by Hew Strachan
The confused tenses testify to Conrad’s self-exculpating purpose. But the point remains that for Austria-Hungary, unlike Germany, mobilization, at least against Russia, did not mean war. The mobilization of the three armies in Galicia was, Conrad explained to Moltke on 31 July, a response to Russia’s mobilization, a defensive step designed to discourage Russia from itself moving from mobilization to war. The revised deployment in Galicia was compatible with such a defensive posture. Austria-Hungary did not declare war on Russia until 6 August. For Conrad, the dangers of exaggerating the Russian threat—of allowing the worst-case analysis to become a self-fulfilling prophecy—had less to do with any norm that war planning should not overtake diplomacy and rather more to do with the fear that armed diplomacy might prevent war fulfilling its political objectives. If Austria-Hungary responded to Russia’s mobilization by abandoning its concentration against Serbia for fear of a war in Galicia that might not happen, its army would have no chance of delivering the speedy victory in the Balkans which was Vienna’s prime purpose.31
Thus, on 30 July Conrad’s first reaction to Germany’s pleas that he look to Russia was to abide by his original decision. Since the first day of actual mobilization had been 28 July and major movements were not due to begin until the following day, 31 July, it was still possible for the 2nd army to be redirected towards Galicia. But Conrad asked the railway department to find a way to continue the movement of the 2nd army to Serbia and simultaneously begin the mobilization of the 1st, 3rd, and 4th armies against Russia. The implementation of partial mobilization against Serbia had been sufficiently lackadaisical thus far to suggest that, even at this late stage, Conrad’s request might have been met without undue chaos. That, however, was not the view of the railway department. Although told to prepare such a plan in November 1913, it had done nothing, nor had it made any approaches to the Germans with regard to the possible exploitation of their underused south-eastern railways. It concluded that simultaneous mobilization could only be achieved by delaying the first day of mobilization against Russia until 4 August. Conrad accepted this arrangement. On 31 July he issued the order for the mobilization of the Galician front, specifying 4 August as the first day. But that evening the persistent pressure from Germany—and also Hungary (Tisza was worried about Romania coming in on the Russian side)—caused Conrad to change his mind about the 2nd army: he now asked the railway department to send it north. He was told it was too late. The railway system could not cope with yet another simultaneous movement in two different directions. Its head, Johann Straub, argued that units would be split up, unless those already in the Balkans were brought back to their home garrisons and then re-embarked for Galicia. This was morally unacceptable: the anticlimax, after the ceremonial and excitement of their recent departure, would shake the confidence of the civil population as well as of the soldiers themselves. The 2nd army would therefore have to continue on its journey to the Balkan front, and then turn round and go back to Galicia. Even after 31 July, trains bound for the Balkans continued to take priority over those destined for Galicia.
Cumulatively, the outnumbered armies of the dual monarchy had forfeited the immediate advantages over the Russians which a speedier mobilization and concentration might have conferred. This loss did not originate with the delayed arrival in Galicia of the 2nd army. At bottom, it reflected the decision for partial mobilization against Serbia alone. It had been compounded by Conrad’s earlier decisions with regard to the Galician front— to concentrate further west, to postpone the commencement of mobilization against Russia until 4 August. These meant that the 2nd army would still get to the northeastern front within twenty-four days of the commencement of mobilization, on 28 August. The disruption of Austro-Hungarian operations in Galicia—for which Conrad blamed the lack of German support in Poland on the one hand, and his own railway department’s inflexibility on the other—was entirely of his own making.32
Given their failure to confront each other’s intentions, it is perhaps not surprising that the two allies remained vague about Russia’s. The intelligence services of both powers were small and underfunded, lacking sufficient agents and, in the Austrian case, dependent on the co-operation of the foreign ministry.33 The attention to Russia’s railway capacity rather than to its operational planning reflected a natural preference for facts rather than speculation. But it produced remarkable confusion as to Russian intentions. The basis to the 1905 Schlieffen plan, the reluctance to consider an offensive in the east, rested on the assumption that the Russians would fall back, trading space for time and so denying the Germans the chance of an early decisive battle. This line of thought was still present in the 1914 edition of the German general staff’s handbook: it stressed that Russia’s tactical strengths were defensive, and that operationally it would eschew the chance of an encounter battle for a more passive role.34
And yet Schlieffen had also anticipated operations around a two-pronged Russian offensive into East Prussia. By 1914 this expectation was reflected in Moltke’s orders to Prittwitz, the commander of the 8th army, that he fall back behind the Vistula rather than risk the destruction of his force. Thus, at the broadest level, the Germans saw that Russia’s strength lay in retreat, while operationally they accepted the fact that Russia would support France by an early thrust into Prussia. And there was a second unresolved ambiguity to add to the first. Assuming that the Russians did attack in East Prussia, would it be the major thrust, or would that be reserved for the attack in Galicia? The Germans did not know on which front the Russians intended to employ the main weight of their forces. Because Germany needed Austria-Hungary to draw off the bulk of the Russian army, its military attaché in St Petersburg could easily fall prey to the expectation that that was what would happen. Others were less sure.35
The information which shaped the calculations of the Central Powers was, like most intelligence pictures, selectively accurate. All the indications which they had picked up were present. The broad conclusion—that Russia’s military strength was rapidly growing, but that its likely operational application remained uncertain (although not so neatly formulated by the general staffs of Germany and Austria-Hungary)—was a fair reflection of the situation. Furthermore, the rapidity and scale of Russia’s military growth in the years immediately before the war inevitably meant that the bases for the Central Powers’ conclusions were constantly shifting. Despite continuing pressure from the finance minister to balance the budget, especially given Russian dependence on foreign loans, Russia’s armed services claimed about a quarter of state expenditure between 1900 and 1909 and about a third thereafter. With 1.4 million men, and a total of 114.5 infantry divisions, Russia’s army in 1914 had become, on paper at least, the strongest in Europe, and was still growing. The capacity to mobilize improved at a rate that not only enabled it to encompass this expansion, but to outstrip it. Between 1910 and 1914 the number of trains that Russia could send westwards rose from 250 a day to 360, and a target of 560 had been set for 1917.
Russia’s mobilization schedule improved as a result, but it still could not compete in international terms. Although Russia led the world in the rate at which it constructed railway line between 1890 and 1913, it nonetheless trailed far behind western Europe in the length of open track in relation to size of territory: by 1913 Germany had 12 kilometres of track per 100 square kilometres, France 10, Austria-Hungary 7, and Russia 1. Nor was the explanation for this continuing inferiority exclusively Russia’s enormous extent. Important after 1909 were the opportunity costs consequent on increased spending on the armed services. The rate of annual growth in railway construction fell after 1909 to one-third of that which Russia had sustained at the turn of the century, and orders for rolling stock were cut so that in 1914 the system was short of 2,000 locomotives and 80,000 wagons. Standardization was forfeit and three-quarters of the entire network was still single track.36
Russia’s greatest resource was manpower, and it was this crude quantitative assessment which gave
immediate support to the exaggerated expectations of Russia’s military might, entertained in France and Britain as much as in Germany and Austria-Hungary. But Russia’s ability to tap its manpower was constrained by its own backwardness: any expansion to its army set back its ability to enhance its timetable for mobilization. The western powers, as nations in advanced states of industrialization, possessed of much of the infrastructure for waging modern war, enjoyed greater incremental effects on their immediate military strength from small additions to their defence budgets than did Russia from major expenditure. In Russia a large proportion of military spending had to go into basic investment, into research and development, into plant rather than production. It also had to make good the material losses of the Russo-Japanese War, especially in the fleet after the crippling blow at Tsushima. By 1911 more was being spent on the navy’s re-equipment than the army’s, but in 1914 the navy still had not commisioned a single Dreadnought; the money had been spent on shipyards as much as on ships.37
The Russian army was not unmindful of the trade-off between manpower and machinery. Its numerical expansion was tempered by the rate of its re-equipment. Artillery was put at the centre of each of the major pre-war army programmes. The 76 mm quick-firing field gun, approved in 1902, was finally issued to all units in 1910–11, and at the same time 122 mm and 152 mm howitzers were adopted. One hundred and eighty-one million roubles, of 225 million allocated to the army in March 1913, were earmarked for artillery, and when these appropriations were overtaken by the so-called ‘great programme’ of 1913, a target of 8,358 guns in all was set.
Again, the improvement was more impressive relative to Russia’s own immediate past rather than to its international comparators. For every gun in 1914, Russia had 200 men to Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s 135.38 Men were easier and quicker to raise than guns were to produce. The 1913 programme, approved in June 1914, increased the recruit contingent from 450,000 to 580,000 for that year, whereas the armaments contracts had until 1917 for final completion.39
Furthermore, low levels of educational achievement meant that manpower in quantity did not necessarily translate into manpower in quality. Although having an exceptionally low ratio of officers to men (1: 27, as against 1: 21 in Germany), the Russian army was over 4,000 officers below establishment in 1909.40 The German army could keep its officer corps small by dint of its excellent NCOs, mostly drawn from the wealthier peasantry or the lower middle class, and reflecting high levels of national education. In Russia such men were commissioned. Consequently, the Russian army was as short of NCOs as it was of officers. In 1903 it had two re-enlisted NCOs per company, as against twelve in Germany and six in France.41 Russian backwardness, therefore, demanded that more resources be devoted to military education, but also dictated that, because so much attention had to be given to basics, the overall level of professional competence would nonetheless remain low. The scale of these structural problems meant that, despite the high levels of military expenditure, Russia was constantly trading off manpower against equipment, or one of them against training: in the desire to improve the first two, the third suffered.
Effectively, army reform was delayed until 1910, and proceeded rapidly thereafter. The loss of time before 1910 was not necessarily the product of military complacency. The Franco-Russian military convention of 1892 had provided the Russian army with a westward orientation and a European yardstick. Russia had the highest growth rate in terms of financial appropriations of any European army in the 1890s. But the Russo-Japanese War had cut across the geographical orientation of its thinking. Shattered in Manchuria, it had then had little time to recover in the years immediately following. To battles with the minister of finance, Rediger—the minister of war—had now to add those with Stolypin, the minister of the interior. Rapid economic growth after 1905, based in part on government spending, helped ease the former tension. But for the latter the army’s task was, in the light of the 1905 revolution and its aftermath, internal order not external defence. The deployment into small units necessitated by its policing role undermined the army’s own discipline: between May and July 1906 alone there may have been more than 134 mutinies. Not until 1908 was the revolution, technically at any rate, brought to an end. In 1909 Rediger was able to increase the training budget by 2 million roubles, to 4.5 million.42
The period 1905–10 was also one of administrative confusion. Before 1905 the so-called general staff was not an effective planning staff but a section of the main staff of the war minister. Bureaucratic functions prevailed over operational. After the defeat in Manchuria the case for reform was highlighted, in the Tsar’s eyes, by the summoning of the Duma and the latter’s aspirations to control the war minister. Therefore, the general staff was hived off from the main staff, and its chief made responsible directly to the Tsar and not to the ministry. At the same time a Council for State Defence was formed, embodying as its permanent members the inspectors-general of the various arms, the war minister, the navy minister, the chiefs of the main staffs of both services, the chief of the general staff, and the chairman of the council of ministers; others were appointed as standing members. Technically, the role of the council was consultative; in practice, its chairman, Grand Duke Nicholas, as the Tsar’s nominee, became a sort of joint defence minister independent of the Duma’s control.
It looked as though the new arrangement embraced the best of two systems: it had the supreme strategic advisory council comparable with Britain’s Committee of Imperial Defence, and it had, as Germany did, an independent chief of the general staff answerable only to the monarch. In reality, it did not work. The Tsar had originally been proposed as the council’s chairman: this would have given it authority and even executive powers. As it was, its relationship to the Council of Ministers, which the Tsar did chair and which was revived in 1905, remained unclear. The Council of Ministers had no formal authority over war and foreign policy, but it did support the plans for new battle fleets in the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific, which the Tsar also favoured. The Council for State Defence did not: with six army members to four naval, and charged with developing an overall plan for national defence, it wanted a land strategy, not a naval one. Frustrated in its pursuit of co-ordination and prioritization in defence planning, the council became as interested in senior promotions and appointments as strategy. The former task had been given it in an effort to promote professional standards, but the main staff of the war ministry remained formally responsible for personnel matters, and so the council found itself also at odds with the ministry of war.
The factionalism was compounded by the Duma. In November 1907 A. I. Guchkov and the Octobrists, committed nationalists, and seeing narrowly conceived tsarism as a block to Russia’s full development, set up their own commission for national defence. Rediger, casting about for allies against the finance ministry, and also anxious to reinvigorate the status of his own office, established links with the new commission, using his deputy, A. A. Polivanov, as go-between. The Duma was supportive of naval and military spending, and to that extent buttressed the minister of war. But Guchkov’s attack on court influence in military affairs—and particularly on the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Sergei (the inspector-general of artillery)—were an assault on the royal prerogative which the Tsar was bound to counter. In 1908, announcing that he proposed to take matters more into his own hands, he ousted Grand Duke Nicholas as chairman of the Council for State Defence, so simultaneously asserting his navalist enthusiasms while curbing the Duma’s complaints. In August 1909 the Council for State Defence was itself dissolved.
The Tsar’s solution to the problems of the services was to strengthen both the army and the navy ministries, and to appoint to them heads whose loyalty was to him and not to the Duma. The general staff, which had proved just as secretive and obstructive as the other agencies, especially in its dealings with the War Ministry and the Council for State Defence, was reincorporated with the War Ministry in 1908, and V. A. Sukhomlinov was appoin
ted its chief. In March 1909 Sukhomlinov became minister of war, with instructions from the Tsar not to attend the Duma. Between 1909 and 1910 his powers as war minister were progressively reinforced. Thus, just as the army was able to begin focusing on the external threat to the west, so at last it began to gain centralization and direction in its administration.43
Sukhomlinov has had a bad press. He was extravagant, adulterous, and corrupt. His self-appointed image was that of the swashbuckling hussar, the upholder of the honour of the officer corps, however dubious the conduct of those officers. Much of the criticism has derived from his political opponents—from the Duma, who saw him as the Tsar’s representative; from the circle of the Grand Duke Nicholas, whom he had effectively replaced. Until the 1970s these men had a major role in shaping western historical writing on the run-up to the revolution, and their frustration at tsarism’s failure to liberalize gained much of its bite from the army’s performance in the war. But their attacks on Sukhomlinov obscured the fact that, whatever his deficiencies, both personal and professional, by 1914 he had the Russian army in a state far fitter for war than it had been in 1910. What he had not overcome, as the personal vendettas reveal, were the deep internal divisions within the army.
One corollary of the enhancement of the War Ministry was the subordination of the general staff. When the former took over responsibility for the latter once more, in 1909, Polivanov was appointed its chief. But Sukhomlinov was convinced that Polivanov was still intriguing with Guchkov and so promoting the Duma’s authority over the army at the expense of the Tsar’s. Polivanov was removed in 1912; and by 1914 there had been six chiefs of staff since 1905.
