The World Crisis

by Winston S. Churchill

  Moreover, the great event had happened in France. On July 114 British and 5 French divisions with as many more in near reserve had begun the battle of the Somme. Although London and Paris were deluded or consoled by moderate captures of ground and prisoners, the general battle of the first day, never afterwards renewed on such a scale, was an unmistakable German victory. The French losses were not excessive for the results gained; but the British Army, the flower of the nation, was mowed down by the German machine-guns; and on the night of July 1 Sir Douglas Haig had to recognize his repulse at the cost of nearly 60,000 men. The Somme battle now developed into an inconceivably bitter and bloody struggle of divisions and corps, representing nations rather than armies, in pulverized fields and villages. It became to the German Staff a hideous preoccupation; but no longer a violent crisis. However, as it continued, the persistency with which regardless of losses the new British armies pressed forward over scores of thousands of corpses, and their vigour in the conflict began gradually to equalize the conditions. The German losses, at first disproportionately small, swelled savagely. All through July, all through August, through September the deadly duel continued. In October it spread from the Somme to the Scarpe; and even at the end of November, when the full rigours of winter in Picardy were added to the most intense horrors of war, Sir Douglas Haig was still possessed of ardent and stubborn divisions with which to strike new blows. The German losses now affected not only the man-power of the State, but the quality of the army. Never again, by the testimony of many of their own regimental histories, did they fight as they fought on the Somme.

  Up till this moment Falkenhayn had survived the consequences of his decisions and the malicious strokes of fortune. But his mortal blow was now to come. So far the German people, though sorely tried and perplexed, had been up-buoyed by the reconstitution of the Eastern Front and the arrest of the British and French upon the Somme. So far O.H.L. could represent that ‘all was proceeding according to plan.’ But now Germany received a shock for which, though it had long been threatened, she was wholly unprepared. On August 27 Roumania declared war.

  Throughout the winter of 1915 and far on into the summer of 1916, Hindenburg and Ludendorff had been marooned at Kovno. They disposed of four armies. Large local battles had been fought upon their front; but they were outside the stream of events. The World War had left them in a martial solitude. All their efforts to procure new forces for the East had been fruitless. They had watched with foreboding and disapproval Falkenhayn gathering his forces against Verdun, and Conrad gleaning the Eastern Front for the sake of the Trentino. Shrunken in authority, eclipsed by the brilliant episodes of 1915, they still sang their same old song, ‘You should never go back to the West, till you have finished with Russia. Russia is only scotched, not slain. You could have finished her last year, if you had only allowed us to make the great encirclement by the North.’ But while the dominating episodes of Verdun and the Somme filled all minds, nobody at the Supreme Headquarters paid much attention to HL.

  Brusilov’s victory had startled German military opinion. No one had believed that such an event could happen. No doubt O.H.L. was dealing deftly with the emergency. Still, there must have been serious miscalculation somewhere. Perhaps after all these Eastern Generals, the men of Tannenberg, were right when they cried repeatedly, ‘Finish with Russia.’

  The entry of Roumania as a German foe opened all men’s eyes. Here was a small country desperately anxious to find the winning side, which in the third year of the war, even in the face of the Serbian Reckoning, now staked its all upon the ultimate victory of France, Russia and England. Less than a year had passed since Bulgaria had expressed in arms the contrary opinion. What had happened in the nine months to make so great a difference in German military credit? The battles, on the whole, had gone well. The public was saturated with tales of captured prisoners, cannon and territory; yet Roumania clearly thought that Germany was going to lose the war. The German armies had fulfilled every task set them. Someone had set them the wrong tasks. And thus there fell upon Falkenhayn a cataract of instructed or half-instructed displeasure. A tremor almost of panic swept the governing circles. The Crown Prince had expressed his views more than a year ago. They had certainly not been altered by the slaughters before Verdun, the responsibility for which had been unjustly thrown upon him. The Kaiser must have gone through great stresses to cast aside the accomplished, masterly Falkenhayn, the man who had retrieved the Marne and Lemberg. It was an awe-stirring act of state. Nevertheless, borne forward upon a tide of fierce opinion, Wilhelm II took the right decision.

  On August 28 Hindenburg and Ludendorff were summoned to Berlin. That night, the chief of the Imperial Military Cabinet informed Falkenhayn that the Kaiser had decided to seek independent military advice. The Kaiser’s letter to Falkenhayn tells its own tale.

  August 28th, 1916.

  The Chief of my Military Cabinet has informed me that you feel obliged to regard it as a sign of mistrust, to which you cannot submit, that I should consult F.-M. Hindenburg as to the present situation. You have also given expression to this standpoint in regard to myself in this evening’s conversation. I can understand this from a theoretical point of view, as it is formally consistent with the position of trust of the Chief of the General Staff; I, however, as the Supreme Commander, to whom ultimately the Chief of the General Staff is himself subordinate, must claim to hear, when and as often as it seems right to me, the views of other high commanders in whom I have particular confidence, especially in so serious a situation as the present. But since I must fear that a constant source of dissension and friction is inherent in this conception of mine, I cannot, to my deepest regret, go against your wish to be relieved of your appointment. Meanwhile I thank you with a much-moved heart for all that you have accomplished in these two years of war, and I request you, until I have finally decided upon your successor, to continue your service. It will also be my care that your wish to find appropriate employment at the front shall be fulfilled.

  Your well-disposed and grateful King

  WILHELM.49

  Thus did the ‘Easterners’ win the last round of their long duel. HL absorbed O.H.L. The massive figure of the aged Field-Marshal occupied the supreme military seat. At his side as vice-gerent, all-grasping, all-using, tireless and hazard-loving, General Ludendorff seized the control of Germany’s destiny. Hoffmann would be left in the East. For the East indeed, no better choice could have been made. Yet now that we know so much that was hidden, it seems that a great triumvirate was broken when that wise mind was separated from Ludendorff’s force and Hindenburg’s prestige. Falkenhayn was sent against Roumania.

  All through the autumn the Stavka steadily backed Brusilov. As the Germans gradually arrived upon the broken front, the Russian attacks became increasingly costly and barren. Nevertheless, they were continued with the ruthless prodigality of new hope. Their Russian operations were broadened by new offensive battles upon the Northern wing of the original attack. Heavy and bloody fighting raged along the Stokhod, throughout July, August and September. The Russian generals strove to make flesh and blood achieve the purposes of artillery. Wire entanglements, which there were no shells to cut, were traversed upon the heaps of dead which the German machine-guns piled upon them. This profusion in the commanders was equalled by the devotion of their troops. The Russian effort persisted in loyal accord with the British battles on the Somme and the Scarpe. The waste of human life in these unnoticed fields was scarcely exceeded in any period of the war. Brusilov’s actual offensive had, up till the time when the Front was stabilized, cost him 350,000 casualties. Against this, he might set his equal number of Austrian prisoners, and probably an additional quarter of a million enemy killed and wounded. But the whole campaign in the Southern theatre, following in the wake of his offensive, involved Russian losses which approached a million. Against these there were no proportionate German casualties. Nevertheless, such was the indomitable vigour of the Russian operations in
these months, that the German and Austrian forces in the East were raised under constant pressure from 1,300 to 1,800 battalions, an increase of 530 battalions, with all other arms in like proportion, while the German army in the West met the Anglo-French attacks at a uniform strength of approximately 1,300 battalions. This was the last effective military operation undertaken by the armies of the Czar.

  The rest of the year witnessed the second of the great German recoveries. Although not on the same vast scale as after Lemberg and the Marne, the paroxysm of German war-energy manifested at the end of 1916 astounded the Allies. London and Paris had been led to believe that the Germans were in extreme distress upon the Somme, that Austria had been mortally stricken by Brusilov, and that the Roumanian declaration was the beginning of the end. Instead they were to endure, before the end of 1917, the total destruction of their small new ally, the final collapse of Russia, and the rout of Italy at Caporetto.

  Although the preliminary arrangements to cope with Roumania had been foreseen and prepared by Falkenhayn—were in fact executed by him in person—the credit of that act of retribution was naturally ascribed to the new commanders. I have, in an earlier volume, described in some detail the campaign which overran Roumania, destroyed or scattered her armies, occupied her capital, and drove the remnants of the Roumanian state to shelter and to starve through a cruel winter within the Russian lines in Bessarabia. The swift ruin of Roumania produced almost the same consternation among the Allies as her arrival in the field had created in Berlin. This little country seemed to have been quite fruitlessly consumed. Indeed the only result of her immolation was a most inconvenient extension of the Russian front by more than 400 miles, and the diversion of nearly twenty Russian divisions. Bucharest fell on December 6, and the Somme battle subsided in the frost and sleet of December.

  The time was now come for the Emperor Francis Joseph to die. He had witnessed with frigid satisfaction the vast recoil of Russia in 1915. The dismissal of the Grand Duke Nicholas from the command of the Russian armies had seemed to him a signal of Teutonic victory more indubitable even than the fall of Warsaw. He had followed with measured approval the over-ripe, but at last condign chastisement of Serbia. He had welcomed the Kaiser on his way to the celebrations of that joyous event. All was then a feast of mutual congratulation. Yet intimate observers had noticed that the high spirits of both potentates had seemed rather forced, and Baron Margutti, to whose records we are indebted, felt at the time that both really wanted peace. They looked upon victory as the means of gaining peace, not, like their generals, as the means of further victories. They had pre-occupations not shared by their servants. Nations may fall and rise again; but dynasties in modern times can only stand or fall. Still, at the beginning of 1916 the sun shone so brightly on the bristling bayonets of the Central Empires that the general staffs were everywhere in the ascendant. Falkenhayn, it was said, had new wonders to produce, and Conrad too, as we have seen, had his plans.

  The Emperor lived long enough to endure the news of Brusilov’s offensive, to receive the Roumanian declaration of War which he had so long dreaded, to see Falkenhayn, the glittering deliverer of the spring, dismissed by the Kaiser in the autumn. The old man’s inveterate pessimism and deeply-ingrained expectation of misfortune returned with doubled force. How often had he not seen these false dawns before? True, the Prussian military flame seemed unquenchable, and Roumania was already suffering the penalty of her faithlessness. But the clouds had gathered again. The summer of success had been bright, but also brief. Evidently, as he had always been convinced, and so often declared, the road was to be uphill to the very end. The end had now come for him.

  Since the War began, he had scarcely been seen in public. He refused all holidays and ploughed methodically through his daily routine at Schönbrunn. The care of the Court Chamberlain had forbidden the Park before the Imperial windows to the public. It was widely rumoured that the Emperor was already dead, and was being preserved as a fetish and a symbol. Unpleasant details about the social and economic life of his Peoples were sedulously kept from him: but his immense experience enabled him to understand better than his courtiers or his generals how grave the food-shortage and popular discontents had become; and when his Prime Minister, Count Stürgkh, was pistolled to death by the son of the leader of the Democratic Party, Francis Joseph formed a perfectly clear resolve to make peace as soon as possible. He determined to make peace by any means at latest in the spring of 1917. As a first step he replaced his murdered minister by a politician of the Left, Koerber, a man who was honoured by the hungry millions, and distrusted by the well-fed tens of thousands. This was his last contribution to the affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

  Bronchitis at 85 is always serious. The Emperor coughed much and passed bad nights. Nevertheless, the dawn of November 20th saw him already seated in his old blue uniform at his writing-desk. It was the practice to send him three portfolios a day. The first was punctually discharged. Before the second was completed his condition of weakness and fever was such that his granddaughter brought him a special blessing from the Pope and persuaded him to receive the sacraments. Four chickens were made into a broth for him at noon. He could not eat it. But the midday files were duly despatched to the Departments. In the afternoon the doctors succeeded in inducing him to go to bed. He rose from his table, but had to be supported to the neighbouring room. The immense fatigue of years of care overwhelmed him. Sleep and death drew quickly near. With an effort he said to his valet, ‘Call me at seven. I am behindhand with my work,’ and sank almost immediately into coma. The Departments inquired about the evening portfolio. The aide-de-camp on duty replied that it would not be delivered that night. A few hours later, the sixty-six years’ reign of Francis Joseph was completed. He died in harness.

  Although the War weighed oppressively upon Vienna, the funeral of the departed ruler was magnificent. The populace, sorely-tried, silent, helpless, hungry, understood that a long chapter in the history of Central Europe had closed. New pages must be turned; nay, a new volume must open. The aged Count Paar would not see this volume. ‘I died yesterday,’ he said to Margutti on the morrow of his master’s death. In fact, he expired during the memorial service two days later. The ties of a lifetime which had been snapped were also the heartstrings of this faithful servitor.

  But the war rolled on.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE RUSSIAN COLLAPSE

  During the afternoon of March 13, 1917, the Russian Embassy in London informed us that they were no longer in contact with Petrograd. For some days the capital had been a prey to disorders which it was believed were being effectively suppressed. Now suddenly for a space there was a silence. Volumes have been written upon the causes and consequences of this silence. For us it draws the curtain upon the tale.

  The Allies, startled and disappointed by the German recovery at the end of 1916, had planned in closer concert than ever before what they hoped would be the decisive operations of the coming year. Each and all of the Allies were to attack at the selected moments upon all their fronts—French, British, Russian, Italian, Roumanian, Salonican. The prospects were good. The Allies now disposed of a superiority of nearly five to two, and the factories of the whole world outside enemy territory were pouring munitions and implements of war to them across the seas and oceans. Russia, from whose fathomless man-power so much was still hoped, was for the first time since the opening battles to be properly equipped. The doubled broad-gauge railway to the never-ice-bound port of Murmansk on the White Sea was now at last completed. The labours, the sufferings and dying gasps of thousands of prisoners-of-war intermingled with criminals and Chinese, toiling for months in perpetual night, had built these sixteen hundred miles of line across the frozen plains and marshes; and Russia was now for the first time in permanent contact with her Allies. Nearly 200 new battalions had been added to her forces; and behind the armies large deposits of all kinds of shell had been amassed. There seemed to be no military reason why t
he year 1917 should not witness the final triumph of the Allies, and bring to Russia the reward which she had sought through infinite agonies.

  Now suddenly there was this silence. The great Power with whom we had been in such intimate comradeship, without whom all plans were meaningless, was stricken dumb. With Russian effective aid, all the Allied fronts could attack together. Without that aid it might well be that the War was lost. It was therefore with strained attention that we watched for the reopening of the telegraph lines to Petrogad.

  Many streams had flowed together to bring the deluge. The Russian revolution was begun by social, military and political forces which within a week were left aghast behind it. In its opening paroxysm all conscious Russia participated. It was primarily a patriotic revolt against the misfortunes and mismanagement of the War. Defeats and disasters, want of food and prohibition of alcohol, the slaughter of millions of men, joined with inefficiency and corruption to produce a state of exasperation among all classes which had no outlet but revolt, could find no scapegoat but the Sovereign. For a year past the Czar and his wife had been the objects of growing universal resentment. The fond, obstinate husband and father, the absolute monarch obviously devoid of all the qualities of a national ruler in times of crisis, bore the burden of all the sufferings which the German Armies had inflicted on the Russian State. Behind him the Empress, a still more hated figure, dwelt in her tiny circle listening only to her cronies—her lady companion Madame Virubova, her spiritual adviser the sensual mystic Rasputin—and presumed thence and on such promptings to sway the whole policy and fortunes of the tormented Empire.