IV. RUSSIAN FRONT, 1916-17
Operations in Russia and East Galicia, igi6 and 1917. About the end of 1915 and the beginning of 1916 the rival belligerents in the World War were confronted with the necessity of making vital decisions. For the Central Powers and their allies the past months had been rich in results. In the Balkan Peninsula Bulgaria's entry into the alliance, and the conquest of Serbia and Macedonia, had opened the way to Constantinople and Asia Minor. The Allied army in the East had tried in vain at Salonika to bring about a change in the state of affairs. The Entente troops had been withdrawn from Gallipoli. Even the bloody battle in East Galicia and on the Bessarabian frontier at the New Year had had no effect upon the general situation. Against Italy, and in the French theatre of war, the armies of the Central Powers had successfully maintained their position.
The chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Gen. Conrad von Hotzendorff , proposed to clear up the situation in the Balkans as far as possible. Rumania must be forced to give up her ambiguous attitude by an ultimatum, supported by the presence in South Hungary of a powerful force of troops. Montenegro and at least the north and centre of Albania must be occupied by the Central Powers. These measures having been taken, an offensive, prepared in the meantime, on Salonika would end the campaign in the Balkans. But the chief of the German General Staff, Gen. von Falkenhayn, had since late autumn, 1915, remained with his plans in the West in the French theatre of war. He pronounced against an offensive at Salonika on sev- eral grounds, and his view of the political, military and technical difficulties of such an undertaking could not be waived aside. The German Gen. von Seeckt also upheld Falkenhayn in this, on the strength of a conference with the Bulgarian Army Com- mand. While the plan of an attack on Salonika was rejected in this manner, pressure on Rumania was now likewise deemed unnecessary, since the military successes of the Central Powers had meanwhile caused a more conciliatory attitude at Bucharest.
As regards the Austro-Hungarian Army Command's plans for dealing with Montenegro and Albania, Falkenhayn tried to postpone these indefinitely. But Conrad clung to his point and carried out his intentions, more or less against the will of his German colleagues, whereupon a most acute personal quarrel broke out between the two generals, lasting nearly a month.
This quarrel, in the course of which Gen. Conrad had the satisfaction of seeing his troops take the Lovchen (Lovcen) and subdue Montenegro, obviously laid no promising foundation for their common decisions in the future.
The idea of bringing about a decision in the war by a cam- paign against Kiev or Odessa in the spring of 1916 seems to have engaged political rather than military circles in Vienna and Berlin. In the latter the Russian operations in 1915 only strengthened the old conviction that the Russian armies thanks to the illimitable area of operations and the skill of the Russian leaders in retreat would always slip their heads out of the noose again, and that any further advance of the Central Powers towards the east could only result in an inconvenient extension of the front. The war, according to the view of both the General Staffs, could only be won against the western opponents. Conrad proposed a combined offensive against Italy. An annihilating blow delivered against this enemy would have been not only in accord with his personal feelings and those of his armies, but was worthy of consideration on many other important grounds. The tension on the Italian front was increased for the Austro-Hungarians by every new defensive battle; the Italian menace to Trieste became more intolerable week by week. On the other hand, Italy was easier to over- throw than France or England, for that matter; and, as often before in history, the fate of the Rhine might be decided in the plain of the Po. Falkenhayn did not refute these arguments; but he was doubtful whether, in the first place, it would be possible to force Italy to break with the Entente, in view of her dependence on England, and, in the second, whether even if, contrary to expectations, Italy's overthrow should be brought about, the Western Powers would take the loss of this Ally so
very much to heart. Falkenhayn was convinced that the decisive campaign could be fought only in the French theatre of war. Conrad held to the other solution, but declared himself willing to place a few particularly good fighting corps at the disposal of the German Higher Command for use in France. This offer was declined by Falkenhayn both on military grounds and as a matter of prestige. He proposed as an alternative that his allies should take over, in addition to the 400 km. of front which they were defending between the Bessarabian Pruth and the Pripet (Prypec) against the Russians, a further portion of the Lithuanian front stretching towards the north. In this way it would become possible to set free more German troops for the attack on Verdun. But Gen. Conrad could not bring him- self to accept this purely passive role, and the result of this difference of opinion was that the two empires of central Europe divided their forces, the one proceeding to the attack in France, the other to the Venetian mountains.
The Eastern Front in March igi6. For the execution of these attacks, forces that had been set free in the Balkans were brought up and others from the Russian theatre. The German eastern troops were, between Oct. 1915 and Feb. 1916, reduced from 56 to 45 or 47 inf. divs., not to mention the exchange of other fighting troops for less serviceable units. Heavy artillery and technical supplies were also withdrawn and sent to France, but these could be adequately replaced, thanks to the mechanical power of German industry.
The Austro-Hungarian eastern front in March 1916 was so organized as to have 6 divs. less than at the close of the fruitless October campaign in 1915- To balance this, however, a series of regts. and batts. were brought up from other divs., so that the Austro-Hungarian eastern armies gave up, in all, 1 20 batts. for the attack on Italy. The drafts for the infantry in this fighting force were supplied mostly from home at regular intervals, the drafting reserve being overfilled owing to the slight losses entailed by the war of positions. Out of this superfluity of men the regts. formed 5th and 6th Batts. Thus there could be no question of numerical weakening on the Austro-Hungarian eastern front. Far more heavily weighed the fact that the best and most reliable troops had been picked for the Italian attack, including nearly all the German-Austrians and a great propor- tion of the Magyars. The eastern armies were seriously weak- ened thereby on the moral side; and the militia-like character, which the Austro-Hungarian army had begun to take on in the Carpathian battles in the spring of 1915, now became particu- larly apparent in the east. Still more severely felt was the withdrawal of the whole of the heaviest artillery, and a consider- able portion of the medium-heavy, to the Italian theatre, and the considerably smaller share of technical supplies which had been assigned to the eastern front when these were divided.
In the beginning of March there were about 40 Austro-Hun- garian and 46 German divs. on the Russian front. Of -these, 42 German and 2 Austro-Hungarian held the front (Pinsk) between Riga and the Pripet and were under the German Higher Com- mand; the other half of the fighting forces, in the south portion of the front, was under the orders of the Austro-Hungarian Army Higher Command (Teschen). Each section had a breadth of 400 km. The Austro-Hungarian divs. were on an average 14 batts. strong, the Germans only nine. The inferior rifle-shooting of the Germans was abundantly compensated by -their superior equipment in artillery and fighting material of all sorts. The entire rifle strength of the forces of the Central Powers on this front amounted at this time to rather more than a million. It would be safe to estimate the Russian front at double that strength. The Russian Higher Command, controlled since au- tumn 1915 nominally by the Tsar but actually by his chief-of- staff, Gen. Alexeiev, could draw on its drafting reserve to the fullest extent. In the spring of 1916 the regiments, in spite of the gigantic losses suffered in the last campaign, had been replenished for some time. Immediately behind the army front were enormous masses of reserves, and all the recruiting depots were full. Half of the world's munition factories were straining to supply equipment for the Tsar's armies. A number of En-
