The Military History of the Eastern Front in 1915

The Military History of the Great War, 1915

The Eastern Front

The defeats which Russia suffered in 1915 at the hands of Austrian, German, and Bulgarian forces demonstrated beyond doubt that the hopes of the French political establishment - that Russian rearnament following the Russo-Japanese war would ensure French security - were a matter more of fantasy than military insight. A lack of communication between different armies, the dearth of competent generals, and, above all, a lack of artillery, particularly heavy guns, all conspired to render numerically superior Russian forces vulnerable to Austro-German assaults.

The early fall of Belgrade also allowed the Central Powers to concentrate their forces in Galicia and East Prussia. Additionally, the Russian’s premature mobilization against the Ottomans meant a disproportionate share of their troops were still positioned there; the early successes against the Turks had prompted the Russians to expand the offensive further into Anatolia, which, while having some successes, likely did not make a significant strategic contribution to the entente war effort.

Even more importantly, after February the Bulgarians begin sending additional troops to northern Galicia to reinforce the Austrian ones. Initially, Bulgaria had been wary of sending its troops to fight in foreign lands. Many of its soldiers were exhausted after fighting three wars in two years, and there was little desire among the broader population for a fight with Russia. A meeting with Austrian and German leaders, however, quickly impressed upon the Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov that there would be grave consequences in the post-war period for Bulgaria if it refused to participate in the war effort.

Fearing diplomatic isolation, the Bulgarians reluctantly agreed to a deal that allowed them to drawdown the number of men in their army while sending the professional, hardened core to Galicia. Along with the German troops steadily streaming into the region, these soldiers would serve as a vital bracing for the more fragile and disjointed Austro-Hngarian forces. This also increased the sense of urgency among the Entente powers to bring Italy, Romania, Greece, or some combination of these nations into the war; in 1915, they would only have success with Italy.

Before the disaster of the First Battle of the Somme, it was still largely Falkenhayn who dictated German War policy. Hindenburg thus received only an additional three corps, ostensibly to hold the line against the Russians in East Prussia. Nonetheless, over the first four months of 1914, he managed to lure the Russians in East Prussia into a series of pitched battles around Konigsberg, Gumbinnen, and Tannenberg that eventually forced the weakened 1st and 2nd armies to evacuate East Prussia. This greatly increased the reputation of Hindenburg and Ludendorff back in Berlin, and when Falkenhayn’s gambit in the west failed, Bethmann Hollweg managed to convince the Kaiser to grant the Junker and his hothead adjutant the reserves that they were requesting for a decisive blow against Russia.

The need for an offensive to relieve the Austrians had increased in the wake of a renewed Russian offensive in Galicia. Russian forces had arrived outside Lemberg (Lviv) once again in April, and it was only the arrival of several Bulgarian divisions that had prevented the fall of the city. Further east, the Russians continued to push into Erzerum, and in May, the Italians joined the war, forcing Austria to send reserves to the Alpine border with Italy.

The Hindenburg-Ludendorff plan called for not one, but two offensives. The first would occur out of the area around Gumbinnen toward the city of Kovno, and destroy what remained of the 1st and 2nd Russian Armies which had originally invaded East Prussia. With their eastern flank secured, they would wait at least three weeks to re-organize their forces before striking south, toward the city of Przasnysz. A joint Austro-German-Bulgarian force would strike simultaneously out of Lviv, aiming for Lublin. After both Lublin and Przasnysz were secured, both fronts would converge on Siedlce, a small city east of Warsaw, encircling the Russian forces that remained in Poland in a massive double envelopment.

The first part of the offensive was slated to begin on July 15th. It called for the commitment of at least seventeen additional German divisions to the east, with at least ten of these divisions coming from those previously stationed on the Western Front, and hence schooled in assault and breakthrough tactics. The losses at the Battle of the Somme and the need to build up munitions stockpiles post-poned the first stage of the offensive for around a month; it began in earnest on August 17th.

In the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the Germans secured their first unalloyed victory since last August. Although the 1st and 2nd armies were not encircled, superior german fire-power destroyed their capacity to operate as effective fighting formations after the conclusion of the offensive. The Russians lost around 145,000 killed, wounded, and captured; the Germans, a bit under 25,000. They also managed to not only advance to Kovno proper, but also to seize the city and its crucial railway junction, which would make any Russian counter-offensive in the area difficult to supply and allow the Germans a spring-board to Vilna for future offensives.

The second phase of the plan was slated to commence less than a month after the first concluded. This meant that it should have begun around October 12th. Difficulties with fitting German rolling stock to Russian rail gauges, however, prevented a speedy redeployment of divisions, and entente offensives around Ypres and the Aisne prevented the withdrawal of a number of divisions slated to be transferred from the west. Nonetheless, by November the offensive was ready to proceed. On November 3rd, the last phase of the offensive begun.

Today, the “Great Winter Offensive”, or, in Russian, the “The Catastrophe of 15’”, is considered one of those rare military operations which constitutes an exception to the time-honored rule that “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. The advance to Lublin and Przasnysz by each flank of the offensive proceeded without issue, and within a week and a half each city had fallen to a mixture of German, Austrian, and Bulgarian troops. Panic within the Russian headquarters in Warsaw temporarily paralyzed the Russian armies in the area. It is likely that a short march straight on Warsaw at this point would have encircled almost the entirety of the Russian Army in Poland. As it was, the decision to dive further East, toward Siedlce, actually brought the Russians precious time to organize a withdrawal of a good number of their forces in the region.

In real terms, of course, the offensive constituted an unmitigated disaster for Russia. Over 625,000 Russian troops were captured. Nearly 1.3 million were killed or wounded. The troops that did escape from Congress Poland still constituted a coherent fighting force, but they would likely be unable to resist an offensive of similar scale. Perhaps most importantly, the need to replenish the losses at the front would require either drafting more urban workers into the army and threatening the productivity of the burgeoning war industries, or doing the same with the peasantry and imperiling local food supplies.

Despite the halo of invincibility that the victory afforded to Ludendorff and Hindenburg, in retrospect it is unclear that this second phase of the offensive constituted a real improvement in Germany’s strategic position. Over 650,000 Austrian and 350,000 German soldiers had been killed or wounded in the offensive. An immense amount of German war materiel had been expended, and many strategic stockpiles were now empty. A large Entente offensive in the west likely would have broken the German lines at this point, but Britain and France at the time still felt that they needed to marshal their forces for a battle in 1916, and the offensives that did occur around Ypres and Passchendaele were smaller in scope, which gave the Germans time to move reserves into the areas.

Nonetheless, by the end of 1915, the situation on the Western Front was growing increasingly grim as Allied numerical and industrial superiority grew by the day. The next year, the hammer would fall.