The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (17 page)

In mid-September, there was already a crisis between the two fronts.
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Ivanov and Alexeyev were determined to push on against the retreating Austro-Hungarian army. They would invest the great fortress of Przemysl, on the San, would capture Cracow and maybe Budapest as well. On the other side, the armies of the north-western front, against Germany, were retreating. Ruzski, who—after a typical episode
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—had replaced Zhilinski in mid-September, suffered from visions of a German advance against Warsaw, and sometimes even talked as if the Germans, after their great successes in East Prussia, could go on to Moscow or Saint Petersburg. The only way to stop this was to withdraw the stricken I, II and X Armies a long way back, he thought—at least to the Niemen, where the fortress of Kovno would protect them. Warsaw might have to be abandoned; and the forts and bridges there were blown up (the first of three separate occasions). At best, Novogeorgievsk, an ostensibly impregnable fortress down-river from Warsaw, should be retained. This set of circumstances brought the two fronts into unwilling contact. Ivanov and Alexeyev would not go forward to Cracow if their northern flank, in the Vistula plains, had been bared by retreats of the type adumbrated by Ruzski. If the north-western front pulled right back, there was nothing to stop the Germans from advancing into these plains and cutting the communications of the south-western front; already there were signs
of German activity here. If Ruzski retired, then Ivanov and Alexeyev would also have to go back—they threatened to give up even Lwów, a proposal that put Grand Duke Nicholas ‘into indescribable frigh’. Conferences between
Stavka
, Ruzski and Ivanov produced no decision. Ruzski would agree, under pressure, to postpone his retreat; would return to his headquarters and decide that it should be carried out after all.

Events produced the decision that the commanders were unable to produce. In the first place, the expected German stroke against Warsaw or Kovno did not take place, or rather, was frustrated at the outset. The Germans crossed the East Prussian border, in the hope of great victories, and were simply stopped before they got very far—supply-problems, exhaustion, inferior numbers, unfamiliar terrain all counting. By 25th September, the Russian X Army was able to stage a counter-offensive that pushed the Germans back to their borders. In Galicia, it was the other way about. The Austro-Hungarian retreat went on over the San. Russian forces followed. There too supply-problems became insuperable; the fortress of Przemyśl
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at least in theory was an obstacle, and no advance to Cracow could be made until it had fallen. Russian forces inched forward through the Galician mud. Finally, there came news that the Germans were arriving in force north of Cracow. On 18th September, Ludendorff saw Conrad. Ludendorff had been told that ‘direct assistance to the Austrians is now politically essential’. It also made military sense. If the Russians came forward to Cracow, then their northern flank, in the Vistula plains, would be open. Consequently, Ludendorff prepared to assemble a new German force, IX Army, to be commanded by Hindenburg and himself. By 22nd September its vanguards had arrived north of Cracow. Ivanov could not go on against Cracow: he would have to meet this new threat, four corps and a cavalry division.

This gave
Stavka
a chance to smuggle in its old scheme, invasion of Germany from the central part of the front, the plains west of the Vistula. Ivanov would have to send troops to this theatre in any event, to match the arrival of Germans. One of Ruzski’s armies would have to remain west of Warsaw, such that a considerable force would be assembled in the middle. Towards the end of September, Ivanov agreed to send substantial forces to this theatre—‘not less than ten army corps, and better still, three armies’. Ruzski would contribute another army (II) and in this way, at least sixteen army corps would take on the Austro-Hungarians’ and Germans’ seven. Joffre took the chance to air his favourite idea, an offensive into Silesia or Poznania. Yanushkevitch therefore ordered ‘preparation of an offensive, of the greatest possible weight, with a view to deep invasion of Germany, proceeding from the middle Vistula to the upper Oder’. To make sure that Ivanov behaved properly, he was
given charge of this operation, II Army being put under his command. Ruzski was of course annoyed. He felt that such operations could only succeed if their northern flank—East Prussia—were securely held. He preferred to develop plans for a new offensive against East Prussia, and refused to part with troops or supplies if this offensive were thereby endangered. In this way, two operations were once more conducted, with little contact between the two, and as well there were engagements of lesser importance in Galicia. Twenty-five divisions, generally, were pinned down in a set of operations in East Prussia, which eventually succeeded in pushing the Germans back to the Angerapp lines. Another thirty were pinned down in Galicia, along the Carpathians and on the San. The supposedly decisive central offensive received barely more than thirty divisions, and supply problems meant that these were less effective than they could have been. The only way to make either front collaborate properly in the offensive was to give it responsibility. Thus Ivanov was, first given control of all four armies. Then Ruzski failed to make II Army as strong as he could have done, and also failed to supply it as he was supposed to. Ruzski was then given control of it, and the operation thus acquired two commanders. The invasion of Germany, not surprisingly, failed to get off the ground.

The events of October were confused and bewildering—a situation not helped by Ludendorff’s subsequent construing of these events as a great German victory. The German corps pushed forward from their railheads north of Cracow, expecting to find a Russian flank. Instead, they found an empty space. From 24th September, Ivanov withdrew his forces west of the San, and set them marching back along the eastern banks of the Vistula. Once they came to safe crossing-points, such as Ivangorod, they would muster on the western banks, in preparation for the invasion. This movement took a great deal of time: for over three weeks, some thirty divisions were more or less subtracted from the battle-field while they took up positions elsewhere. The Central Powers were free to manoeuvre at will: Conrad followed the Russian retreat as far as the San, and Ludendorff pushed his troops, with an Austro-Hungarian corps, towards the Vistula. Both represented these advances as a victory. In reality, the only serious engagement, between 11th September, when the Austro-Hungarian retreat began, and 11th October, when the first real action opened on the Vistula, was a minor affair, at Opatów, in the Vistula plains. The Russians left a cavalry screen west of the Vistula. A mixed group of infantry and cavalry under Mannerheim ignored its orders to retreat. Early in October, a German and an Austro-Hungarian corps collided with this force. The Russian cavalry decided not to risk battle after all, and withdrew—incidentally breaking the only convenient
bridge under the weight of its horse-guns, and not informing the infantry brigadier, whose flank it was supposed to protect. In the outcome, the infantry brigade could not get its guns out, and also lost half of its men as prisoners. After that, the Germans arrived on the western bank of the Vistula, and indulged in desultory bombardment of such targets as they could find. Ludendorff wondered what to do. He decided that the Russians must have decided to give up the Vistula plains, and for want of anything better, sent three of his corps under Mackensen towards Warsaw. Conrad, on his side, thought that recapture of Lwów was first priority, and told his troops to cross the San. Only two corps and some cavalry remained at the join of the two armies’ fronts, opposite the fortress of Ivangorod.
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Ivanov could not take much profit from this. His troops’ movement along the eastern bank of the Vistula suffered from one delay after another. They marched over a hundred miles in a downpour, on bad roads swamped in mud. Of the three armies involved—IV, V and IX—V was in the worst position. It could not feed its horses because hay did not arrive. The horses dropped. Shell-boxes had to be left behind, along with bridging equipment needed for the crossings to come. Even the railway-journeys that could be made once the forces came to usable railheads were difficult: one of the lines, through Ivangorod, came under German bombardment. Moreover, when V Army reached its stations to the south-east of Warsaw, it became dependent on Ruzski’s front for supplies, although receiving orders from Ivanov. It did not get priority from Ruzski, such that V Army was more or less out of action for a month. The other two armies arrived by 8th October, strung out along ninety miles of river, with only two crossing-points, at Ivangorod and Novo-Alexandriya. II Army assembled in Warsaw, also dependent on Ruzski for its supplies, and also left in the lurch. Its commander, Scheidemann, was mesmerised by reports that Ludendorff was attacking Warsaw, and his staff wrestled with problems of logistics as the army became an almost unmanageable mob in the Polish capital. On 11th October, after much prodding from
Stavka
, Ivanov told IV, IX and V Armies to cross the Vistula. IV and IX Armies, at Ivangorod and on the river to the south, attempted to cross, but were pinned by German and Austro-Hungarian bombardment to small bridgeheads, in which they lost heavily. V Army had no bridges, and its troops had to cross by raft or barge, through machine-gun fire. Pontoon equipment did arrive some days later, and a bridge was thrown up. Then the Vistula rose, and carried off the bridge, which floated downstream to the suburbs of Warsaw, where it came to rest. The army staff ‘forgot’ what it had done with the field-mortars; and all manner of other equipment lay strewn around the roads to the south, such that the
army really depended on supplies from Warsaw, itself in a state of seemingly inextricable confusion. By mid-month, the Russians’ attempts to cross the Vistula had all broken down.
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The Central Powers did not do much better. Ludendorff had sent a strong group against Warsaw. It had not much difficulty in following the Russians’ advanced-groups’ retreat into the city, and by mid-October there was talk of a German occupation of Warsaw. But Ludendorff appreciated that his flank on the Vistula was weak, and he was also told that there were about nine Russian divisions in Warsaw to his five. Prudently, on 18th October, he decided not to risk anything, and secretly ordered retreat, to begin on 20th October. Conrad on his side was less prudent. He set his armies to cross the San. Their attempts to do so broke down again and again, for much the same reasons as Russian attempts to cross the Vistula had broken down. Further south, there was nothing but an indecisive imbroglio in the Carpathians. Conrad produced a fancy scheme. He would, as Ludendorff demanded, send troops (his I Army) to help hold the line opposite Ivangorod. These troops, and the German corps on their left, would withdraw; the Russians would cross; and then the Austro-Hungarian group would counter-attack, when the Russians were only half-across. By 22nd October three separate operations were thus planned. Ivanov wanted to set IV and IX Armies across the Vistula, at Ivangorod and Novo-Alexandriya. Conrad was prepared to meet them with his supposed flank-attack: Ludendorff meanwhile would retreat from Warsaw. Matters on the Russian side now became still more disjointed because Ruzski was put in charge, first of II and then also of V Army, because this was the only way by which they could rely on his support. As it happened, the Austro-Hungarians were sharply defeated opposite Ivangorod. They allowed the Russians to cross, but their own flank-attack was not successful, and in any case they could not interfere with the crossing of all the Russian divisions hitherto penned in on the wrong bank of the Vistula. On 22nd October there were ten divisions to the Austro-Hungarians’ and Germans’ eight; on 26th October, thirteen to eight. The Austro-Hungarian I Army was itself taken in flank, lost 40,000 men and withdrew to the south-west.
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At the same time, Ludendorff retreated as he had planned. By the end of October, the Central
Powers had retired almost to where they had started from a month before.

The Russian armies had clearly had the best of this fighting, whatever Ludendorff subsequently claimed. The Germans’ attack in central Poland had encountered nothing substantial; their attacks on Warsaw and Ivangorod had failed; and now they were retreating towards the south-west. The Austrians had failed to break out across the San and made progress only in the scarcely-defended Bukovina, far to the south-east. As Russian forces advanced on the north bank of the Vistula, the Austrians were forced to retire south of it, abandoning the San, and allowing the fortress of Przemyśl to be once more shut in, with a garrison of 120,000 men. They fell back towards the Dunajec-Biala positions in early November, covering Cracow, and the Russian III Army duly followed.

Had the Russian command-system been functioning with anything like adequacy, this might have been a dangerous moment for Ludendorff and Conrad. But the two fronts were divided: the south-western one naturally gravitated towards the south-west, the north-western one, when Ruzski allowed it to gravitate anywhere at all, to the north-west. The armies in central Poland were divided now, for reasons of supply, between the two commands. Ivanov tended to draw IX Army, the southernmost one, into his battles with the Austrians, whose resistance, on the San, turned out to be stronger than expected. Consequently, its neighbour to the north, IV Army, was perpetually confused as regards its southern flank. On the other side, Ruzski was preoccupied with East Prussia and even, grotesquely, felt that there should be a strong flank-guard against a German breakthrough from there towards Warsaw—mistaking a German
Landsturm
brigade at Thorn for an army corps. This was a thesis that Stavka itself endorsed: ‘The Grand Duke insistently expresses himself on the indispensability of securing success in East Prussia and on the San, without which there can be no proper safety for our operation in the plains of the Vistula’. A new I Army was therefore placed to guard II’s right and X’s left. There were nine army corps in II and V Armies, and these were placed across the open western flank of the Germans, with four army corps. But V Army was held up for the sake of the flank of II, II was held up because Ruzski expected German resistance where there was to be none, and supply-problems completed
the picture. All’commands now vacillated between the needs of front and flank; and
Stavka
itself behaved like ‘a weather-cock’—telling Ruzski on the one side to pursue the Germans towards the south-west ‘with iron energy’, on the other that ‘the next step in securing further advance must be to press the enemy in East Prussia and on the San’. Early in November, contradictory instructions were issued four times, Ivanov remarked that ‘frankly speaking, it is impossible to detect in
Stavka’s
instructions either an exact task or a fixed objective’. Russian soldiers stumbled bewilderedly through empty Polish territory, supplied, in IV Army, by biscuit brought along by staff-cars. Not until 12th November was the shell-dotation per gun brought up even to ninety rounds; and the railways were not brought back into service until mid-November. The wounded were taken back, first to Warsaw, where they lay on straw in long lines along the station-platforms, and then to Petrograd or Moscow, where they were also unloaded onto straw, on station platforms—this time, perhaps, with the amelioration of being tended by a Grand Duchess.
Stavka
, aware of these problems, and knowing, too, the division of the fronts regarding the directions of advance, decided to call a halt. The invasion of Germany was not to begin until 11th November; meanwhile, to make sure it was co-ordinated, Ruzski was put in charge of IV Army as well as II and V. This meant that Ivanov and Alexeyev would continue their private battle with the Austrians—though without IV Army, the help of which could have been decisive.