But Falkenhayn cared for none of these things. He had selected as his scene of the offensive perhaps the strongest point in the French front. The rugged, hilly, fortified salient, steel-tipped by the fortress of Verdun, was to be his battle-ground. It offered no line of advance to Paris; it was in fact the sector most remote from the capital. It struck at no joint between the British and French armies. A successful German advance of even 50 miles would drive the Allies back upon no vital communications. Even if the famous stronghold fell, and the vigorous field armies by which it would certainly be defended were forced to retreat so great a distance, they would only have shortened their fighting front and would still have 150 miles between them and the steps of Notre Dame.1 Why then did this accomplished soldier, almost certainly the ablest brain which Germany employed in the whole war, plunge into courses of such surprising apparent perversity?
He had a plan of striking originality. Nothing like it has been found in the operations of any army in the Great War. Nothing like it was possible with the weapons of former wars. It was founded upon Falkenhayn’s appreciation of French psychology and German artillery. He believed that the French regarded Verdun with sentiments which had no relation to material facts. Verdun was the historical scene of the triumph of the Gaul over the Teuton. It was regarded throughout France as the corner-stone in the French rampart against Germany. To preserve Verdun the French would, as Falkenhayn judged, make exertions which would exhaust their strength. Verdun would become the anvil upon which the remaining force of the French army would be pulverized in successive relays by the German heavy howitzers. They would be bled white; their hearts would be broken; honour would compel them to defend positions which a cool view of war would have yielded at a certain price. The brave would be slain, and Paris, accepting defeat, would sue for peace.
Here, be it observed, was no turning movement such as HL excelled in, nor any ‘breaking through’ like Gorlice-Tarnow. To force the French army to sacrifice itself in detail upon this grim altar was Falkenhayn’s theme. He judged the French pride rightly. In the event they were to immolate nearly 400,000 men, the flower of 100 divisions, at Verdun. Actually the German attackers from the open field were to suffer less than the defenders of perhaps the strongest fortress-position in the world. In all the larger aspects he was wrong. He misjudged the heroic constancy of France and the stubborn fortitude of that old nation. And meanwhile he left behind him in the East not only lost opportunities but living perils. Russia was recovering her strength. A steady stream of munitions which the world had manufactured upon the authority of 700 millions of British wealth was now flowing towards Russia. All the year the armies of the Eastern Front might sway to and fro in indecisive warfare, but the Russian giant had still one mighty blow to strike.
Another grave and undermining weakness lay in the conduct of Austria. The victories of 1915 on the Eastern Front, though won by German troops and skill, had raised the pride and self-confidence of A.O.K. Conrad felt himself a conqueror, at least by proxy. Had not his eye discerned the true point of attack on the Russian front; had not he rightly conceived its character? Relieved from immediate danger, in possession once again of the whole of Galicia, cheered by the prospects of a general victory, Conrad and the military circles over which he presided now assumed dominating power in the Dual Monarchy, and felt in a position to assert their independent judgment against their German ally. In their rejoicings over the campaign against Serbia there had mingled a strong strain of irritation. This longed-for event had in the end been a German achievement. They had felt themselves ‘patronized’ as well as commanded by O.H.L. In dark days, with the Russian bayonets bristling along the crests of the Carpathians, submission had been inevitable. Now that the tide had turned, their self-esteem mounted rapidly. An increasing tension developed between Falkenhayn and Conrad.
Personal friction was aggravated by diverging aims. Falkenhayn wished to gather the largest possible number of German divisions for the attack upon Verdun, and for this purpose he required Austria to exert herself continuously against Russia. Since he was going to the West, Conrad should throw his weight to the East, occupy the Russians and release a maximum of German troops. Conrad’s ideas and Austrian inclinations were turned in the opposite direction. Their hatred of Italy was intense. Above all these things they desired to punish this ‘perfidious’ pirate nation. The Austrian troops themselves shared this mood. They understood the quarrel with the Italians; they always fought with keener spirit against them than against the Russians. A fierce offensive in Tirol was their heart’s desire; and for this Conrad had a plan.
Falkenhayn deprecated this offensive. He was stiffly resisted. In order to frustrate it, he demanded the Austrian heavy howitzers for his attack on Verdun. He was refused. The most he could obtain from Conrad was a solemn undertaking that the Eastern Front should not be endangered by withdrawals for the campaign against Italy. This promise was not kept. While Russia gathered herself for a culminating effort, Austria steadily denuded her Eastern armies, and scraped every division and every gun to wreak vengeance against Italy in Tirol.
For these new excursions Conrad prepared himself by a merry event. He had long been a widower. His mother having died, he felt free to re-marry. When the news of his intention was brought to the Emperor, Francis Joseph manifested marked disapprobation. He deemed matrimonial adventures incongruous in a Chief of Staff in full crisis of war. His prejudices, unreasonable as they may have been, were shared by the Austro-Hungarian army and nation; and when Conrad’s bride appeared in due course to do the social honours of the Headquarters at Teschen, even in that interlude of success, ungracious criticisms were rife. Conrad’s popularity with the nation to whose service he was devoted was fatally affected. He was no longer in a position to sustain the renewal of defeat. There was a feeling that for great commanders Armageddon ought to be an all-sufficing occupation.
CHAPTER XXIII
BRUSILOV’S OFFENSIVE
The disasters which had befallen the Allies in every field during 1915 had forced them to a closer unity and more intimate consultation. Inter-allied conferences from henceforward began to play a prominent part. Intense effort was made to survey the war as a whole and to concert joint and simultaneous plans. There was at this time a strong reaction against what were termed ‘side-shows.’ For 1916 the supreme exertions were to be concentrated against the German fortified lines in the West. France and England were to assault together in the summer astride of the Somme, and Italy and Russia were to make great offensives at the same time. Thus on every front the Central Empires would be assailed.
Falkenhayn’s attack upon Verdun on February 21 disturbed these elaborate preparations. It was necessary for the French to carry a whole army from their northern sector to Verdun; and the gap had to be filled by an extension of the British front. It has therefore been argued by the Falkenhayn school in every army that his irruption and seizure of initiative in the decisive theatre was thus vindicated. No doubt from the German standpoint this result was in itself good. But much easier and cheaper methods of deranging the impending Anglo-French offensive were to hand. If Falkenhayn had wished to pursue as the main feature of 1915 a far-reaching campaign in the East, he could evidently have minimized his dangers in the West by making the same kind of retirement in April, May or June, 1916, as Hindenburg and Ludendorff did when they were in control at the beginning of 1917. What was the use of all this French country which had been acquired so haphazard in the flux of the first invasion, if it were not to be sacrificed or sold back to its owners for a sufficient price in time or blood? The suggestion that, but for Falkenhayn’s attack on Verdun and the consequent weakening of the summer thrust by the Allies along the Somme, the German Front in France must have been broken, is not one which can be accepted.
As the winter grudgingly withdrew the gigantic plans which both sides had evolved came into action. The Russians indeed, both in December and March, made heavy bloody and fruitless efforts with their north
ern armies. Their March attack near Lake Narotch seemed to be timed to catch the thaw, which at this season made the ground most painful to the infantry in assault and the roads impassable to the artillery and supplies in pursuit. The Narotch offensive, in which eighteen Russian divisions were engaged and where new, abundant supplies of shell and heavy shells were used, was repulsed by the Tenth Army under Eichhorn with a loss of upwards of 70,000 men.
The surprise cannonade of Verdun reverberated throughout the warring world, and from every theatre all eyes were turned upon the Homeric combats which raged round Douaumont and Thiaumont and ‘304-metre hill.’ The British hastened by every means the dispatch to France of all the ‘Kitchener’ armies for the forthcoming offensive on the Somme. It was expected that by the middle of June Sir Douglas Haig would have nearly fifty divisions, representing the fighting force of an army of two million men, at his disposal in France and Flanders. The Russians in that emulation of comradeship which was the characteristic of the Czar’s armies concerted a new enormous onslaught. Their main attack, to which twenty-six divisions were assigned, was mounted on a 25-mile front to the north and south of the village of Krevo in the neighbourhood of Molodetchno. In order to hold their enemies upon the rest of the line and prevent the transference of reinforcements to the threatened sector, the High Command of the South-West Front was directed to prepare contributory offensives. General Ivanov had passed from the scene. He had been appointed to the ‘Council of Empire’—an honorific method of compulsory and final retirement from executive authority. In his place sat General Brusilov, whom the reader will remember as the leader of the southernmost Russian Army in the battle of Lemberg now nearly two years gone by. Hitherto Brusilov, having always fought against Austrians, had borne all the tests of war. He will certainly go down in history as an officer of exceptional energy and comprehension. He was fortunate in having at the head of his four armies commanders of proved and real merit; Kaledin, Sakharov, Shcherbachev and Lechitski. All these men were fully abreast of the realities of modern war and accustomed to direct large operations. The South-West Front accordingly set itself to study its subsidiary role.
For nearly five months the Teutonic activities in the East had been in suspense. Apart from the two ill-starred Russian attacks a very tranquil form of trench warfare with, as was remarked, ‘scarcely 100 to 150 casualties a day,’ had smouldered from the Baltic to the Roumanian boundary. The breathing-space had been precious to Russia. Her armies had been refitted and replenished after the hideous retreat from the Polish Salient. The crisis of munitions was broken. From now onwards ammunition, guns, and above all rifles, were arriving in a growing stream. Our observer, General Knox, notes that nearly 1,200,000 rifles from the United States, from France, from Italy and Japan had reinforced the national production now expanded to 100,000 a month. Meanwhile the ranks had been refilled and large numbers of unarmed men stood behind every formation ready to relieve in turn the fighters of their rifles and their duties. The Russians thus contemplated resuming aggressive warfare upon the largest scale and throwing their whole front into full activity by about the middle of June. This general renewed onset from the East was to synchronize with the opening of the offensive of the western Allies upon the Somme. Of all this formidable recrudescence Falkenhayn and O.H.L. were unconscious.
Events were to precipitate the Russian attack. The drama of Verdun seemed to require from every ally of France competing sacrifices. But now on May 15 Conrad re-entered the scene. He was triumphant after his borrowed victories in Galicia. For long weeks he had been pining for the snows to melt, and open the hated Italy to his new offensive. We have seen how severely Falkenhayn had deprecated this diversion. The separation of the two Commanders was final. In the mountains of the Trentino, across almost the same ground where British and French divisions were to stand two years later, Conrad fell upon the Italians with superior forces and all the best Austrian artillery, of which the Austrian front against Russia had been denuded. He made immediately serious headway in the general direction of Verona. Italy raised the alarm. The King of Italy telegraphed personally to the Czar. The Stavka was moved to ask Brusilov whether he could do anything to take the pressure off the harassed ally. Nothing must of course prejudice the ‘set-piece’ attack impending near Krevo; but surely some forward movement was possible which would prevent further withdrawals of Austrian troops from Galicia to the Trentino? Brusilov replied that his armies could just as well make such a demonstration at the beginning of June as at the appointed time three weeks later, when they were to have conformed to the main Krevo battle scheme. Brusilov was authorized to strike for what he was worth; it being understood that only limited results could be expected.
It was this very derangement of the time-table that produced the greatest Russian victory of the war. By every maxim of military prudence the Stavka committed an error when they compromised their prospects in the battle planned around Krevo by loosing prematurely the offensives of their four south-western Armies. Yet it was this element of what is often called ‘lack of clear thinking,’ which imparted to Brusilov’s attack the priceless quality of SURPRISE. Moreover, Brusilov’s plan was well made. All the four Armies were to be launched at once. They were to attack without elaborate, noticeable preparation. A brief bombardment—only a single day, into which the ammunition of a whole fortnight’s fighting was packed—was to be followed by a general incontinent walk forward of all the Russian forces along a line of nearly 200 miles. June 4 was fixed as the date; and the haste of the decision guarded its secret.
At the signal this broad though shallow battle burst upon the unsuspecting Austrians. Conrad, his gaze directed upon Verona, learned that all his Eastern Armies were ablaze. The next day the Russian infantry advanced. On the right Kaledin carried all the opposing trenches, progressing 10 miles on a front of thirty. On the left Lechitski was completely victorious. The successes of the two centre armies were less sensational; but in the main the Austrian troops either fled or eagerly surrendered in great numbers to the enemy. Bohemian regiments virtually fraternized with their fellow-Slavs. The resistance of the Austro-Hungarian Armies was broken upon the entire front and a gulf of 195 miles yawned in the Eastern defence of the Central Powers. Brusilov’s contributory attack, launched prematurely and unrelated, had achieved results far beyond anything dreamt of for the great Russian ‘set-piece’ at Krevo. The Stavki showed itself capable of profiting by the gifts of fortune, and discarding all their long-cherished plans for the campaign, resolved to back the new success with every man and gun their railways could carry to the south. This transference of forces, hampered only by the meagre railways, was in full progress from the 9th or 10th June onwards. Meanwhile Brusilov was advancing. In the month that followed, the armies of Nicholas II, which had hitherto suffered unexampled miseries with patient fortitude, whom their conquerors had almost dismissed from their calculations, captured above 350,000 prisoners, nearly 400 guns, 1,300 machine-guns, and regained a tract of debatable ground 200 miles wide and in places nearly 60 miles in depth.
GENERAL BRUSILOV
These disconcerting tidings reached Falkenhayn at the most awkward of moments. His attacks on Verdun had subsided into a prolonged concentrated struggle in the crater-fields around the fortress. Each side crammed new divisions into the limited arena of the death-grapple, and fed their guns with unstinted shells. The Germans had performed prodigies. Douaumont and Thiaumont and Vaux were in their hands. The possession of ‘304-metre hill’ was disputed with blood and assertions. But the world sustained only one impression, namely that the French held Verdun; and that impression was grievous to the German cause. For over three months past there had been no question of an attack which could be broken off at pleasure. The prestige of the German army was engaged. The reputations of Falkenhayn, of O.H.L., and indeed of the unlucky Heir to the Throne, were deeply involved. To gain some definite, indisputable success on this deliberately challenged battle-ground had become militarily and personally
indispensable.
Meanwhile a hundred miles to the north all the new British Army, 30 or 40 divisions of them, every man a volunteer, with powerful French forces on their right, were obviously about to make their greatest attack in measureless force. The whole region before the German Somme front was lined with batteries; and air reconnaissance showed the enormous accumulation of munitions and the close-up camps of nearly a million men. This storm was about to burst. Falkenhayn had gone willingly—wilfully—to the West, and thus had he fared there.
Neither the German supreme commander nor his staff was unequal to the occasion. They took the decisions imposed upon them by events with cool and refined judgment. They yielded up their hopes of Verdun. They faced the approaching explosion on the Somme. They resolved to restore the Eastern Front.
Wherever in its turbulent advance the Russian waves had encountered German troops, they had swerved as from a rock. Bothmer with the Südarmee, its one German division stiffening nine Austrian, held his ground or receded slowly. Linsingen, opposite the extreme right of the Russian attack, covering Kovel and the important railways running back to Kholm and Ivangorod, maintained a stubborn posture. Now from every side Germans must be brought to regather the Austrian hosts and re-form the front. HL must send three divisions, two more must be scraped from local reserves; four must come from France at the very moment when they were most needed there. As for Conrad, caught in the act of having improperly and unfairly cast away the front which Germany had re-established for him, taken red-handed in the midst of an unwarrantable disconnected Trentino offensive, he must without compunction be brought under discipline. No more could the pretensions which A.O.K. had indulged after 1915 be tolerated. Unity of command was the penalty which O.H.L. exacted in return for their renewed valiant aid. Conrad’s Italian offensive was immediately suppressed. Austrian divisions and Austrian artillery must recross the breadth of the Monarchy and help to stem the Russian flood. Brusilov’s great battle now turned upon whether the Germans could arrive to succour Austria at a greater rate than Russians from the North could sustain him. Here the Russian railways showed their weakness. Moreover, the very quality of being launched on the spur of the moment which had favoured Brusilov’s offensive, now deprived it of nourishment. There was no deeply-banked weight behind his attack. By the middle of July the Teutonic Front was again continuous. Hard fighting with varying results burned all along the southern line, but it had once again become unbreakable.
The World Crisis Page 33
