Conscription in the Russian Empire

Transcription

Each of the warring nations on both sides entered the war for different reasons and with different objectives, but so far none of them had come close to their goals. This week however, for the first and only time for nearly the next four years, one of those nations, surprisingly enough the least militarily competent of them all, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, could say, “Mission accomplished”. I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War. When we left off the western front had frozen, the Russians were close to Cracow, the Austrians were stopped by the Serbs, and the British Indian army under General Barrett had taken Basra and was moving in to Mesopotamia. Here’s what happened next. On the Eastern Front the Russians were close to Cracow, the capital of Austrian Poland, but were still opposed by a pretty large force of both Austrian and German forces. Further south, however, this was not the case. The main mountain passes were poorly defended, having been stripped for men to use at Cracow, and by the 29th General Boroevic was facing the very real threat of a Russian offensive through the mountains toward Budapest. There was big disagreement in the Russian high command, though. After the enormous battle of Lodz had stopped the Russians from driving into Germany and they’d been stopped again at Cracow, General Ruzski wanted to pull the Russian forces back to Warsaw, but General Ivanov believed that the Austrians were now too weak to stop them again and Russia should go on the offensive. Whatever they did, though, they had other issues to consider. The White Sea was closed by ice, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea by enemy navies, so Russia was having serious import export troubles. Over the past two months she had recruited just under one and a half MILLION new soldiers, but for the most part these lacked training, weapons, and winter gear. There was also a terrible shortage of other munitions- Russian artillery was down to ten rounds per gun per day. Conrad von Hotzendorf, Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial army and one of the architects of the war, struck right at this time, on December 3rd with his best available troops and German support between Limanowa and Lapanow. Thanks to a huge element of surprise, he managed to push the Russians back 60 kilometers in just four days until Russian reinforcements could arrive and halt the retreat. As an enormous bonus, Conrad’s drive had allowed Boroevic to also go on the offensive in the mountains and gain new and stronger positions. The net result of this was that it foiled Ivanov’s plans to thrust past Cracow and into Germany and destroyed any offensive toward Budapest. This was a real double victory for the Austrians, but it was also the end of something: never again would the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army make a decisive operation under its own initiative, or have a victory that an Austrian leader could entirely claim as his own. After this, any Austrian victories- against Russia or later Italy- would come under German supervision. You know, if you look at Austria’s army compared with the enemy, you really see that Austria had no idea what to do in the long run, [s]because there was never supposed to be any “long run”. Compare the Austrian and Russian armies in July 1914 and December 1914: At the beginning of the war, Russia had 3.5 million men mobilized, down now to two million-ish. Austria had had 3.3 million men mobilized at the outbreak of the war, also down now to around two million, BUT Russia had 10 million men she had yet to conscript, Austria had fewer than 2 million left. And she was at war with Russia. Austria did have a very powerful ally in Germany though, and on December 1st the German High Command- the Kaiser, Chief of Staff Falkenhayn, and Generals von Hindenburg and Ludendorff had a war conference at Posen. The Generals demanded large reinforcements to help Austria and knock Russia out of the war, but Falkenhayn was convinced the war could only be won in the west and then by a political settlement, so he would send no more troops from west to east other than the three divisions he’d already sent. But what of the Austrian troops further south on the Balkan front? Last week the Serbs had managed to stop the Austrian advance, but that only lasted a couple of days, and by the 29th, the Serbian high command, defending on an over-extended front decided to evacuate Belgrade. On December 1st, 1914 the Austro-Hungarian army occupied Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. In July when Austria had declared war on Serbia, the occupation of Belgrade was the only war-making objective, so on December 1st, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for the final time in over 600 years of Habsburg leadership, could say, “mission accomplished”. There were celebrations in Vienna and congratulations from Berlin, and it seemed a given that the war in Serbia would soon be over, and then... and then it all began to fall apart. On December 3rd there was an Austrian parade in the streets of Belgrade, but that same day the Serbs were beating the Austrians at Arandjelovac. France had given Serbia much needed ammunition supplies and in the wake of that surprise victory, the Serbs advanced to find the now over-extended Austrian lines crumbling before them, and by the 4th, General Oskar Potiorek’s imperial army was in retreat. The Austrians had severely underestimated their southern neighbor and were paying the price, but it was sadly the case that many of the monarchs running the show really didn’t have a clue about what was going on. The Archduke Karl, who succeeded Franz Ferdinand as heir to the Imperial Austrian throne, believed that the Russians were finished and the war was basically over. He also believed that the western front didn’t really matter and what did matter was that Austria march on Italy. King George V of England didn’t seem to understand that some of his relatives were the enemy. To him, his cousin Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein was not actually fighting for the Germans, he was only running a POW camp. At least the Kaiser seemed to understand the horrors that he had played a part in unleashing. But the surprising ignorance of some of these leaders is at least in part attributable to the press. I mean, most of the journalists writing about the war did not have a knowledge of military matters and anyhow often wrote things that were pure fantasy. I read in Max Hastings’ book “Catastrophe” that according to the French press, the German crown prince was assassinated August 5th, wounded in France on the 15th, assassinated again the 24th, committed suicide September 4th, apparently resurrected because he was again wounded October 18th, and then declared insane on November 3rd. This was a bit extreme but since many governments refused to provide facts about the war or let war correspondents visit the front, mostly to keep up public morale, when people did discover what was really happening, a huge credibility problem was created and journalists throughout Europe became increasingly skeptical about any official government pronouncements. This would worsen as the war continued. But the news was mostly pretty incredible anyhow. How do you imagine what half a million people on a battlefield looks like, or sounds like when you read about it in the papers anyhow? How do you comprehend tens of thousands of deaths in a single day? Nothing like this had ever happened, certainly not all at once. Let’s look back at this week: the Russian colossus was being pushed back by the Austrians and Germans in the East, aided in large part by confusion and indecision in the Russian High Command. In the Balkans, the Austrians had seemed triumphant, but only days later were on the retreat. The Western Front was frozen into a stalemate but could explode anywhere at any time, more Russians were regrouping in eastern Turkey after their defeat a couple weeks ago, British Indian troops were marching from Basra further inland in Mesopotamia, and German ships were roaming around off of South America. All of that was happening and it was only getting bigger. Hey, here’s another thing that happened this week: on December 1st came the first German aircraft that was equipped with radio. But the big news this week was Austrian news. Austria had wanted this war; Austria had schemed to get this war started; but the Austrian military had proven itself to be incompetent and hundreds of thousands of men from all corners of the Empire had died in mere months because of an obsolete and ridiculously complicated military bureaucracy that pretty much engaged in fantasy warfare. Their reputation abroad was worsened by the fact that much of the army command took pride in the wartime atrocities it committed in little Serbia. But for a few days in early December, Austrians could rejoice, for they had pushed back the Russians and more importantly, had taken the Serbian capital. They were the only warring nation that had achieved its goal. This hurrah would be short lived, though, and it would be the Austrians final real hurrah, and four the next four years the men of the empire would only die and die and die. The attrocities that the Austrians comitted in Serbia were part of our episode from August 28 in which we were also talking about the so called Rape of Belgium, a series of attrocities committed by German troops in Belgium. If you want to find out more about the backgrounds of The Great War or just want to get a glimpse behind the scenes of our show, check out our Facebook Page or follow us on Instagram. See you next week.