The World Crisis Read online

  THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH

  The World Crisis

  Part V—The Unknown War

  The Eastern Front

  Winston Churchill

  Copyright

  The World Crisis

  Part V—The Unknown War

  The Eastern Front

  First published 1923–31. © Estate of Winston S. Churchill

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2013 by RosettaBooks, LLC.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Image of Winston Churchill at Stadwald with the Army Council to the Rhine, 1919 reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of The Broadwater Collection, an archive of photographs owned by the Churchill family and held at the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

  Electronic edition published 2013 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795331541

  To

  Our Faithful Allies

  and Comrades

  In the Russian Imperial Armies

  Contents

  Preface

  I. The Dusk of Hapsburg

  II. The Annexation of Bosnia

  III. Towards the Abyss

  IV. The Murder of the Archduke

  V. The Austrian Ultimatum

  VI. The Fronts and the Combatants

  VII. Declarations of War

  VIII. The Mobilization Interval

  IX. The Assembly of the Eastern Armies

  X. Austria Against Russia

  XI. The Battle of Lemberg

  XII. The Invasion of East Prussia

  XIII. The Battle of Tannenberg

  XIV. The First Masurian Lakes

  XV. The Second Round

  XVI. The Battle of Lodz

  XVII. East or West?

  XVIII. The Winter Battle

  XIX. Beyond the Dardanelles

  XX. The Fall of Warsaw

  XXI. The Reckoning with Serbia

  XXII. Falkenhayn Returns to the West

  XXIII. Brusilov’s Offensive

  XXIV. The Russian Collapse

  Appendix I: The Hapsburg Dynasty

  Appendix II: Some Authorities Consulted

  Appendix III: References

  PREFACE

  In the five volumes of the World Crisis and the Aftermath I have told the story of the War from the British standpoint, and particularly from those positions of authority which I held myself. The war at sea, the expedition to the Dardanelles, and the campaigns in France and Flanders filled the stage. It was only here and there that brief summaries of the struggles of Russia with Germany and Austria in the East could find a place. In this new volume the proportions are reversed. The tale both of the events leading to the War and of its battles is told from the Eastern theatre, and only brief, indispensable references are made to British and French affairs. I have attempted to give a general account of the whole War upon the Eastern Front, and the distant cannonade in France breaks only fitfully upon the ear. The primary theme arises in Vienna and covers the agonies of Central Europe. The familiar events in the West are seen only in their reactions upon the Eastern Front.

  Although I had lived and toiled through the war years in positions which gave a wide outlook and the best information, I was surprised to find how dim and often imperfect were the impressions I had sustained of the conflict between Russia and the two Teutonic Empires. It was not until I studied its problems from this new angle that I began to see the tragedy in its completeness. I believe that British and American readers will also find the narrative of these events necessary to a true understanding.

  The sources are abundant. Voluminous histories, memoirs, rejoinders, exculpations and official accounts, some only recently published, are available. Many have not been translated into French. Few have been translated into English. Others are technical, and interest chiefly military students. A whole library exists into which the English-speaking world has scarcely ventured. Yet our own fortunes were powerfully swayed by all that happened in the East, and it is there that we must look for the explanation of many strange and sorry turns in our fortunes.

  I must acknowledge the assistance I have derived from the massive records of Conrad von Hötzendorf, the virtual Austro-Hungarian Commander-in-Chief; from the works of Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Falkenhayn and Hoffmann; from the Russian accounts by Danilov, Gourko and Sukhomlinov; from the successive volumes of the German and Austrian official histories; from the library of the Royal Institute of International Affairs; and from the long series of searching military monographs which have appeared from time to time in the Army Quarterly. I must also pay my tribute to the statement of the causes of the War by Professor Bernadotte E. Schmitt, of Chicago University, who has marshalled in masterly fashion the whole series of official and authentic documents in an impressive array.

  Finally, I am deeply indebted to Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hordern, who for more than a year has assisted me in the assembly and sifting of material with his excellent advice, and in making the necessary translations, and preparing the numerous maps without which the story would be unintelligible.

  A list of some of the authorities consulted or cited will be found in Appendix II. In all cases I have sought to probe the original documents, and have had direct translations made from the German and Russian texts.

  I have striven to make the operations of the Armies plain to the lay reader and to show also, as in previous volumes, what happened and why. Every effort has been made to simplify the terminology. Russian, Polish and Austrian names of men and places in great numbers are an inevitable deterrent to English-speaking readers. But the same difficulty would no doubt recur, if unhappily a great war were ever to be fought in Wales! For convenient brevity the word ‘Austrian’ is nearly always used to cover the Austro-Hungarian Empire. William II is described throughout as the Kaiser, and Francis Joseph as the Emperor. Other abbreviations and symbols will be introduced as the narrative proceeds. It is my hope that in the result the reader who will gaze attentively upon the simple maps and diagrams which illustrate and sustain the text will have at his disposal a continuous and compendious description of these vast and mournful episodes of human destiny.

  CHARTWELL,

  KENT,

  13 August, 1931.

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  The Emperor Francis Joseph

  Field-Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf

  Count Berchtold

  The Tannenberg Celebration, August 24, 1924

  The Czar and the Grand Duke Nicholas at the Front

  Hindenburg, The Kaiser, and Ludendorff

  General von Falkenhayn

  General Brusilov

  TABLE OF MAPS, DIAGRAMS, ETC.

  The Eastern Theatre of War: Principal Distances

  The Assembly of the Armies, August, 1914

  The Assembly before Lemberg, August, 1914

  The Battle of Lodz

  The Caucasus, January, 1915

  The Eastern Front, 1915

  The Serbian Campaign, 1915

  Brusilov’s Offensive, 1916

  The Eastern Front, 1916

  The Eastern Front, 1914–18, general map

  IN TEXT

  The Polish Salient

  The Schlieffen Plan

  Austria-Hungary: Corps Mobilization Areas

  Austrian Mobilization Plans

  Battle of the Jadar

  The Battle of Krasnik

  Plehve’s Wheel

  The Battle of Komarov: Opening Phase

  The
Battle of Komarov: The Envelopment

  The Battles of the Gnila Lipa: August 26–30, 1914

  The Battle of Komarov: Plehve’s Escape

  Conrad’s Plans, Sept. 2, 1914

  Auffenberg’s Situation, Sept. 2, 1914

  From Komarov to Rava Russka

  Situation, Sept. 10, 1914

  Jilinski’s Plans, August, 1914

  Assembly in East Prussia

  The Battle of Gumbinnen

  Prittwitz during the Battle of Gumbinnen

  Prittwitz’s Decision after Gumbinnen

  The Situation in East Prussia on HL’s Arrival

  Russia’s Strategic Alternative

  From Gumbinnen to Tannenberg

  Samsonov’s Advance

  The Situation in East Prussia, August 25, 1914

  Usdau

  Tannenberg: Situation on August 27, 1914

  Tannenberg: Situation on August 29, 1914

  Tannenberg: The Russian Disaster, August 30, 1914

  The Re-grouping after Tannenberg

  The First Battle of the Masurian Lakes

  Effect of the Russian Counter-attack, Sept. 10, 1914

  The Austrian Retreat after Lemberg

  The Race to the Sea

  Falkenhayn’s New Plan: September, 1914

  The Antwerp Operations, October, 1914

  The German Advance in Southern Poland

  Re-grouping of the Russian Armies

  The German Retreat from Southern Poland

  The Transfer of the German Ninth Army

  HL’s Problem, November, 1914

  The Opening in Northern Poland, November, 1914

  Lodz: Scheffer’s Critical Situation

  Serbia, End of August, 1914

  Potiorek’s Advance, November, 1914

  The Austrian Advance to the Kolubara

  The Serbian Counter-Stroke

  The Austrian Retreat from Serbia

  ‘The Crab’: HL’s Strategic Idea, January, 1915

  HL’s Plan for the Winter Battle

  The Feint at Bolimov

  The Winter Battle

  The End of the Winter Battle

  Falkenhayn’s Alternative Plans, 1915

  The Eastern Plan, April, 1915

  The Break-Through at Gorlice-Tarnow

  Rival Plans, July 3, 1915

  The Fall of Novo Georgievsk

  The Armies against Serbia, October, 1915

  The Invasion of Serbia

  NOTE.

  The reference numbers printed against the more important quotations given in the text refer to the list of sources contained in Appendix III.

  CHAPTER I

  THE DUSK OF HAPSBURG

  If for a space we obliterate from our minds the fighting in France and Flanders, the struggle upon the Eastern Front is incomparably the greatest war in history. In its scale, in its slaughter, in the exertions of the combatants, in its military kaleidoscope, it far surpasses by magnitude and intensity all similar human episodes.

  It is also the most mournful conflict of which there is record. All three empires, both sides, victors and vanquished, were ruined. All the Emperors or their successors were slain or deposed. The Houses of Romanov, Hapsburg and Hohenzollern woven over centuries of renown into the texture of Europe were shattered and extirpated. The structure of three mighty organisms built up by generations of patience and valour and representing the traditional groupings of noble branches of the European family, was changed beyond all semblance. These pages recount dazzling victories and defeats stoutly made good. They record the toils, perils, sufferings and passions of millions of men. Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain. Ten million homes awaited the return of the warriors. A hundred cities prepared to acclaim their triumphs. But all were defeated; all were stricken; everything that they had given was given in vain. The hideous injuries they inflicted and bore, the privations they endured, the grand loyalties they exemplified, all were in vain. Nothing was gained by any. They floundered in the mud, they perished in the snowdrifts, they starved in the frost. Those that survived, the veterans of countless battle-days, returned, whether with the laurels of victory or tidings of disaster, to homes engulfed already in catastrophe.

  We may make our pictures of this front from Napoleon’s campaigns. Hard and sombre war; war of winter; bleak and barren regions; long marches forward and back again under heavy burdens; horses dying in the traces; wounded frozen in their own blood; the dead uncounted, unburied; the living pressed again into the mill. Eylau; Aspern; Wagram; Borodino; The Beresina—all the sinister impressions of these names revive, divested of their vivid flash of pomp, and enlarged to a hideous size. Here all Central Europe tore itself to pieces and expired in agony, to rise again, unrecognizable.

  In earlier volumes I have traced the remorseless growth of those antagonisms which in the last quarter of the nineteenth century converted Europe into an armed camp, and into two great systems of alliances upon whose equipoise the peace of the world was uncertainly founded. But this long process was studied and described primarily from the standpoint of the Western powers, and centred upon the abiding quarrel between France and Germany and the attitude of Great Britain thereto. We now re-ascend the streams of history to those sources of the World War which arose in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe. Even if Germany and France had never been rivals and enemies, or if England had never been estranged by Germany, the fountain-heads of wrath in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan States would sooner or later have overflowed in a deluge of war. Without these eastern sources of trouble the mighty Western powers might have long dwelt in the sunshine of peace and progress. It was the fatal confluence of two powerful separate and self-moving sets of antagonisms that alone rendered possible the supreme catastrophe; and it was the course of events in the east that fixed the fatal hour.

  The states and peoples of central and south-eastern Europe lay upon its broad expanses in the confusion left from ancient wars. The old battlefields were cumbered with the bones of bygone warriors, and the flags and trophies of far-off victories, and over them brooded the memories of many a cruel oppression and many a perished cause. In the main the empire of the Hapsburgs and the states of the Balkan Peninsula sate amid the ruins of centuries of struggle with the invading, proselytizing, devastating Turk. Here, long after they had ebbed and ceased in the west, the tides of warlike Islam had finally been dammed. After long-drawn struggles the Danube was liberated. For a while the Ottoman power reigned over the Christian races of the Balkans, and even in its decrepitude held them in a withering grip. One by one, aided mainly by Russia, these fierce races, hammered hard upon the anvil of Turkish misrule, shook themselves free; until finally the Turkish power was broken for ever. Roumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece, relieved from the curse of bondage for five hundred years, stood erect, and gazed upon each other almost immediately with eyes of keen malevolence and rivalry. Each of them remembered that at one time or another the hegemony of the Balkans had been hers; and all began to gather up the tangled, severed threads of their conflicting national histories.

  First among the champions of Christendom stood the empire of the Czars. If Austrian and Hungarian chivalry had stemmed the Turkish invasions, it was Russia who for two centuries had advanced upon Turkey, inspired to the deliverance of kindred races still in bondage, and impelled by other motives towards Constantinople and the warm, open waters of the Mediterranean. The feud between Russia and Turkey was as old and as deadly as that between France and Germany. But whereas Russia, animated by Peter and Catherine and other famous Romanov sovereigns, had waxed continually, the Ottoman power had waned and set. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century the peril and preoccupation of central and eastern Europe was Turkish strength. During the nineteenth its danger was Turkish weakness.

  The final retreat of invading armies, the freeing of virile races and wide domains, the decay and disappearance of a common foe, gradually relaxed or destroyed the
bonds which had long united the races of the Dual Monarchy. The necessities which had induced the Teutons, Czechs, Magyars and Slavs to form a joint empire for security had stood the strain of a succession of disastrous wars and civil wars. As the external enemy faded and died, the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to fall to pieces. Like the liberated states of the Balkans, the four constituent peoples of the Danubian plains began to think again for themselves about their past and their future. Hungary had in revolt and revolution almost torn herself away in 1848. Caught and crushed by Russian armies pouring through the passes of the Carpathians, she was led back captive by the Czar and chained once more to the throne of his brother Emperor. It was upon an orgy of blood and executions that the youthful Francis Joseph entered upon his long and fatal reign. Bohemia in the general resurgence of nationalism which marked the close of the nineteenth century fretted, chafed and struggled in the Austrian net. Perhaps she might have been reconciled if the Dual had become a Triple Crown. But this neither Francis Joseph nor Hungary would concede.

  To the southward the problems of the Empire were even more acute. The southern Slavs lay astride the Imperial frontiers. The core of the race was in Serbia, but large numbers of Slavonic folk dwelt north of the Danube and in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The sentiment and tradition of all the southern Slavs turned towards Serbia as to a magnet, and through Serbia far back across the ages to the once great Serb empire of Stephan Dushan. To revivify those glories and reunite the lands and peoples now sundered, became the persisting ambition of the Serbian people from the moment they had shaken off the Turkish yoke. This hardy warlike stock, ‘the Prussians of the Balkans,’ whose teeth were whetted in centuries of unrecorded ferocious struggles with the Sultan’s troops, respected nothing that stood in their way. Reckless of consequences to themselves or others, fearing naught and enduring all, they pursued their immense design through the terrors and miseries of Armageddon, and have, in fact, achieved their purpose at its close.

  All these disruptive forces were actively and increasingly at work within the Empire in the latter part of the last century. The progress of the western world, the advance of democratic ideas, the imperative necessity for universal education, the adoption of representative and Parliamentary institutions upon a wide franchise, the requirements of compulsory military service, all tended to aggravate the stresses. So long as education was a privilege gained with difficulty by the ardent few, questions of language and history were not disturbing; but when mixed populations and mingled religions took their obligatory seats in millions at the desks, every classroom, every curriculum in every village school became an arena. There was not in the declining Empire any force equal to that which has imposed throughout all innumerable national schools of the United States one single language and one universal secularism. Each race in the Dual Monarchy indulged its separatist tendencies to the full, and reviving ancient, even long-forgotten tongues, used these as weapons in ever-extending hostilities.