It was while German troops were fighting their way through Belgium, that Russia’s 1st and 2nd armies (a total of 29 infantry divisions), launched a powerful attack upon East Prussia in support of France, and opened up the fighting on the Eastern Front. The Russian plan was for the 1st Army to take Konigsburg in the north, while the 2nd Army skirted the Masurian Lakes and trapped the Germans near the town of Allenstein (see map). This intention – Russia’s Plan 19 – had been suspected for some time, but, according to the predictions of the Schlieffen Plan it came some five weeks earlier than anticipated! It had been confidently assumed that, over so vast a country, it would take a month or more for Russia to mobilize its forces and be ready to launch a major offensive. By that time, France would have been defeated, and a large number of troops would have been available on the Eastern Front to face and defeat a second-rate Russian Army.

     That proved to be a serious miscalculation. Facedxwith this sudden and unexpected onslaught, the German 8th Army defending the area was overwhelmed at the Battles of Stalluponen and Gumbinnen (20th July), and were obliged to pull back. Alarm bells sounded in Berlin. Indeed,xthe commander of Eastern Prussia, General Maximilian von Prittwitz, went so far as to suggest a full withdrawal to the west of the River Vistula. That was not acceptable. He was immediately replaced by Paul von Hindenburg (assisted by General Erich Ludendorff), and he quickly gave approval to a bold plan put forward by a member of his staff, LieutenantxColonel Max Hoffman. Having learnt from uncoded wireless messages that the commander of the Russian 1st army, General  Paul von  Rennenkampf, planned a few days of refit  before  launching  an  attack on Konigsberg, a small but conspicuous force – mostly cavalry – was left to face Russia’s 1st Army (a calculated risk), and the entire German 8th Army was moved to the south, some by train, to take on Russia’s 2nd Army (see red arrows on map above). Completely unaware of this manoeuvre, the Russian 2nd Army marched straight into the German trap. Atxthe Battle of Tannenberg that followed (Allenstein on the map), one of the largest encounters to take place on the Eastern Front (26-28th August), the Russians were totally overwhelmed. They lost close on 30,000 men, killed or wounded, and over 90,000 were taken prisoner. The German casualties were below 15,000. Indeed,xso complete  and  damning  was this defeat,  that  the  2nd Army’s  commander, General  Alexander  Samsonov, committed suicide. ThexRussian 1st Army, narrowly avoiding encirclement, was then defeated at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes (see map above) and driven out of East Prussia in September. They did return early in the New Year, but were again defeated and expelled in what came to be known as the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes of February, 1915.

     Incidentally, inxorder to take Russian attention away from East Prussia, where they were planning this second battle of the Masurian Lakes, the Germans launched a diversionary attack upon Warsaw at the end of January 1915. This resulted in the Battle of Bolimov. It was inconclusive in its result, but it proved significant for being the first time that poisoned gas was used in the war. In fact, however, this new weapon, delivered via 18,000 shells, went virtually unnoticed. Because of the cold weather, the chemical froze and proved ineffective!  ……

THE EASTERN FRONT

EASTxPRUSSIA

THE BATTLE OF TANNENBERG:   26th- 30th AUGUST AND

THE BATTLES OF THE MASURIAN LAKES:  SEPTEMBER 1914 and JANUARY 1915

GALICIAxand THE POLISH SALIENT:  AUGUST- NOVEMBER 1914

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Acknowledgements

Map, Battle of Tannenberg: themaparchive.com  Battle of Tannenberg: common.wikimedia.org  Battle of Masurian Lakes: historica.fandom.com  Map (Galicia): eeroots.blogspot.com.  Eastern Front: robinsonlibrary.com/history  Battle of  Limanowa:  avalanche press.com   Przomysl:  ww1live. wordpress .com Polish Salient:  a contemporary New York Times map.

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  …… thexBattle of Tannenberg was actually fought at Allenstein a few miles distant (see map above), but was called Tannenberg by the Germans for propaganda reasons. It was at Tannenberg, back in 1410, that the German-Prussian Teutonic Knights, having returned from the Holy Land, were humiliatingly defeated at the hands of the United Slavic and Lithuanian forces. This was seen as a fitting token of revenge, as well as a booster for German morale. For the Russians, the event has always been known as the Battle of Grunwald. ……

  …… Over the years, questions have been asked as to why the Russian 1st Army did not go  to the rescue of  2nd Army when the Germans launched their attack. The official answer is that the terrain between the two armies, the marsh lands of the Masurian Lakes, made such an attempt impractable. However, it is said by some that the two generals involved, Rennenkampf and Samsonov, were bitter rivals (as they were), and that Samsonov’s pleas for help went unheeded. That has never been confirmed. At the battle, the Russians lost some 120,000 men (including 9,000 taken prisoner), together with most of the equipment of an entire army.

     Theyxdid well at first, gaining victories at the Battles of Krasnik and Komarov (see map left above), but they lost many men by mounting frontal attacks of infantry and cavalry, and when they were attacked on their flanks by two Russian armies they could advance no further. Atxthe end of August they were soundly defeated at the Battle of the Gnila Lipa with heavy losses. Then on the 3rdx September they lost the Battle of Rava-Ruska (on the  same day as the Russians seized the ancient city and administrative centre of Lemberg) and were forced to retreat behind the Vistula and San Rivers. Byxthe end of the month they had fallen back to within fifty miles of Crakow, and had been forced to abandon their fortress city of Przemysl, then under siege. Under the command of Nikolai Ivanov and Aleksey Brusilov, virtually the whole of Galicia was now in Russian hands. Such was the measure of their success that a large number of German forces had to be transferred from the Western Front – created into the German Ninth Army – in order to hold the line. Had the Russians had more manpower and equipment at this stage, it is possible that they could have struck through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains, reached the Hungarian plain, and knocked the Habsburg Empire out of the war. Indeed,xit was only with the aid of a German infantry division, plus the onset of severe winter conditions, that the Russians were prevented from entering Hungary at the Battle of Limanowa, fiercely fought from 1st to the 13th December (illustrated), during what came to be known as the Carpathian Winter War. As it was, the Austro-Hungarian Army lost over 300,000 men during this offensive and never really recovered from this loss. For the Russians, the success of their Galicia campaign went some way to offset the humiliating defeats they had suffered at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes during their abortive campaign in East Prussia.  

     Atxthe best of times, the Austro-Hungarian army was not a well-motivated fighting force, had few competent commanders, and lacked some of the most basic equipment, but, this said, one of the major reasons for its defeat in this instance must be laid at the door of its commander, General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf. At the beginning of the war, under-estimating the strength of the Russian forces at this early stage, he had sent only three armies (twenty seven infantry divisions and twenty-one cavalry divisions) to the Russian Front. In contrast, he had dispatched a large proportion of his forces to invade and quickly capture Serbia. As it so happened, however, he failed three times to overcome the Serbs, and withdrew his forces in mid-December after suffering more than 220,000 casualties. As we shall see, it was not until an invasion of that country in October 1915 – under German command and assisted by Bulgarian troops – that the Serbs were eventually defeated. Obsessed with seeking revenge upon Serbia, the Russian Front did not get the support it clearly needed.

    Incidentally, thexsiege of the fortress city of Przemysl in the south-east corner of Galicia (see maps above), was the first and one of the longest sieges in the First World War. The Russians bypassed it on the 24th September, anxious to push the Austro-Hungarians further westward, and it remained isolated and surrounded until it was forced to surrender through lack of food and ammunition on the 22nd March 1915. It was recaptured by German and Austro-Hungarian troops on the 3rd of June (illustrated). By that time the city itself, and the thirty or more fortified posts that surrounded it, had been reduced to rubble. It is estimated that during the siege both sides lost about 115,000 men, killed, wounded or missing.

THE BATTLE OF THE POLISH SALIENT:  AUGUST – NOVEMBER 1914

     With the Russians occupying most of Galicia, there was now a real fear that they would capture Cracow, gain entrance to Silesia, and advance on Vienna. In order to relieve the pressure on the Austro-Hungarian forces, Hindenburg reassembled the Ninth Army, aiming to push back the Russians in the Polish Salient (west of the River Vistula), seize Warsaw, and then continue south into Galicia to stop the Russian advance in that area. At first he did make good progress on a broad front between Wirballen and Augustov, but his army, opposed by six Russian armies, was stopped on approaching Niemen. Then, in mid-October, following a highly successful Russian counterattackxat the Battle of Ivangorod, the Germans were forced to retreat, suffering heavy losses as a consequence, and failing to take Warsaw despite seven months of ferocious fighting. After regrouping, however, it stopped the Russian advance atxLodz, and kept the Russians at bay by winning the October Battle of the Vistula River and the November Battle of Lodz. In this sector, there were occasions when troops on both sides resorted to trench warfare, but only for short periods.

    Incidentally, after the war many Russians felt that the contribution made by their forces in these battles on the Eastern Front had not been sufficiently recognised by the French. They argued that it played a large part in securing the failure of the Schlieffen Plan to capture Paris. This is impossible to determine, of course, but it is worth noting that just before the war General Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff, moved 180,000 men from the West to the Eastern Front, and that on the 28th August, during the attack on Belgium itself, two corps (about 60,000 men) plus a cavalry division were sent to support German forces on the eve of the Battle of Tannenberg. Some historians argue that this seriously weakened the plan’s crucial right wing, the thrust specifically planned to capture the French capital. ……

     ...... Itxwas soon after the battle for Galicia, in November 1914, that there was a brief encounter between ships of the Russian and Ottoman navies. On the 17th, a Russian force of five pre-dreadnougt battleships, three cruisers and 13 destroyers bombarded the Black Sea port of Trebizond (vital for supplying coal to the Turks). In response, the next day the Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz and the light cruiser Midilli were despatched to take revenge, and at noon the following day sighted the Russian force off Cape Sarych, on the southern shore of the Crimean Peninsula. The battle that followed – simply an encounter between the Yavuz and the Russian flagship Evastafi – lasted no more than 14 minutes. Both ships were badly damaged and each lost one of its gun emplacements and its crew. By 12.30 the Ottomans had lost sight of the Russians because of a thickening mist, and, being outnumbered, decided to make for Cape Sinop on the Turkish coast. Casualties amounted to 47 dead and 24 wounded.

    Apart from their campaign in East Prussia, where they certainly suffered a major defeat, it could be said that the Russians had fared fairly well in 1914. They had made a successful take-over of the province of Galicia – routing four Austro-Hungarian armies in the process – and come close to invading Austria-Hungary via the Carpathians, whilst in the Polish Salient they had repulsed a strong German attack and kept possession of Warsaw. However, in 1915, as we shall see, the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, launched by the Central Powers at the beginning of May, drove the Russians out of Galicia, whilst, further north German troops took over the Polish Salient and invaded Lithuania. The Russians were to recover somewhat in 1916, but there was a great deal of political unrest in the Russian Empire, much of it aimed at the inadequacy of its fighting forces (the lack of supplies, the failure on the battlefield, and the mounting casualties), and, ipso facto, the antiquated, oppressive regime that ruled over the Russian people. Therein lay the seeds of the Great Retreat and, in the long term, the Russian Revolution.

THExBATTLE OF GALICIA:

AUGUST – SEPTEMBER 1914

   While this action was taking place in East Prussia the Austro-Hungarians saw fit to launch an attack against the Russians in Galicia, a small province in the north-east corner of Austria-Hungary, aiming to take Lublin and Cholm (see map right)

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