On September 6 a Convention was signed at Pless by Falkenhayn, Conrad, and General Gantschev, representative of Bulgaria, by which Germany and Austria-Hungary with six divisions each were to be on the Serbian frontiers ready for operations within thirty days, and Bulgaria with at least four divisions within thirty-five days. As the Bulgarian divisions were double the ordinary infantry strength, these arrangements concentrated against Serbia from three separate quarters the equivalent of at least twenty divisions. The failure of the Austrian offensive in Volhynia made it necessary for four Austrian divisions to be replaced with a like number of Germans. Thus no less than ten German divisions were to be employed. ‘The Serbian troops,’ says Falkenhayn, ‘that were still fit for battle were estimated to number in all 190,000 to 200,000 men.1 Our troops available against them were some 330,000 who in the main must have been superior in military value to the Serbians. The latter could hardly be expected to withstand the effects of massed heavy artillery or of trench-mortar batteries.’ Such was the storm soon to break upon the violent small unhappy country.
The menacing attitude of Bulgaria riveted Serbian attention, and her military preparations were soon obvious. Great efforts were made by England and France to persuade Serbia to make concessions in Macedonia to Bulgaria which would avert the impending danger. But the Serbians with equal obstinacy and courage rejected these overtures and prepared themselves to meet the onslaught of their hated and deeply injured Balkan neighbour. Serbia began to mass her troops against a Bulgarian invasion from the east, and was altogether unaware of the terrible German thrust which was preparing from the north.
Not only had Falkenhayn to find his ten divisions against Serbia from the Austrian front, but he had also to meet the main offensive of France and England now rapidly approaching in the West. For both these needs he had to withdraw four divisions from the Russian front, including Hindenburg’s command. HL had been authorized to begin their long-desired offensive through Kovno towards Vilna, and by the first week of September this was in full progress. Animated by Ludendorff, Hindenburg bitterly and fiercely resisted these withdrawals of his troops. Dominated by his local point of view, he fought for every division. His correspondence with Falkenhayn reveals the intensity of the struggle of these two powerful figures.
On August 27 the first German division had been taken from the Mackensen group and ordered to Orsova on the Danube, partly to bring it into the new theatre and partly to expedite Bulgarian decisions. At this time Conrad seems to have been drawn into the HL orbit. He supported the Hindenburg requests for the strengthening of the Kovno-Vilna offensive. Falkenhayn gave a clear answer. ‘A reinforcement of the Kovno Group is certainly to be desired, but it is incomparably more important that the Dardanelles should be secured and in addition the iron in Bulgaria struck while it is hot. Consequently the forces which we are able to withdraw from the region of Brest-Litovsk, without slackening our hold on the enemy’s throat, must go to the Danube.’ During the latter days of August and the early part of September no less than ten divisions were removed from the central and southern sectors of the Eastern front and sent either to the Danube or to meet the oncoming attack in France. These withdrawals were but the preliminary. ‘Before very long,’ says Falkenhayn, ‘the necessity was bound to arise for ten or twelve divisions to be taken from the region of the army group in the north for use in other theatres of war.’
These transferences and the threatened minimizing of the eastern theatre were viewed with stern hostility by HL. For them at the moment the Vilna offensive was the only object in the world. All their strategic convictions, all the fruits of their preparations, all their chance of winning distinction were equally at stake; and here was Falkenhayn and O.H.L. not content with coming over to the East, winning tremendous victories, and thereafter weakening the southern armies, but now actually withdrawing from HL the very divisions they were counting on for their promising operation in the north! Repeated warnings were given by Falkenhayn that whatever happened to the Vilna offensive, he meant to have all the troops he wanted to attack Serbia and meet the French. HL were bluntly told that they must adapt their plans to this condition. They were to give up two divisions in the middle of September and other forces would constantly be withdrawn from their command after a few days’ interval. HL replied by counter-demands. They declared themselves in full battle, hopefully advancing on their left and heavily attacked on their right. They claimed in extreme urgency the Xth Corps withdrawn from Mackensen which was assembling at Bialystok for transport to the West. Let them have these for Kovno—even for a fortnight. Falkenhayn refused. The Xth Corps went to France.
On September 19 Falkenhayn informed Hindenburg that the removal of portions of the Twelfth and Eighth armies must begin, and that a division of the Twelfth Army in reserve, the 26th, must go at once. Six more divisions were to follow with all speed. HL complained about ‘an interference’ in their rights. They required these divisions for the capture of Riga, a main feature in their plans. This issue was fought upon the removal of the 26th Division. ‘The division,’ said Falkenhayn, ‘is required for the Serbian front. Not one more day can be allowed.’ Even when the 26th Division had been wrenched away, HL continued their resistance. They would, they said in a tone of independence, release the troops as soon as possible; but when they could release them, they could not say. They were being heavily attacked themselves. The whole of their plans would miscarry, if they were weakened at a moment when great results hung in the balance. ‘I expect,’ wrote Hindenburg, ‘that I shall succeed in preventing the enemy from breaking through. It is impossible however at the moment to send off any more troops. This can only be done when the attack has been beaten off and after the front has been shortened by the taking of Smorgoni and the bridge-head of Dvinsk.’ Falkenhayn replied brutally that the Vilna offensive was of no consequence. What did it matter whether the line on which HL settled for the winter was drawn through Smorgoni or further back? He had to face the great French and British offensive in France and to nourish the all-important attack upon Serbia. ‘The demand that your Excellency should transfer the first of these two divisions to the West as soon as it is possible to entrain them from Vilna, must therefore be adhered to.’
Hindenburg refused point-blank. He sent a letter to the Supreme Command challenging the entire past conduct of the campaign by Falkenhayn:
‘The fact that further relinquishment of divisions is now meeting with difficulties is due to the plan of campaign favoured in the summer, which was unable to strike a deadly blow at the Russians in spite of the favourable circumstances and my urgent entreaties. I am not blind to the difficulties of the general military situation which have ensued, and if the Russian attacks are beaten off really decisively, I shall relinquish further divisions as soon as it seems possible for me to do so…. But I cannot bind myself to a definite time. A premature relinquishment would give rise to a crisis, such as is now being experienced, to my regret, on the Western Front, and in certain circumstances it would mean a catastrophe for the Army Group, as any retiring movement of my troops which are but weak in comparison with the enemy, must lead to very great harm being done to the formations, owing to the unfavourable condition of the terrain. I request that my views should be represented to His Majesty.’
Falkenhayn replied with vigour:
‘Much as I regret that Your Excellency should without any cause consider the present moment suited for explanations of events of the past, which are therefore unimportant at the moment, I should not trouble to refute your statements, if they concerned only me personally. But as it amounts to a criticism of orders issued by O.H.L., which, as is well known, have in all important cases met with the previous consent of His Majesty, I am unhappily compelled to do so. Whether Your Excellency agrees with the views of O.H.L. does not matter, once a decision has been made by His Majesty. In this case every portion of our forces has to adapt itself unconditionally to O.H.L.’
He then proceeded to make a highly
controversial and at the same time masterly rejoinder to all the criticisms and insinuations which HL had put forward. He reflected acidly upon Hindenburg’s operations, in the sense that he had been ready to put up with them so long as they did not obstruct larger possibilities. He concluded:
‘I will report to His Majesty the scruples which Your Excellency raises against the withdrawal of the two divisions. I must refuse to bring the remaining points of your telegram to the knowledge of the Emperor, because they only concern past events… about which I do not intend in any case, to approach the Supreme War Lord in these grave days.’48
The clash was front to front; but the Emperor supported Falkenhayn, and Hindenburg bowed. It was well for his fame that he did so. He was taking a local view and a partisan interest. Had he and Ludendorff sat at the summit, they would have viewed a different scene. He suggests this himself quite simply in his memoirs.
On September 25 the British and French attacks in Artois and Champagne began. Sir John French fell on at Loos with his fifteen divisions and with severe losses stormed forward a mile and a half on a front of seven and a half. The French attack in Champagne, backed by thirty-four divisions, made great progress. Seventeen French divisions committed to the assault drove the remnants of two German divisions back two and a half miles on a front of about fifteen. Both British and French offensives had been prepared by a gunfire, the like of which human beings had never previously delivered or sustained. But once the troops sought to advance beyond the areas pulverized by their batteries, the machine-gun and the rifle asserted their then invincible power. General Joffre had evidently been impressed by the reports of the German break-through of Gorlice-Tarnow. The concentration of French infantry and artillery upon the front of attack was prodigious, and at the outset in the locality it was decisive. But the Germans were not the Russians. There was in fact not the slightest comparison between them. The great French mass instead of irrupting through the pierced German line and flinging back its wounded flanks on either side, found itself confronted with numberless obstinate resistances. On the 26th and 27th it came to a standstill. From that moment its very strength became its weakness. Its mass presented a hideous target to the swiftly-gathering German guns. The crater-fields which its own artillery had prepared became the tomb of tens of thousands of Frenchmen. The Xth German Corps, which had luckily been snatched from Hindenburg ‘without one day’s delay,’ arrived on the scene at the critical moment. The German line, though dinted, was consolidated, and the French crowded together and unable to deploy were shot to pieces. The battle in Champagne was one of the most marked examples of the fallacious valuations of General Joffre and his Headquarters Staff. Even Loos with all its confusion and waste of young troops was a less blameworthy defeat.
By the early days of October both the French and British attacks had been definitely broken. They were only continued—unconsciously, no doubt—to save the faces of the High Command, and to allow the impression of defeat to evaporate in scrambling operations which the world could not follow. Nearly three hundred thousand French and British soldiers had been killed or wounded. The German front was everywhere intact; and not one single division did Falkenhayn remove from the mass he was gathering against Serbia. On the contrary at the height of the battle he even diverted the German Alpine Corps to replace the Austrian divisions who had failed to present themselves upon the Danube. We must consider this triple exercise of will-power, the stripping of HL, the withstanding in the West, and the perfection of the preparations upon the Danube, all simultaneously proceeding, as the culmination of Falkenhayn’s command.
All was now ready for Serbia. In the spring and throughout the summer the German Staff Officers had been intently studying the passages of the Danube and the Save. This work, entrusted to the peripatetic Colonel Hentsch, had been thoroughly done. Every battery position, every road, every bivouac, every billet, every water spring, all the islands, all the hills, all the railway possibilities had been examined with meticulous energy and the results woven into a complete texture of Staff knowledge. Four armies were now about to spring from three sides upon that small and fierce people on whom the guilt of Sarajevo had been fastened. One German and one Austro-German army were marching towards the Danube, Belgrade and the Save. The First Bulgarian Army ranged itself to strike towards ‘the historic capital Nish. The Second Bulgarian Army prepared to lap round to the southwards and by severing the railway from Salonica isolate the doomed community from the world and from all forms of succour. The communiqués from the Eastern Front still depicted Mackensen fighting with his Army Group in Poland. Actually he had been for three weeks marshalling three of the four armies which were about to invade Serbia. One of these mornings, I see from the records of the British War Council, I drew the attention of my colleagues to a sentence amid scores of intelligence reports. ‘Mackensen is at Temesvar.’ It seemed to me, watching with attention from a situation of knowledge, but without executive authority, that the Bulgarian menace which was now so open must be a part of a general design against Serbia, and to clear a road for Germany to sustain the Turkish armies at the Dardanelles. Realization came a few days later. On September 20 our Military Attaché with the Serbians mentioned that there was more than the usual movement of troops and trains beyond the rivers, and on the 23rd he reported ‘a steady increase’ in the German and Austrian forces, beyond the Serbian frontier. On the same day the Bulgarian mobilization was announced. Still no one could tell how much Germany intended to do. Pressure and threats from the north by Austrian and German forces might be a sufficient assistance to a purely Bulgarian attack upon Serbia. Worrying always about the Dardanelles, I naturally credited the Germans with similar preoccupations. The words ‘Mackensen is at Temesvar’ seemed to glare from the pages and pages of stuff we had to read each day. All doubts were soon to be removed.
Mackensen’s preparations were approaching completion. The most capable commanders were placed at his disposal. Gallwitz commanded the German Eleventh, and Kövess the Austro-German Third Army. It will be remembered that the earlier Austrian invasions of Serbia had been launched mainly from Bosnia across the Western frontier. The Austrians had considered the forcing of the Danube, often more than a thousand yards broad, too serious an operation. Potiorek had tried what he thought was an easier way. His experience had led him to remark to his successor at the moment of dismissal: ‘If you ever have the chance again, go in by Belgrade.’ The Germans were of this opinion too. In the early days of October they marched the Third and Eleventh Armies rapidly southward from the areas where they had been concealed to the selected passages of the Danube and the Save on either side of Belgrade.
Few indeed are the instances in history of a river-line athwart the advance of a superior army proving an effective defence. Mystifying bombardments at many points and an elaborate feint at Orsova baffled the Serbians. Almost to the last they remained in doubt of the actual points of passage, and altogether unwitting of the enormous forces which were rolling upon them. Two of their three small armies, the First and Third, at length faced the Austro-Germans, and their remaining Second Army stood between Nish and the rapidly-assembling Bulgarian First Army. Against the Bulgarian Second Army which to the southward threatened their sole railway-line for reinforcement or retreat, they could muster only detachments and volunteers.
On the 7th October both Teutonic armies began the passage of the rivers. Assisted by large islands, by the overpowering artillery which had opened on the 6th, and by the Austrian monitors, they soon established themselves after heavy fighting and several local repulses on the southern bank. On the 8th they were ferried across in great numbers. Belgrade fell to the Austrians on the 9th, and very large forces were dug in on Serbian soil along a 50-mile front on both sides of the city. The Serbians had placed their oldest men in the trenches and fortified positions from which the crossings were resisted. They now counter-attacked fiercely with both their northern armies. Hard fighting followed; but the weight and power of
the Germans across the river grew continually. Mackensen had ordered the advance to begin on the 15th; but Gallwitz, visiting him personally, explained that his horses were not yet across. The general attack was therefore postponed till the 18th. On this day the battle began along the whole front. All day the Serbians held their positions, but on the 19th they were overwhelmed at many points, and by the 24th both the Teutonic armies were advancing steadily into the centre of Serbia. It is surprising both that the two bridges across the Danube were not completed till the 21st, and that the invasion could be supplied in the interval entirely by boats. Mackensen had hoped that the Serbians would stand, and be surrounded at their arsenal and military centre of Kraguyevatz, but this temptation they resisted. Burning and blowing up their stores and depots, they continued their retreat to the southward.
They had need to do so. On the 23rd the Bulgarian First Army crashed upon them from the east, and a savage battle between armies whose soldiers hated each other with personal loathing, and the memory of recent bitter wrongs, began. Slowly but surely the fresher and far more numerous Bulgarians prevailed, and the Serbian Second Army retired towards their old capital. Meanwhile the Bulgarian Second Army, driving a weak opposition before it, had already captured Veles and Kumanovo by the 23rd, thus cutting the vital railway-line behind the forlorn people.
The World Crisis Page 31
