To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  OHL’s first attempt to create a German army for Poland had planned an allocation of two corps under the command of Schubert, with Ludendorff as his chief of staff. Ludendorff was thoroughly alarmed. Perhaps he recognized the contribution of Hindenburg’s calm to his own success. In any event he refused to be separated from the commander of the 8th army. He went to Silesia, argued that two corps were insufficient for operations there, and convinced OHL that an enlarged 9th army should be formed, with Breslau as its base, Hindenburg as its commander, and himself as its chief of staff.142 Ludendorff’s ability to get his own way—in the organization of the command, the distribution of forces, and the operational plan—has to be set in the context of the disarray at OHL. All these issues reached their climax on 14 September, the very day that Falkenhayn replaced Moltke. Although the arrangements that resulted were initiated by his predecessor, it was Falkenhayn who would have to bear the burden of their implications. The clash between Hindenburg and Conrad, Conrad’s growing Germanophobia, Ludendorff’s independence of OHL—for all these Falkenhayn had, by the circumstances of his appointment, already become the butt.

  To create a 9th army sufficiently strong to meet Ludendorff’s wishes and Hindenburg’s newly won prestige the 8th army in East Prussia was reduced to two corps, supplemented by Landwehr and garrison troops. In addition to the positions on the Masurian lakes and the Angerapp, a line beyond the East Prussian frontier, between Vilkovishki and Suvalki, was ordered to be built. Falkenhayn asked the navy to mount a demonstration in the Baltic, off the coast of Courland, in order to aid the weakened forces in East Prussia and to prevent the Russians shifting troops to the south.143 However, the navy had concentrated its main forces in the North Sea, and so was insufficiently strong to sustain offensive action against the Russians in the Baltic. The demonstration, begun on 19 September, was broken off on the 25th. Nor was the Vilkovishki-Suvalki line constructed. At the end of September the 10th Russian army began to push the Germans out of the Augustowo forest and Suvalki, back towards the frontier. By mid-October the 1st and 10th armies had reestablished a Russian foothold in East Prussia.

  The 8th army’s loss was the 9th army’s gain. Hindenburg deployed four corps, a reserve division, and a cavalry division, with his main weight on the line Kattowitz-Kreuzburg. On 28 September the 9th army began its advance towards the Vistula. The weather was bad, the roads muddy, the railways of the broad Russian gauge. The Germans’ handling of these problems was exemplary. Locally requisitioned Polish carts coped better with the conditions than the heavy German transport. A marching rate of 30 kilometres a day was maintained. On 4 October the 4th, 3rd, and 1st Austro-Hungarian armies took up the line to the south, crossing the Visloka on the 5th and relieving Przemysl on the 9th. Dankl’s 1st army followed the course of the Vistula as it moved north-east, crossing to the left bank and aiming for Sandomir. The major objective of the advance—relief for the Austro-Hungarian army, the security of Przemysl—had thus been achieved.

  Conrad’s confidence grew with the lack of serious Russian resistance south of the Vistula. But neither he nor Ludendorff seems to have thought too deeply about what the Russians were doing. The Austrians had cracked the Russian codes, and between 28 and 30 September intercepted Russian signals suggested to Conrad that a redeployment was in train; by the 30th AOK knew that the Russians planned to hold on the San and the Vistula, and to mount a thrust from Warsaw in the north.144 But Ludendorff still reckoned on the main Russian forces lying to the right of the 9th army’s advance, and still—despite his recognition that Ivangorod was strongly held—relied on seizing the Vistula bridgeheads up as far as Warsaw before the Russians could regroup. German surprise was virtually complete when on 9 October, the day that Przemysl was reached, details of the Russian order of battle were found on the body of a dead Russian officer. Corroborated by signals intelligence, they revealed that three Russian armies were massing behind the Vistula. The 9th German army was advancing straight into the mouth of the enemy’s principal striking force. With the main weight of the Central Powers’ forces—the Austro-Hungarians—still on the San, the Russians had brought weight against weakness.

  The proposal for a Russian attack in Poland had, of course, been formulated by Stavka at the war’s outset. Although the conditions for its fulfilment— security on the flanks—had not been met on the North-West Front, they had been on the South-West. Furthermore, the prospect of continued retreat on the North-West Front threatened not only the Russian interior but also the rear of the successful South-West Front. Therefore the consolidation of the Galician victory could only be achieved by a success in Poland; a simple advance southwards into Hungary—even if possible in logistic terms— would eventually become exposed to German intervention. Although the operations in Galicia had gradually sucked in the 9th army, drawing it across the Vistula and away from Poland, victory now released it again. A switch to Poland would use Russia’s railway strengths, not its weaknesses, and would provide the direct aid to France for which its allies clamoured.

  MAP 13. POLAND

  The major block to the adoption of this strategy was bureaucratic. Poland was Stavka’s idea; the two Front commanders were both preoccupied with their own concerns, Ruzskii, on the North-West Front, had to be talked out of his proposal to fall back to the Niemen. His actions were settled less by Stavka’s directions than by the German decision to concentrate in Poland, and by enabling the North-West Front to advance back into East Prussia. Although circumstances were also forcing the hand of Ivanov’s South-West Front, it proved reluctant to acknowledge the fact. At a conference with his Front commanders at Cholm on 22 September the Grand Duke got Ivanov, in the light of intelligence on the Austro-German movements, to release the 4th army to cover Ivangorod. But Ivanov’s own concerns were still with the Galician theatre, and moves across the Vistula were seen by Alekseev as aimed at Cracow and Austria-Hungary, not Breslau and Germany. Floods on the San delayed the moves of the South-West Front. By the end of September the Russians had some intelligence, albeit partial, of the Central Powers’ intentions. Therefore, Stavka’s plan to exploit the Polish theatre now became a counter-offensive. The solution to the attitude of the South-West Front was to make it responsible for Poland. The 3rd and the 8th armies, supported by the newly formed 11th raised from second-line divisions, were grouped separately under Brusilov’s command. Ivanov was left with the 4th, 9th, and 5th armies, and was given the 2nd army from Ruzskii’s front. The weather, the muddy roads, and the high waters of the San made the Russian redeployment laboured. Ivanov decided to wheel his forces behind the screen of the Vistula, rather than push them straight across into Poland. Although this decision slowed the movement yet further, pulling the Russians east before they went north, it also obscured the Russian intentions from the Germans. By mid-October the 2nd army, reinforced by corps from Siberia, was concentrating around Warsaw, the 5th—the last to move and with the furthest to go—was coming in on its left, the 4th was grouped round Ivangorod, and the 9th had extended the line to Sandomir. The 1st army, released by Ruzskii’s advance into East Prussia, was instructed to move south to Warsaw, leaving only the Russian 10th army facing the German 8th army. The Russian intention was to hold the Germans on the Vistula, and then fall on their flank with the armies concentrated around Warsaw. A total of ten corps, or 40 per cent of Ivanov’s strength, lay north of the River Pilica, midway between Ivangorod and Warsaw. On 10 October the Russians began to cross the Vistula to attack.145

  By 9 October the Germans had accomplished their original aim, the relief of the Austro-Hungarian army. But it had been achieved largely by dint of the Russians’ pause and redeployment rather than through the efforts of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The command of the 9th army, still now buoyed by its own talk of a major decision, sought more. Rather than reshape their operations in the light of the balance of forces deployed in Poland, Hindenburg and Ludendorff persisted. Their object now was to defeat the Russians south of Warsaw before Ivanov’s Fro
nt could complete its final concentration. To muster sufficient strength for such an undertaking, they demanded that Conrad’s armies extend their line northwards to Ivangorod, so releasing the 9th army from responsibility for south Poland. The Germans would then be able to hold the main Russian formations south of Warsaw, while the Austrians manoeuvred on the San and the Vistula.

  Ludendorff’s illusions were nurtured by the Russians’ slowness in completing their concentration. Although individual corps effected crossings of the Vistula around Ivangorod and Gora Kolvaria, nearer Warsaw, between 10 and 12 October, the main body remained east of the Vistula. On 12 October Mackensen’s corps, on the 9th army’s left, drew the 2nd Russian army back towards Warsaw. Ivanov was alarmed by the Germans’ movements and was anxious not to come to grips at Ivangorod before his concentration at Warsaw was complete. Grand Duke Nicholas urged speed. Unable to contact his Front commander, he resorted to deviousness: in a bid to weaken Ivanov’s authority in the Warsaw area, he suggested Alekseev as commander of the 2nd Army. Ivanov countered by asking that Stavka hand over Danilov as Alekseev’s replacement as chief of staff to the South-West Front. The Grand Duke then tried a different tack. Both the 2nd and 5th armies, although under Ivanov’s command, were dependent on the North-West Front for their supply. On 13 October he put both of them under Ruzskii’s command. The Polish operation thereby became a joint manoeuvre involving both Fronts and requiring Stavka to co-ordinate it. But, although west of Ivangorod the III Caucasian corps was battling at Koznienitse, across the Vistula, both Fronts continued to counsel delay. Thus, the general offensive, originally ordered by Ivanov on 10 October, was postponed until 18 October and then 21 October. It was too late. On the night of 20 October the Germans began to fall back. Stavka’s object had perforce to be pursuit rather than a blow to the German flank.146

  Entirely overlooking the original object of the exercise, Hindenburg and Ludendorff blamed the failure to achieve a decisive victory in Poland on their allies. The Austro-Hungarian army was exhausted; it was ravaged by cholera, which had gained a foothold in Galicia; its movements were clogged by the rains and muddy roads. Furthermore, its main body was engaged in heavy fighting with Brusilov’s group along the San and south of Przemysl in the Carpathian foothills. On the night of 17/18 October the Russians crossed the San. Przemysl, whose resistance had become as important a symbol to the Austrians as Verdun was to the French in 1914, was threatened once more. As the Russians again lapped round the city, supply trains steamed into its station every fourteen minutes for six days, delivering the supplies for a six-month siege. But AOK had calculated the garrison to be 85,000 when in reality it had swelled to 130,000, and had left its 30,000 civilians entirely out of account. Furthermore, the retreating 3rd Austro-Hungarian army plundered the garrison’s food stocks. Encircled once more, Przemysl’s position was worse than it had been before its relief on 9 October.147

  In the by-now customary tit-for-tat, Conrad attributed these fresh ills on the Germans’ hunger to seize Warsaw. Looking north, not south, Hindenburg and Ludendorff wanted Dankl’s 1st Austro-Hungarian army to give direct support to Mackensen on their left wing. Conrad, reasonably enough in the circumstances, refused. He said that the 1st army could not go further than the mouth of the River Pilica. This concession was sufficient to relieve the German right, around Ivangorod, so allowing the Germans themselves to sidestep northwards. However, Conrad warned that he would not be in a position to act until 20 October. But Hindenburg’s and Ludendorff’s consequent complaints about the immediate security of their right conveniently obscured the major danger, which was inevitably—given the Russians’ intentions—to their left. Mackensen had already had to pull back from Warsaw on 16 October, and on the 17th Ludendorff decided he would have to refuse his left flank, bidding Mackensen to hold on the line Rava-Lovich. Excessive German ambition in relation to numerical strength, rather than Austro-Hungarian failings, explain the unravelling of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff master-plan.148

  Ninth army’s new proposal was to withdraw their left, hoping to hold the Russians debouching from Warsaw in the direction of Lodz. Dankl’s army was now to be the main striking force. Given the delay in its arrival, and the existence of Russian bridgeheads around Ivangorod, Conrad did not propose that Dankl should try to defend the Vistula crossings. Instead, the 1st army was to mass on the River Itxanka, which flowed into the Vistula south of Ivangorod, and fall on the Russians as they moved westwards. Russian movements wrong-footed this plan from its inception. Ruzskii and Ivanov advanced their armies in echelon refused to the right, each corps crossing the Vistula successively and so supporting its neighbour to the north. Thus, Dankl’s army was not able to attack as it had planned, while the Russians reinforced and expanded the bridgehead so stubbornly held at Koznienitse. On 27 October Dankl ordered his army to fall back on Radom. The Germans made much of the fact that this order was not immediately communicated to their right-hand corps, Dankl’s neighbours. Mutual suspicion between the allies, and the provision of such grounds for its reinforcement, helped the argument that the retreat was the product of Austrian weakness. In reality, Mackensen had been hard hit on 25 and 26 October and the German left had already pulled back to Lodz.

  The Germans’ retreat was, in technical terms, as well-conducted as their advance. The communications they had prepared for the latter now aided the former. Although Ludendorff fell prey to his customary nervousness, Hoffmann remained confident. Roads, railways, and bridges were destroyed by the Germans as they fell back. Hoffman reckoned that the Russians’ supply arrangements were such that they could not advance more than 120 kilometres from their railheads. The lack of railways west of the Vistula meant, he wrote in his diary on 18 October, that ‘nothing can go wrong. If we have to retreat, the Russians can follow us only for three days.’149 Signals intelligence confirmed his optimism. By 1 November the Russian pursuit was exhausted.

  However, Hoffmann’s operational self-confidence could not deny that in strategic terms Ludendorff’s apprehensions had some justification. German troops had proved consistently capable of defeating the Russians in battle. But there were not enough of them. The Russians had re-entered East Prussia, regained most of western Poland up to the line of the Varta, had pushed along the Vistula towards Cracow, and were across the San. The relief brought by the sally towards the Vistula promised to be brief.

  At the end of October Ludendorff travelled to Berlin to discuss the situation with Falkenhayn. The latter’s attentions were concentrated on Ypres; his loyalty was with Germany’s original strategy, a decisive victory in the west which would, in its turn, resolve the situation in the east. Although Conrad wanted thirty German divisions for the east, Falkenhayn insisted that the six new corps, forming in Germany, were needed for Ypres. Only when the battle was over would the 8th and 9th armies be reinforced. Ludendorff, at this stage, seems to have been prepared to accept these arrangements. As a former chief of operations on the general staff he could not but agree with OHL’s continuing efforts to achieve success in the west. Moreover, the danger to Silesia, given Russian supply problems, was not pressing. Stavka’s immediate efforts seemed likely to be concentrated on their flanks, the advance in Poland having once again created an exposed Russian salient. Two thrusts were likely, the first along the Vistula towards Cracow, and the second into East Prussia by way of Mlawa. The former was Conrad’s responsibility. The second Ludendorff felt capable of countering himself. Falkenhayn, for his part, was clearly happy to leave affairs in the east in Hindenburg’s and Ludendorff’s care. On 1 November Hindenburg was appointed commander-in-chief of all German troops in the east, with Ludendorff as his chief of staff and Hoffmann as chief of operations. The command of the 9th army was given to Mackensen.

  However, Ober Ost, as the new command was called, once again set about transforming its limited tasks into grandiose ideas that far exceeded the resources available to it. Ludendorff argued that the available railways would allow the 9th army to be rapidly
concentrated at Thorn, where it could link with the 8th army and whence it could thrust south-east to Lodz. The movement would threaten the right flank of the Russian armies in Poland and the left of those in East Prussia. By its very nature the aim of the operation could only be limited, to disrupt the Russians and to gain time for the Ypres battle to be completed. Ludendorff did not have the men to hope for more. As it was, his plan demanded that the hapless Austrians cover the German concentration by extending north along the Silesian frontier. And even then, Mackensen’s army only mustered just over five corps for its advance on Lodz.

  The failure of OHL to grasp the growth in Ober Ost’s objectives was in part the product of the speed with which the Lodz operation was mounted. Ludendorff’s ambitions developed as events around Lodz developed. He began planning for what was seen by Falkenhayn as a local counter-attack on 3 November. On 4 November Falkenhayn renewed his attack on Ypres and thus postponed further the transfer of the six corps from the west. Russian efforts were put into the South-West Front and the advance against the Austro-Hungarians. The direction of the Russian attack, Stavka’s and the North-West Front’s belief that the Germans were protecting Silesia to their front, and the consequent neglect of their right flank in Poland all added to the pressure in favour of a major German blow towards Lodz. By 10 November 800 trains had carried out the redeployment of the 9th army. On 11 November it began its advance. By now Ludendorff was convinced that the chances of a major success were greater in the east than in the west. The case was doubtful. A total of 135 Russian divisions faced seventy-five of the Central Powers: the six corps which Ludendorff coveted could have done little more than strengthen the defensive. And, even had Falkenhayn been swayed by the factors that convinced Ludendorff, these corps could never have been extricated from around Ypres and transported eastwards in time to have the decisive effect which Ober Ost claimed was achievable. Ludendorff needed to act fast if he was to effect surprise; he needed to wait if he wanted to be reinforced.150