The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (47 page)

Brusilov turned to the forces of the western front, and decided that his main task must be to unlock the German defences on his own northern flank. But the difficulties of this were considerable. In the first place, Evert himself showed no stomach for action; and in any case Brusilov’s own northern group—a mixed force of cavalry and infantry divisions on the bend of the Styr north-east of Lutsk—was unable to get over the Austrian defences. This was mainly a matter of terrain—the marshes of the Styr, with only a few ways through them. Two cavalry corps and an infantry corps attempted without success to force the Styr salient, but succeeded, at best, in seizing villages on its perimeter.
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The one break-through that did occur brought eighty per cent loss against barbed-wire hidden in the marshes, and the attackers lost so heavily that their success could not be followed up. Brusilov blamed this on the cavalry commander, Gyllenschmidt, for his ‘feeble activity and bad management’. But in country of this type, there was not much that Gyllenschmidt could achieve. The Styr salient would require investment of greater force, and it was an error—a cruel one—of Brusilov’s to suppose otherwise.

With this salient on his flank, Brusilov seems to have thought that German troops would use it to debouch far in his rear. He recognised that Gyllenschmidt could do little, and therefore summoned Evert to attack—Evert, with two-thirds of the army’s heavy artillery, and a huge force of
nearly a million men groomed for offensive action, prepared—according to conference instructions—since mid-April 1916. Evert had no stomach at all for his attack. He demanded ‘quantities of heavy shell that go beyond our wildest dreams’. He switched the main area of attack between one place and another—on 1st June announcing that the Narotch area was unsuitable, that Baranovitchi, in the centre of his front, was to be preferred; and preparations were switched to this area. The transfer of reserves from Lake Narotch to Baranovitchi naturally was allowed to take weeks. He was asked to attack in June, but said that this attack must be postponed—‘it would be unseemly to attack on Trinity Sunday and All Souls’ Day’. On 4th June, attack was put off until the 17th and then the end of the month. It was switched away from Pinsk—because the marshes were not dry—and then switched back again a week later. As early as 5th June, men on Brusilov’s front regarded Evert—with his German name—as a traitor; Brusilov complained to Alexeyev that ‘he will turn a won battle into a lost one’. On 16th June Evert was telling Alexeyev that his attack would be ‘only frontal blows, promising only very slow progress with the greatest of difficulty’.
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Kuropatkin, still in charge of the northern front, was even more prudent—even announcing that the Germans had reinforced their front here by four divisions. No-one noted how Brusilov had won his victories—in some ways, not even Brusilov himself. Evert in particular could only imagine some great set-piece offensive. His gestures towards attack were feeble—a few sporadic corps-actions in the latter part of June, leading nowhere in particular. Insistence on great preparation meant that the Germans were not at all surprised, and the preparation was in any event perfunctory as Evert switched the stage of his pusillanimity from one place to another—his deliberations being followed by transport, hither and thither, of great quantities of matériel. It was the legacy of Lake Narotch in March, 1916.

In the event, he agreed to attack near Baranovitchi, early in July. In the meantime, he and Kuropatkin—no doubt partly as excuse to relieve themselves of any need to attack—parted grudgingly enough with reserves for Brusilov’s front: 5. Siberian Corps, which arrived on 12th June, followed by two others on 18th June and 1. Turkestan Corps on 24th June. 5. Siberian Corps took only a week to arrive in full—much the same time as reserve-troops took on the German side, a sign that, when the transport-officers were made to do their work properly, reserves could be shifted at speed.
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These four corps were only the beginning of a considerable shift of reserves to the successful front. Even so, there were still 400,000 men on Kuropatkin’s front to 200,000 Germans, and Kuropatkin would not shift more than a division or two, in this decisive phase.

By mid-June, the disorientation of Kaledin and the confusions of
Evert’s front had stopped Brusilov’s advance in the northern sector. None the less, the great confusions brought to the Central Powers by Brusilov’s methods continued to work much harm to the decisions of Falkenhayn and Conrad. Their reserves had been altogether disrupted—some went to Volhynia, for counter-attack; others were sent to eastern Galicia, to stop the threatened collapse; others again went to the area south of the Dniester, in an attempt to shore up the collapsing Austro-Hungarian VII Army.
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It was this confusion of enemy reserves that allowed Brusilov more successes, in July, despite the confusion of his advance.

Falkenhayn was still committed to his western campaign, and in any case an Anglo-French offensive on the Somme was about to come—the preliminary bombardment beginning on 24th June (lasting until 1st July). Conrad was likewise committed to his offensive against Italy. Neither man wished to break off in order to save the eastern front. There was an initial delay as Conrad tried to get Falkenhayn to send reserves—Verdun had failed, Asiago was working. Falkenhayn responded icily: he had nothing to spare from the west; moreover, there had been no Russian troop-movements to Brusilov’s front from Evert’s, such that the Germans north of the Pripyat still faced a great superiority of numbers. A series of small-scale grants was made—Linsingen’s front received five battalions from marshes to the north, a
Landwehr
brigade, an Austrian brigade, and the Austrian reserve division that had first, erroneously, been put in against XI Army. For four days, nothing more was decided. Conrad met Falkenhayn in Berlin on 8th June and was forced, almost like ‘an errant schoolboy’,
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to give up troops from his Italian front, where in any case the offensive was slackening. Four German divisions would be sent, four and a half Austro-Hungarian ones, including two and a half from the Italian front at once. A trickle of German troops began on 6th June, and by 20th June ten and a half new divisions, Austro-Hungarian and German, had been moved to the threatened eastern front. Even so, there was a new dimension to the disaster with the collapse of Pflanzer-Baltin on the Dniester. Reserves were not even sent as a block to Volhynia: three divisons, one of them German (from Macedonia) had to be diverted to hold up the remnant of VII Army. The reserves were not much, in the context of two shattered Austrian armies, of the four corps sent to Brusilov as reinforcement. But Falkenhayn would not give anything away from the west; increasingly, too, Ludendorff, jealously controlling his independent front, would not part with significant reserves. In this way, he could embarrass Falkenhayn and take over command of the whole eastern front himself, perhaps even of the whole German army. If, to cut them down to size, the Austrians and Falkenhayn were defeated, so much the better for Ludendorff.

The Central Powers did what they could, Conrad attempted to restore the morale of his men by moving into commands antiquated fire-eaters such as Tersztyánszki, who rapidly discovered that they did not speak the same language as the dejected and bewildered soldiers. By 10th June 10. Corps had 3,000 men left, Szúrmay, 2,000. The largest division of the army was the Viennese 13. Rifle Division—with 1,400 men of an establishment of 12,000. Tersztyánszki sent back ever more alarming messages to Conrad—the Germans were looking, now, ‘queerly’ on the Austrian efforts. Tersztyánszki told his men:
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‘My patience is exhausted and I refuse to have my and the senior officers’ reputations dragged in the mud.’ The men, who in any case might legitimately have supposed that they were not fighting for their commanders’ reputations, remained unaffected by such literature. By the end of June, IV Army ceased to exist, except in so far as there was a German framework for it. To plug the gaps both here and in VII Army, Conrad had to stop the offensive against Italy, and obtain troops. He told Archduke Eugen, commanding the offensive, that the three divisions already sent (by 16th June) must be followed by another five, in two corps. ‘We are now forced to stop your offensive, having waited to the uttermost limits for you to fulfil your promises’ was Conrad’s instruction to the Archduke. On 24th June the Austrians in northern Italy had to retire to a suitable defensive line, and to fend off another Italian offensive. Eight divisions went back to the east.

Falkenhayn had instructed men to hold ‘every square foot of line’—not a sensible policy, since the Austrian soldiery was simply taken prisoner while doing so. He had in mind a great counter-stroke, against the northern flank of Kaledin’s salient—a flank that now reached the river Stokhod. By 20th June, twelve and a half Austro-German divisions were gathered, under a German, Marwitz. Most of the German divisions were either second-class troops, or tired units from the western front. In any case, the Central Powers’ effort was split—of sixteen and a half fresh divisions sent by 20th June, nine went to Volhynia, two to
Südarmee
, the rest to the Dniester front. The counter-offensive on the Stokhod went wrong—at best a few miles forward, for very high losses. 2,000 prisoners were made, and four guns taken; but losses reached 40,000, and the Austrian IV Army, bewildered at the experience of advancing, was counter-attacked and driven far beyond its starting-point. The offensive was switched from the northern to the southern side of Kaledin’s salient on 22nd June. It made no difference, even though Austrian groups now came under German commanders. On the Dniester, the Russian advance continued throughout the latter part of June: reserves were too few to stop it. The only thing that saved this area was the supply-difficulty encountered by Lechitski.

In reality, the first wave of reserves, sent in various directions and in packets by Conrad and Falkenhayn, had failed to serve any useful purpose. Marwitz’s counter-attack merely broke up the reserve-forces still more. The way was therefore open for a renewal of Brusilov’s offensive, again along the whole front. The four new corps were put into line, attacking the Styr salient early in July. Between 3rd and 6th July the salient collapsed, the troops of III and VIII Armies being drawn against it—III Army with five army corps, against two. The guns had been well-prepared, the troops trained; the marshes had also dried, and threw up clouds of dust that obscured the defenders’ view. 30,000 prisoners and thirty guns were taken, even German troops’ morale now collapsing. Now the Russians came up against the Stokhod, base of this salient. Two German divisions came to hold the line, and succeeded, with the loss of a bridgehead or two, in achieving this. In the south, there was also a minor repetition of early June. Lechitski’s army drove against VII Army late in June, encountered divisons that counted less than a regiment at half-strength, and captured a series of towns leading to Halicz. A German counter-attack failed, the three reserve divisions (Kraewel) being largely wasted and the Russians being treated even to the unusual spectacle of German troops fleeing, having to be sabred back, by Austrian generals, to their front lines.
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Most of the Bukovina was taken by the Russians, and the southern flank of
Südarmee
turned on the Dniester. Now Falkenhayn could not refuse to send troops—four German divisions were sent to the Dniester front, two Turkish divisons were promised as well. In this period, even the weak Russian XI Army did well, advancing over the Galician border to take Brody in mid-month. The northern flank of
Südarmee
was turned, and that army had to undertake a retreat—such that it stood only thirty miles east of Lwów.

On the other hand, attempts by the Russians to break out on the German part of the front failed. On 2nd July the promised offensive of Evert began, at Baranovitchi. It was a piece of fatalism, not unlike Lake Narotch. Ragoza, the army commander, had prepared an attack on Vilna, for over two months. He was now given two weeks to prepare one instead in the marshy region north of Pinsk. At Baranovitchi, there was some tactical advantage—a German salient, occupied, as it happened, by two Austrian divisions. Otherwise, there was only marsh. There was no time to sap forward, no time for guns to register properly. A huge force of cavalry clogged the supply-lines. Twenty-one and a half infantry, five cavalry divisions were gathered. A thousand guns opened the bombardment, with a thousand rounds each. This was not effective. Two German divisions were brought in as reserves just before the attack began; the bombardment, though lasting for several days, achieved nothing in
particular. A few initial tactical successes came—3,000 prisoners, a few guns, On 4th July one of the two Austrian divisions collapsed, and the line was held by reserve Germans. Then the attack stopped—resumed again with bombardment on 7th July, and again stopped. By 8th July the Russians had lost 80,000 men, the Germans 16,000. Yet this attack had used up more shell than the whole of Brusilov’s front in the first week of his offensive.

With this, efforts to involve the other two fronts came virtually to a stop: troops were now diverted to Brusilov’s front, as the other two commanders parted with troops in order to avoid having to attack again. In the south, Lechitski carried on along the Dniester, to take Halicz in the latter part of July. In East Galicia, there was an advance from one tributary of the Dniester to another. But Brusilov decided that the time had come for a great attack towards Kowel
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—north-east from the Stokhod positions. If he could take Kowel, the German line to the north would be turned, and Evert’s front would be allowed forward. After the fall of the Styr salient, his troops occupied the Stokhod and hoped for great things. Brusilov himself seems to have given up his own methods—preferring to believe that, now that his front had been guaranteed unlimited reinforcement, a direct attack of the battering-ram type should be attempted. He was given control of III Army, the southernmost of Evert’s front. He set VIII Army, as before, to move west against the Austro-Germans; in between, he would have a new force, the Guard Army.