Paléologue, driving back to the capital from an audience with the Tsar, encountered one of these regiments marching along a road. The general, recognizing the Ambassador, saluted and boomed out, “We’ll destroy those filthy Prussians! No more Prussia! No more Germany! William to St. Helena!” As each company paraded past Paléologue’s car, the general rose in his stirrups and bellowed, “The French Ambassador! Hurrah!” The soldiers cheered frantically, “Hurrah! Hurrah!” Finally, the general galloped away, shouting over his shoulder, “William to St. Helena! William to St. Helena!”
Sometimes, women with children followed for the first few miles: “One … was very young … and she was pressing a baby to her breast. She was striding out as well as she could to keep pace with the man at the rear of the file, a fine fellow, tanned and muscular. They did not exchange a word, but gazed fixedly at each other with loving, haggard eyes. Three times in succession, I saw the young mother offer the baby to the soldier for a kiss.”
The same scenes were repeated in railway stations in every town and village in Russia. In Moscow, British Consul R. H. Bruce Lockhart remembered: “the troops grey with dust and closely packed in cattle trucks; the vast crowd on the platform to wish them Godspeed; grave, bearded fathers, wives and mothers, smiling bravely through their tears …; fat priests to bless the happy warriors. The crowd sways forward for a last handshake and last embrace. There is a shrill whistle from the engine. Then, with many false starts, the overloaded train, as though reluctant to depart, crawls slowly out of the station and disappears in the grey twilight of the Moscow night. Silent and bareheaded, the crowd remains motionless until the last faint echo of the song of the men, who are never to return, has faded into nothing.”
Somehow, it was the men rather than the officers who sensed what was coming. Beneath the gaudy talk of parades in Berlin and cries of “William to St. Helena!” many a Russian soldier marched to war suffused with a melancholy resignation that he would never see his family or his village again. At the front, General Alfred Knox, a British military attaché, found a tall young recruit from Kiev downhearted because he had left his wife and five children. Knox tried to cheer him, telling him he would come back, but the soldier only shook his head and said, “They say it is a wide road that leads to war and only a narrow path that leads home again.”
In sheer numbers of soldiers, the Russian army was a colossus. The pre-war regular strength of the army was 1,400,000; mobilization immediately added 3,100,000 reserves. Behind this initial mass stood millions more. During three years of war, 15,500,000 men marched away to fight for the Tsar and Holy Russia. In the British press, this mass of bodies ready to bleed was reassuringly described as “the Russian steamroller.”
In every respect except numbers of men, Russia was unprepared for war. The railroads were hopelessly inadequate; for every yard of Russian track per square mile, Germany had ten. French and German reserves moving to the front traveled 150 to 200 miles; in Russia, the average journey was 800 miles. A general commanding a Siberian corps told Knox that he had been on a train for twenty-three days bringing men to the front. Once the operations began, the supremacy of German railroads allowed the German command to move whole armies rapidly from one front to another. On the Russian side, said Knox, “the Supreme Command ordered, but the railroads decided.”
Russian industry was small and primitive. For every factory in Russia, there were 150 in Great Britain. Russian generals, expecting a short war, had accumulated limited reserves of weapons and ammunition. Russian guns, having fired all their ammunition, quickly fell silent, while enemy shells, arriving steadily from German factories, burst continually overhead. At one point, Russian artillerymen were threatened with court-martial if they fired more than three rounds per day.
Russia’s immense and isolated geography made it impossible for the Western Allies to help. Germany easily blockaded the Baltic, and Turkey, entering the war against the Allies in November 1914, barred the Dardanelles and the Black Sea. Communication remained only through Archangel, frozen solid in the winter, and Vladivostock on the Pacific. Russian exports dropped 98 percent and imports 95 percent. An average of 1,250 ships called at Russian ports annually during the war, while arrivals in British ports amounted to 2,200 weekly. Once the British and French attempt to break the blockade by storming the Dardanelles at Gallipoli had failed, Russia became a “barred house which could be entered only through the chimney.”
Not all the flaws lay in technology and geography. At its summit, the Russian army was commanded by two men who hated each other: General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, the Minister of War, and Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, the Tsar’s distant cousin, who commanded the armies in the field. Sukhomlinov was a small chubby man with a fat feline face of whom Paléologue observed, “with his sly look, his eyes always gleaming watchfully under the heavy folds of his eyelids, I know few men who inspire more distrust at first sight.” Although totally bald and advancing on seventy, Sukhomlinov retained a strong taste for expensive pleasures including a voluptuous wife thirty-two years his junior. Mme. Sukhomlinov enjoyed giving enormous parties, clothing herself in Paris and vacationing on the Riviera; her husband was left to pay the bills as best he could. Allowed a handsome traveling allowance based on mileage, he conducted frequent inspection trips to Vladivostock, eight thousand round-trip miles from his office. Once there, local officers found that the War Minister disliked leaving his train.
Sukhomlinov’s reputation was not so much bad as a mournful joke. “The true picture of a drawing room soldier, scented, pomaded, with gold chain bracelets on his white wrists,” recalled a lady who met him in society. “In spite of his mature age, Sukhomlinov was … eager for pleasure like a youth,” wrote Sazonov, his ministerial colleague. “He enjoyed life and disliked work.… It was very difficult to make him work, but to get him to tell the truth was well-nigh impossible.” Nevertheless, along with supporting his wife, it was Sukhomlinov’s responsibility to organize and equip the Russian army. A former cavalry officer who had won the Cross of St. George in the 1878 war against the Turks, he believed in the charge—the cavalry with sabers, the infantry with bayonets. Modern weapons, such as machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, he thought unworthy of brave men. As a result, the Russian army entered the war with half as much field artillery as the Germans—seven field-gun batteries per division as opposed to fourteen—and 60 batteries of heavy artillery compared to 381. “Sukhomlinov,” explained General Nicholas Golovine, who served under him, “believed that knowledge acquired by him in the ‘seventies of the last century and largely of no further practical importance, was permanent truth. His ignorance went hand in hand with an extraordinary light-mindedness. These two personal characteristics enabled him to treat the most complicated military questions with astonishing levity. His attitude of easy assurance made the impression on those not familiar with the complicated technique of modern military art that Sukhomlinov handled such problems well and took the right decisions quickly.”
Most significantly, Sukhomlinov made this impression on the Tsar. Like many rogues, he could be enormously charming, and he carefully did everything in his power to please Nicholas. His reports, unlike those of other ministers, were brief and free from gloomy predictions. Knowing that the Tsar took pride in the army, he gave constant assurance that morale and equipment were in splendid condition. When he reported in person, he larded his talk with selections from his vast fund of funny stories. At court, he was known as “General Fly-Off” because of his alertness and speed in anticipating the Tsar’s wishes. Nicholas enjoyed him greatly, and, watching the superbly polished regiments of the Imperial Guard march past on parade, could not believe that the Russian army was unready for war.
Sukhomlinov was a courtier who used high military rank to support a lavish way of life. His arch-rival, the Commander-in-Chief in the field, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, was a prince of the Imperial blood, a grandson of Tsar Nicholas I. Although born to great wealth and impec
cable position, Nicholas Nicolaievich devoted his life to service in the army. In appearance, the fifty-seven-year-old Grand Duke was awesome. Standing six feet six inches tall, with a thin body, blazing blue eyes in a narrow face, his beard trimmed to a neat point, a dagger or sword hanging from his belt, he was the ancient warrior chieftain. “He was the most admired man in the army, not only an old-fashioned soldier, but deeply Slav,” wrote Paléologue. “His whole being exuded a fierce energy. His incisive measured speech, flashing eyes and quick, nervous movements, hard, steel-trap mouth and gigantic stature personify imperious and impetuous audacity.”
In the army, the Grand Duke inspired feelings of awe. By “the peasant soldiers of the Russian army,” declared Knox, “… he was regarded as a sort of legendary champion of Holy Russia.… They felt that, though he was a strict disciplinarian and very exacting … he would ask from the private soldier no greater effort than he … imposed upon himself.”
Naturally enough, the Commander-in-Chief and the Minister of War despised each other. The Grand Duke took his responsibilities as seriously as Sukhomlinov took his lightly. In 1908, when the Duma had criticized the appearance of members of the Imperial family in high military ranks, Nicholas Nicolaievich resigned from active command. Sukhomlinov, appointed War Minister in 1909, had seen a clear field for his own advancement to the more glamorous role of Commander-in-Chief once war was declared. To his chagrin, in 1914 the Tsar, having been dissuaded from assuming personal command of the armies in the field, appointed his cousin to the post. Thereafter, both in word and in deed, the jealous War Minister did what he could to undercut the Grand Duke. At one point, with messages streaming in begging for more shells, Sukhomlinov refused to raise the order for more ammunition. When the Chief of Artillery came to him weeping to say that Russia would have to make peace because of the shortage of shells, Sukhomlinov told him curtly to “go to the devil and shut up.”
Both in Berlin and in Paris, strategy was tailored to the size and clumsiness of the Russian colossus. Aware that the state of Russia’s railroads would not permit a rapid concentration of the Tsar’s millions of soldiers, the German General Staff planned that the weeks before the cumbersome giant could move should be used to destroy France. “We hope in six weeks after the beginning of operations to have finished with France, or at least so far as to enable us to direct our principal forces against the East,” General von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff, told his nervous Austrian counterpart in May 1914. The Kaiser characteristically expressed the German plan more crudely: “Lunch in Paris, dinner in St. Petersburg.”
Knowing that the blow was coming, French generals and diplomats had struggled single-mindedly for twenty years to ensure that the Russians would move quickly in the East once war began. To speed up Russian mobilization, France had poured money into her ally; the loans were given strictly on condition that they be used to build railroads leading to the German frontier. Even with this new track, the number of men in position by M-15—fifteen days after mobilization—would be only a fraction of Russia’s strength. Nevertheless, France insisted that the Russians attack on M-15 with whatever they had ready; the French counted on seven hundred thousand men. To wait longer meant catastrophe for France.
In its first weeks, the war ran brilliantly according to the German timetable. Through the hot weeks of August, the cream of the German army, one million men in gray uniforms, moved like a human scythe across Belgium and northern France. On September 2, less than a month after crossing the frontier, the Kaiser’s weary advance guard stood thirty miles north of Paris. With a single lunge, they would be on the Champs-Elysées.
From the day war began, the primary mission of the French Ambassador in St. Petersburg was to urge the Russians to hurry. With a stream of anguished telegrams from Paris flowing into his Embassy, Paléologue bustled from one office to the next, begging, imploring and demanding haste. On August 5, he told the Tsar, “The French army will have to face the formidable onslaught of twenty-five German corps, I, therefore, implore Your Majesty to order your troops to take the offensive immediately. If they do not, there is danger that the French army may be crushed.” Nicholas responded emotionally. Reaching out and clasping Paléologue in his arms, he said, “Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, let me embrace in you my dear and glorious France.… The moment mobilization is complete I shall order an advance. My troops are most enthusiastic. The attack will be pressed with the greatest vigor. No doubt you know that the Grand Duke Nicholas is extraordinarily forceful.”
On the same day, the Ambassador called on the Grand Duke: “The generalissimo received me in his enormous study where maps were spread out on all the tables. He came towards me with his quick firm strides. ‘God and Joan of Arc are with us,’ he exclaimed. ‘We shall win.…’ ” “How soon will you order the offensive, Monseigneur?” asked Paléologue. “Perhaps I shan’t even wait until the concentration of all my corps is complete. As soon as I feel myself strong enough, I shall attack. It will probably be the 14th of August.” Escorting Paléologue to the door, he vigorously shook the Ambassador’s hand, crying, “And now, into God’s hands.”
The Grand Duke was as good as his word. The front he commanded was 550 miles long, beginning in the north on the Baltic where the Russian Baltic provinces bordered East Prussia. From there, the front curved south and west around the enormous bulge that made up Russian Poland. Then, along the bottom of the Polish bulge, it ran eastward to the frontier of the Ukraine. On the southern sector of this long line, in the Austrian province of Galicia, an Austro-Hungarian army of one million men was massing. West of Warsaw, on the direct line to Berlin, the Russians could not advance because of the danger on their lengthy Galician and East Prussian flanks. The Russian attack, therefore, was delivered in the north, against East Prussia.
Two Russian armies were selected to make the attack. The First Army, consisting of 200,000 men under General Rennenkampf, was to move southwest parallel to the Baltic coast, while the Second Army, 170,000 men under General Samsonov, would advance northward from Poland. Rennenkampfs army was to start first, drawing on itself the bulk of the German forces in East Prussia. Two days later, once the Germans were fully engaged, Samsonov was to strike north for the Baltic, putting himself across the rear of the Germans fighting Rennenkampf. Each of the Russian armies individually was larger than the German force. If the Grand Duke’s strategy worked, the Germans would be ground up between the two armies, and the Russians would begin crossing the Vistula River below Danzig. Ahead of them, the road to Berlin—only 150 miles away—would lie open.
Because of the need for haste, the Russian offensive was assembled piecemeal. Grand Duke Nicholas did not leave the capital for field headquarters until midnight of August 13. Allowing his train to be shunted onto sidings so that troop trains could pass, he took fifty-seven hours for the journey and arrived on the morning of the 16th. General Samsonov, commander of the Second Army, was an asthmatic and had been on leave with his wife in the Caucasus. He arrived at his headquarters on the 16th to find his troops already on the march toward the frontier. General Rennenkampf, a swashbuckling cavalry officer, sent his Cossacks raiding across the border as early as the 12th. A German machine gun, captured on one of these forays, appeared as a trophy two days later on the lawn at Peterhof, where it was examined with interest by the Tsar and the Tsarevich. On August 17, Rennenkampf’s entire army advanced, driving the German frontier troops before them. In these first skirmishes, Rennenkampf’s tactics recalled the Napoleonic Wars one hundred years before. Under fire from German cannon, the General sent his cavalry to charge the guns. As a result, in the war’s first engagements many young Guards officers, the flower of Russia’s aristocratic youth, were shot from their saddles.
Although the German General Staff had anticipated a Russian advance into East Prussia, the news that Cossack horsemen were riding over the rich farms and estates of Junker aristocrats sent a thrill of horror through Berlin. Temporarily ignoring the Russian Second Army
moving up from the south, the Germans engaged Rennenkampf’s force on August 20. The Russian artillery, firing 440 shells per day, was effective, and the result was a partial German defeat. In desperation, the German General Staff hastily dispatched a new pair of generals to take command. On August 22, Paul Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the formidable military duo which was to lead Germany through four years of war, were both aboard the same train bound for East Prussia.
While Rennenkampf rested—too long—from his victory, Samsonov’s army was struggling north through the wild, uninhabited country north of the Polish border. The route lay through a maze of pine and birch forests intersected by streams and marshes, with few inhabitants, poor roads and no railroads. There were few farms on this sandy soil, and the army ate only what it could pull behind it in carts. On the eve of battle, some of the men had been without their full ration of bread for five days.
Despite their hardships, Samsonov’s men struggled forward. Many of the men, coming from small Russian villages, were pleased at the sight of the East Prussian towns. Soldiers of the 23rd Corps, reaching the town of Allenstein, cheered enthusiastically, believing themselves to be entering Berlin. Samsonov himself was less sanguine. At the end of a long chain which began in Paris, passed through Paléologue, the Grand Duke and the Northwest Front commander, Samsonov received constant signals to hurry. “Advancing according to timetable, without halting, covering marches of more than 12 miles a day over sand. I cannot go more quickly,” he telegraphed back. As it was, his men were hungry, his horses without oats, his supply columns disorganized, his artillery mired.
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