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VICTORY on the Marne and disaster at Tannenberg tended to dim the result of a third great battle fought in the opening weeks of war. Even as Rennenkampf’s Cossacks rode through East Prussian barnyards, the main mass of the Austro-Hungarian army, one million strong, launched itself north from Galicia intending to amputate Poland from Russia. Within less than three weeks, the Russians had stopped and smashed these invaders. Four Austro- Hungarian armies were routed, two hundred thousand prisoners and Lemberg, the capital of the province, were taken, and Russian cavalry crossed the Carpathians to ride out onto the great Danube plain toward Budapest and Vienna. In terror, hinting that it might be forced to a separate peace, the Austrian government appealed to Berlin for help.
The German General Staff ordered Hindenburg to rush reinforcements. On September 14, 1914, two German army corps headed south from East Prussia; four days later, Hindenburg raised the rescue force by two additional army corps and a cavalry division. Even this help might not have been enough if the Russian offensive had not suddenly halted of its own accord. The source of this command—inexplicable and keenly frustrating to front-line generals who sensed a chance to knock Austria-Hungary out of the war—was Paris. On September 14, Paleologue received a telegram from his government. “It instructs me to impress on the Russian government that it is essential for the Russian armies to press home their direct offensive against Germany,” he wrote. “[We are] afraid that our Allies may have had their heads turned by their relatively easy successes in Galicia and may neglect the German front in order to concentrate on forcing their way to Vienna.” On the Tsar’s command, to accommodate the wishes of his ally, the triumphant Russians began receding from the Carpathians. Two of the four Russian armies in Galicia were shifted north to begin a fruitless attack on German Silesia. Again, Russia had made a gallant and expensive gesture toward her hard-pressed ally. But it represented a gross violation of sound military strategy as nicely expressed by the old Russian proverb: “If you chase two hares, you won’t catch either.” Russia’s chance to crush Austria-Hungary at the outset was lost.
In the early battles of 1914, the Russians learned that the Austrians were a far weaker foe than the Germans. Fighting Austrians soon came to be considered almost unworthy by Russian officers. Knox discovered this feeling among twenty young subalterns just posted from artillery school: “The poor boys were keen as mustard and told me that their one fear was lest they might be employed till the end of the war against the Austrians and never have a dash at the Prussians.”
The Russians also discovered on every battlefield that dash and bravery were not enough. The Russian cavalry, carrying long lances and swinging sabers, rode exuberantly to meet the Prussian Uhlans and Austrian Hussars. The Russian infantry, wielding vicious four-edged bayonets, willingly attacked whatever positions their officers indicated. But where those positions were defended by superior artillery and plentiful machine guns, the charging Russian ranks were scythed like rows of wheat. By the end of 1914, after only five months of war, one million Russians—one quarter of the army—had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
Among the officers, the ratio of loss was far higher. Unlike German and Austrian officers, who took sensible precautions, Russian officers considered it cowardly to take cover. Attacking in the face of murderous enemy fire, the officers made their men crawl forward on the ground while they themselves stood erect and walked into the enemy bullets. The famous Preobrajensky Guard Regiment lost 48 of its 70 officers; the 18th Division had only 40 of its original 370 officers. “These people play at war,” said Knox sadly.
To make good these losses, three thousand military cadets were commissioned early and sent to the front. Fifteen thousand university students, originally deferred from military service, were ordered to take four months of military training and become lieutenants. Orders were given to curb the flamboyant, wasteful bravery of young officers. “Remember what I am going to say to you,” said the Tsar on October 1, 1914, addressing a company of cadets promoted to lieutenant. “I have not the slightest doubt of your courage and bravery, but I need your lives, because useless losses in the officer corps may lead to serious consequences. I am sure that every one of you will give his life willingly when it becomes necessary, but do it only in cases of exceptional emergency. In other words, I am asking you to care for yourselves.”
Despite their sacrifices, the Russians began the war as a gentlemanly undertaking. Captured enemy officers were not questioned; it was considered improper to ask a brother officer to inform on his compatriots. In time, the relentlessness of the German combative spirit was to alter these generous feelings. One German officer, being carried wounded from the battlefield, drew his revolver and shot his stretcher bearers. Later, the Tsar was to write, “We take no prisoners where the enemy uses explosive bullets.”
Much of the power and resilience of the Russian army lay in its religious faith. Knox was enormously impressed by the simple, unquestioning belief, permeating all ranks, that prayer would lead to victory. In an underground hut near the front, he once listened to a Russian general discussing tactics with a group of Russian officers. “Then,” wrote Knox, “in the simplest possible way, without any hypocritical flourish … he added, ‘You must always remember, too, the value of prayer—with prayer you can do anything.’ So sudden a transition from professional technicalities to simple primary truths seemed incongruous, and gave me almost a shock, but was taken quite naturally by the officers crowding around, with serious, bearded faces, in the little dugout. This religious belief is a power in the Russian army.”
Knox watched a regiment of veterans drawn up on parade. Near the front, “The General … thanked them in the name of the Emperor and the country for their gallant service.… It was touching to see how the men were moved by his simple words of praise.… The latter leaned over and chucked men here and there under the chin as he rode along. ‘Poor fellows,’ he said as we drove away, ‘they are ready to give their lives for a smile.’ ”
The difference that faith could make was demonstrated on every battlefront. At Easter in 1916, a German attack was launched near the Baltic. At five a.m., German artillery began pounding the Russian trenches cut into the marshy ground. At the same time, the Germans released gas into the Russian lines. The Russians, lacking both gas masks and steel helmets, endured. After each hour of bombardment, the German artillery paused to learn the effect on the Russian trenches. Always, there was a resumption of rifle fire from the Russians, followed by a new German bombardment. After five hours of this devastation, Russian battalions of 500 men were reduced to 90 or 100. Yet when the German infantry finally advanced, it was met by a Russian bayonet charge. In all that day, the Russians gave up only a mile and half of front. That night, from within the Russian lines the Germans heard the sound of hundreds of men singing the Easter hymn, “Christ is risen from the dead, conquering death by death.”
Despite the huge losses of the previous autumn, the coming of spring 1915 found the Russian army again ready for battle. Its strength, down to 2,000,000 men in December 1914, had swollen to 4,200,000 as new drafts of recruits arrived at the front. In March, the Russians attacked, hurling themselves again on the Austrians in Galicia. They had immediate, brilliant success. Przemysl, the strongest fortress in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fell on March 19 with 120,000 prisoners and 900 guns. “Nikolasha [Grand Duke Nicholas] came running into my carriage out of breath and with tears in his eyes and told me,” wrote Nicholas. A
Once again, waves of Russian infantry and horsemen rolled exultantly up to the Carpathians. The peaks, craggy and thickly forested, were desperately defended by crack Hungarian regiments. Because of their pitiful lack of heavy artillery and ammunition, the Russians were unable to bombard the heights before their attacks. Instead, each hill, each ridge, each crest had to be stormed by bayonet. Advancing with what Ludendorff described as “supreme contempt for death,” the Russian infantry swept upward, leaving the hillsides soaked with blood. By mid-April, the Carpathian passes were in Russian hands and General Brusilov’s Eighth Army was descending onto the Danubian plain. Again Vienna trembled; again there was talk of a separate peace. On April 26, 1915, convinced that the Hapsburg empire was collapsing, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary.
It was at this moment that Hindenburg and Ludendorff let fall on Russia the monster blow which for months they had been preparing. Having failed to destroy France in 1914, the German General Staff had selected 1915 as the year to drive Russia out of the war. Through March and April, while the Russians devastated the Austrians in
