attained. Italy also was at a standstill. On both the Isonzo and the Tirol fronts, the Austrian defence was maintained. Terrible battles involving the supreme efforts of the best and largest armies were fought out bitterly in France, as they had been in Russia: but the crowning episode of the year lay in the Balkans, and it is thither we must now proceed.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE RECKONING WITH SERBIA

  We have seen how Falkenhayn had first of all been drawn to the East in 1915 by the vital need which he recognized of opening through communications between Turkey and the Central Empires and thus relieving the Dardanelles, and how he had been forced to postpone this indispensable operation by the grievous state of the Austrian armies on the Russian front. HL, while welcoming the transference of effort to the East, urged the view that Russia should be made an end of once for all, by the use of even larger forces, and even wider movements. Falkenhayn did not agree. As soon as the Russians had been signally defeated and were in full retreat in Poland and Galicia, he returned with eagerness to his original plan. This involved the immediate total destruction of Serbia, and for this purpose the bringing in of Bulgaria upon the side of the Central Powers. During the whole of July, after various earlier efforts, negotiations were conducted at Sofia with King Ferdinand and his Ministers. The Bulgarian Government, always pro-German in their sentiments, were profoundly
impressed with the disasters which had overtaken Russia and the vast recoil of all her armies. But the struggle upon the Gallipoli Peninsula dominated their actions. They knew that another great effort to storm the Peninsula and open the way to the fleet was imminent. Until this new battle had been fought, they would not take the plunge. If the Turks in Gallipoli were beaten, and the British Fleet arrived before Constantinople, an attack on Turkey offered them even far greater prizes than could be wrung from Serbia. Moreover, the elimination of Turkey from the European theatre, the opening of the Bulgarian southern frontier to the advance of an Allied army, and the opening of the Black Sea to the British fleet would almost certainly win Roumania and Greece to the Allies’ cause, and thus expose Bulgaria to the gravest peril if she was found alone in the Balkans on the wrong side. Therefore Bulgaria, unmoved by the German victories in the east, awaited the issue of the battle in the south.

  On August 6 a general attack by all the British, Australian and French forces began upon the Turkish positions, and simultaneously a large new British army descended upon the peninsula at Suvla Bay. The landing of 25,000 men was effected without serious opposition at a point where only a few Turkish gendarmes were watching the coast. The only Turkish troops available were three days’ march distant at Bulair. However, owing to the incompetence of the British general commanding the landed force, and an unbelievable series of accidents and blunders, the troops remained upon the beaches and did not attack the high ground in earnest until powerful Turkish forces had actually arrived. The battle was then joined at all points and reached its climax on August 9, when the further advance of the Suvla army was arrested by the Turks; and when the British and Gurkha troops who had actually gained the key position of the Saribair mountain, were blown off the summit by the fire of their own naval artillery. By the 15th the British had been defeated all along the line with a loss of 20,000 men, and Bulgaria decided to join the Central Powers.