army back to the line S. of Zboro-Kurima-Strzopko-S. of Virava- Wola Michowa. At the same time Bohm's forces on the upper San front were compelled to fall back to the starting line of Jan. 23, whence they were withdrawn, in a state of exhaustion, to a line generally behind the mountain crest. The right, still in front of the recaptured Uszok Pass, was transferred to the control of the South Army.
Three weeks longer the battle lasted, but without material change, though both sides were 110,000 to 120,000 stronger in combatants than they had been in January. In the area of the Austrian III. Army two fresh German divisions, grouped as the " Beskiden Corps," arrived to stiffen the defence. In its new positions the Austrian II. Army held its own. The South Army maintained its ground also from N. of the Uszok Pass to Tuchla, and stormed at last the positions of the Zwinin (April g) and Ostry (April 25) and Koziowa. To the E., Pflanzcr-Baltin's right wing and centre, reenforced by German mounted troops, regained its positions on the Dniester and held off a new attack which Lechitzky mounted against its outer flank between Czernowitz and Usciebiskupicc on the Dniester. By April 20, however, the Battle of the Carpathians was at an end, after three months of continuous mountain fighting, in temperatures sometimes as low as -22 deg. F.
The apparent effect of these battles was to give the Russians more secure possession of a bridge-head S. and S.W. of the Dukla Pass which they could not use, and to waste the remaining war- energy of the Austro-Hungarian army in attempting to relieve a fortress which certainly contained fewer men than the number sacrificed in the attempt. But in reality the indirect conse- quences of the battle were of much greater importance than the direct. In the Carpathians, no less than in the Masurian winter battle presently to be described, the Central Powers had managed to snatch the initiative before the Russian offensives had got under way, and thus put back the date and place of those offen- sives so far that the break-through into Hungary proved impos- sible. For the third time the " steam roller " had been brought to a standstill. Moreover it was showing signs of wear. Man- power had been unsparingly expended by the Russian command in its determination to break through; the trained officers and under-officers of peace-time were reduced to a skeleton, and the supply of munitions and even arms was becoming a very grave problem. In the majority of cases, it had been the Russians who attacked and the Austrians who defended the' strong moun- tain and hill positions, and, though specific figures are not known, all the evidence available points to the Russian losses having been far greater than those of the Austrians and Germans. In sum, the Russians needed a pause even more than their opponents.
The Masurian Winter Baltic and the First Battle of Przasnysz. The plan of campaign formed by Ludendorff for E. Prussia, as already mentioned, aimed higher than the simple preventive- offensive for which Falkenhayn had " lent " the four new army corps. His line of reasoning, differing from Falkcnhayn's, was, and remained, this: the war will be decided by military victory in the W. ; but this victory will not be possible till after the definitive defeat of Russia, because the degree of numerical and material superiority required for the double task of breaking through the strong trench-system of the W. and exploiting the break-through in an open-field campaign was not attainable till Germany could devote practically every battle-worthy man and gun she possessed to the western theatre. Meantime, nothing was gained and much lost by using up reserves in repetitions of the battle of Ypres. Whether, in Feb. 1915, the time was ripe for such a blow as Ludendorff contemplated is however more doubt- ful. Both on the Mlava-Myszyniec front and on the E. front of E. Prussia the Russians were well in advance of the natural barriers protecting the northern corridor. Victory W. and N. of those barriers could only lead to a limited exploitation unless the barriers could themselves be carried in the tactical pursuit. Victory on the barriers themselves, on the contrary, would give an unlimited field for strategic exploitation inside them. In the situation of Feb. igis, then, an effort to inflict a completely disastrous defeat on the Russians required two successive efforts,
or successive maxima in a continued effort; hence a double allot- ment of force would have to be made. A large part of the "required divisions could have been found from the army reserves of the central salient, or by thinning the line itself there, had it not been for the formation of the German " South Army," which, raising the number of divisions absorbed in the Austro- Hungarian front from i to 5, left only limited possibilities of drawing on the IX. Army and Woyrsch, for the benefit of the E. Prussian Army, which ever since Nov. had been on a very low footing. Woyrsch and Mackensen were in fact able to provide six free divisions. For the rest, if nothing could be spared from France, the eight new divisions were the only available reen- forcement. Hence Falkenhayn's well-founded scepticism as to the scope of the E. Prussian offensive, and hence also Ludendorff's regret, after the event, at having parted with so much of his local reserves for the bolstering-up of a Carpathian attack.
The secret augmentation of the E. Prussian forces from the figure of 10 divisions (8 of which were Landwehr and Ersatz) in mid-Jan, to that of 24 in the first week of Feb. was itself no small task, and had it not been for a very fierce diversionary attack by the IX. Army at Bolimow, in the angle of Bzura and Rawka, on Jan. 3i-Feb. 2 memorable as the first occasion on which gas-shell were employed on a large scale it is doubtful whether it would have been accomplished, for the assembly had to be made under cover of a thin screen of mounted, troops, and by hypothesis the opponent himself was preparing to attack. The plan itself was comprehensive, and suggests that Ludendorff had not given up hope of being able to extract more divisions from Falkenhayn. It consisted in three main elements: (i) the destruction, by means of breaking through and envelopment combined, of all enemy forces lying between Lyck and Tilsit, (2) the attempt to carry the Bobr line with a rush so as to break into the " corridor " south of Grodno, and (3) an advance on the Mlava-Willenberg front, in conjunction with (2), so as to bind the Russian I. Army while the X. was being destroyed and the Bobr forced.
The German forces were divided into three armies: the VIII. (Otto v. Below) of 7 divisions (including one of the new corps), which, after covering the whole eastern front during the assembly was to form an attack front on its right wing (Johan- nisburg); the X. (v. Eichhorn) of 7\ divisions, including the XXI. active and the other two new Reserve Corps assembled between the Nicmen and the Lakes'/and the Army Group Gall- witz, ten divisions, of which six came from central Poland, holding the southern front from the Orzyc to the lower Vistula.
The scheme of the German offensive, though it was to be car- ried out over much the same ground as the September battle, differed considerably from the plan of that battle. The winter trench-line represented the halt of the Russians after the Romin- ten Heath battle, in front of the Lakes-Angerapp barrier. It ran N. to S. from the Schorellen Forest by Darkehnen, E. of Lotzen to W. of Johannisburg, where it began to curve away to join the southern front. The right wing therefore presented to the Germans better chances of envelopment than Rennen- kampf's right had shown in Sept., and it was on this flank that Ludendorff meant to make the chief effort. But the most signifi- cant difference was that it was now intended to treat the attack on the Russian S. flank as a break-through and not an envelop- ment problem. For this reason, not only was an attack-group formed behind Lake Spirding but von Gallwitz, guarding the S. front, was to occupy the Russians on the Narew and prevent them from assembling large forces against the S. side of the VIII. Army attack. Moreover the attack was to aim at seizing cross- ings of the Bobr at and near Osowiec. Tactical cooperation in the encirclement of the Russian forces north of Lyck was the primary but by no means the principal task of the VIII. Army's attack-group. If the power and speed of the X. Army's blow from the N. proved as great as was ho'ped, the exact position of the anvil on which it crushed the Russians was of secondary im- portance compared with the seizure of Osowiec and the Bobr by brusque attack in the Liege manner. On this, and on the progress made by the XX. Corps (Gallwitz's left) by Myszyniec on
