THE EASTERN FRONT
THE BATTLE OF LAKE NAROCH: 18th – 26th MARCH, 1916
Acknowledgements
Map of Eastern Front: medium.com Map of Lakes: jewish.org/Belarus Barbed Wire: badboy.nI The Massacre: ww1live.wordpress.com Siberian Riflemen: twitter.com by the Belarusian artist Vladimir Saiko, 2016 Poster: istock.photo.com The Brunsilov Offensive (detail): art.com
As we have seen, the German offensive against the French stronghold of Verdun began in February. The fighting was ferocious, the casualties were exceedingly heavy, and it was quite clear that this was intended to be a very long battle of attrition. ThexFrench Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre, in accordance with the Cantilly Conference of December 1915 (at which the Allies had agreed to give mutual assistance when needed), called upon his Allies to go on the offensive in order to put the Central Powers under pressure and force the Germans to withdraw forces from the assault on Verdun. The Italians, now at war with Austria-Hungary, launched another attack along the Isonzo River in South Tyrol, and in July – somewhat belatedly – the British opened up the Battle of the Somme.
The Russians, as it so happened, needed no encouragement to go on the offensive. The Great Retreat had seen a reduction in Central Power forces along the entire Eastern Front. About 1.5 million Russians faced no more than one million combined German and Austro-Hungarian forces. The RussianxChief of Staff, General Mikhail Alexeev, planned a knock-out offensive in the Vilnius-Naroch area, where the advantage of numerical superiority was at its greatest. On paper it appeared to be a promising enterprise. An all-out attempt would be made to recapture Vilnius (see map), and a threat against this target – one of the most important towns in Russia’s Baltic provinces – would doubtless require the Germans to bring in reinforcements from the Western Front … the main aim of the offensive. The major thrust would be made by the Second Army, starting from Lake Naroch, where a force of 350,000 men and 1,000 guns would take on the 75,000 men and 400 guns of the German Tenth Army. Meanwhile, the Russian Northern Army Group would move south from Riga and meet up with the Second Army to take part in the capture of Vilnius. Within the military there was some disagreement over the timing of the offensive. Some called for a delay in order to avoid the thaw of winter snow and the problems this could bring (which, in fact, proved to be sound advice!) but, with time being of the essence as far as Verdun was concerned, it was decided to launch the attack on the 18th March.
The two-day bombardment which preceded the assault, whilst being the largest delivered on the Eastern Front to-date, also proved to be the most ineffectual. Very little reconnaissance was carried out, so, for the most part, the shelling was wildly inaccurate, and left most of the German defences and artillery intact and fully manned. It was a prelude to disaster. The infantry were then left free to advance, and they paid the price. The German line at that time ran roughly along the eastern shore of Lake Naroch (north to south), and the Russians attacked along two quite narrow fronts either side of the lake. This would have been a most demanding task in normal conditions, but the thaw had set in just a few days earlier, and had made the terrain a boggy mire, with mud knee-deep in many places. Slowed down, bunched together, and with little space in which to manoeuvre, the infantry – made up of many raw recruits – were easy targets for the rifle and the machine-gun, operating from well-defended positions. On the first day alone, Russian casualties were over 15,000, and there was worse to come. This human-wave tactic – with minor modifications – was repeated over a number of days. The Russians, by sheer force of numbers, eventually managed to gain some ground, but, come the closure of the campaign, the Germans counter-attacked early in April and regained lost territory. Overa
ll, the Russians lost 70,000 at the Battle of Lake Naroch, and some 30,000 in the attack mounted from Riga. Over 12,000 men died of frostbite and 5,000 of the dead were found caught up in the barbed wire fencing, a gruesome statistic. In contrast, total German losses were around 20,000.
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In broad terms, the failure of the Russian attack was not difficult to assess. Originally planned over a wide front some 60 miles wide, it was launched at the wrong time and at the wrong place. The opening bombardment was close to a complete failure – with dire consequences – and incompetent commanders, doubtless influenced by the large number of infantry at their disposal, made little if any attempt to bring a halt to the carnage. Regarded as one of the worst military defeats of all time, it was hardly a promising beginning for the army’s new commander-in-chief, the Czar himself! Indeed, there are many who argue that Russia’s catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Naroch Lake “paralysed” the Russian army for the rest of the war; contributed to Russia’s capitulation; and, indeed, played a large part in the support of a revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
Incidentally, thexGerman composer Siegfried Wagner, son of Richard Wagner, set to music a poem by the German poet Günther Holstein about the Battle of Naroch. Entitled Night at Lake Naroch, it was produced in 1919. Today, the lake and the surrounding lakes make up a popular tourist resort.
As we shall see, the success achieved by the Russians at the opening phase of their next assault, the Brunsilov Offensive – launched in June 1916 to give further support to the hard-pressed French on the Verdun front (and, at that juncture, the hard-pressed Italians on the Isonzo front!) – doubtless played some part in restoring faith in their army. However, as we shall see, it didn’t, indeed it couldn’t go far enough to counter the threats to Czarist rule that had been growing within the Russian Empire for more than ten years. When the Brunsilov Offensive grinded to a halt in the September, the heavy loses it incurred only served to increase the political and social unrest boiling just below the surface. It was clearly another step, a big step, towards the break-out of the Russian Revolution.
