Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/953

Rh

gan in turn to attack the flank of the Austrian attack-group, which had gained ground northward as far as Lapanow and Rajbrod. At Limanova, the scene of this flank attack, three dismounted Austrian cavalry divisions had to meet the on- slaught of more than an army corps. At the same time, the centre of the Russian III. Army farther N. assumed the offen- sive again, and threatened at Lapanow, to break the Austrian main body in two. But resistance at Limanova continued till the Austro-Hungarian III. Army, defending the Carpathians with varying fortune, had managed to assemble a group on its left which struck in on the flank of the Russian forces about Limanova (Dec. n). Thereby the battle of Limanova-Lapanow was decided. A last Russian force which was seeking to reach the flank of this Austrian counter-offensive was itself engaged in flank by other forces of the Austrian III. Army, and the Russians withdrew along the whole W. Galician front to R. Dunajec-Krzostek-Krosno-Lisko (Dec. 14-16). A few days later the Russians launched a fresh offensive which in the battle of Jaslo (Dec. 21-25) drove back the inner flanks of the Austrian III. and IV. Armies to the line Zaklicyn on Dunajec-Gorlice UscieRuske-Koniecza, and pressed the front of the former back to some places behind the Carpathian line. Here, and farther E., the operations were entering on the phase known as the Battle of the Carpathians, which will be dealt with later. But from Tilsit, to Gorlice, the campaign of 1914 closed in " stabilization."

At this period, according to Falkenhayn, the combatant strengths on both sides were: 105,000 Germans and 320,000 Russians E. of the lower Vistula (E. Prussian fronts); 525,000 Germans and Austrians and 847,000 Russians between the lower and the Upper Vistula; 525,000 Austrians (including i German division), and 521,000 Russians between the Upper Vistula and the Rumanian frontier. In sum, 1,155,000 Germans and 1,688,- ooo Austrians (of whom 502,000 were German- Austrian).

Acknowledgments are due to General Y. Danilov for certain information as to the Russian plan of campaign and strategic deployment. (C F A )

III. CAMPAIGN or JANUARY-SEPTEMBER, 1915

By the third week of December, 1914, the struggle in the central salient had died down to a trench-warfare contest, in which the remaining energy of the troops was devoted to con- solidating gains or to preventing the opponent from doing so. The situation of Ypres was reproduced in that of the eastern front at the end of the battle of Lowicz. But there was the important difference that on both flanks there was still room to manoeuvre. On the N. flank, the region of Plock, Mlava and Myszyniec was open, and the Russian army's position, in front of the Angerapp and the lakes, reached for the third time as the result of the battle of Rominten Heath (Nov. 13-16), rested its flanks on no very secure obstacles. On the S. flank, the line was continuous from Cracow to the Carpathians, but thence eastward the position was fluid. The Grand Duke, therefore, determined to assert his offensive will and power, and, confiding in the hardiness of his men, for whom winter was less terrible than for the enemy, began to group his forces with greater density on the flanks. The first signs of this tendency appeared in the counter-stroke of Jaslo, which nullified the reverse of Limanova-Lapanow and initiated the battles of the Carpa- thians. The second consequence was the reenforcement of the X. Army, and the re-formation, under a new army staff (XII.), of an offensive mass on the Narew.

At the outset, in the latter part of Dec. 1914, this new policy seems to have aimed at tactical results only, but in Jan. the offensives maturing on the outer flanks became evidently stra- tegic. Interpreting the experience of the previous campaigns, the Russian headquarters could see not only the insecurity of their northern corridor, which must continue until E. Prussia had been cleared to the Vistula, and the similar but lesser risk to their left flank, but could also judge that the conquest of E. Prussia and the invasion of Hungary would be very heavy blows to the heart of the war-sentiment in Germany and Aus-

tria-Hungary. Reinforcements were constantly coming in, and it seemed that what the Russian headquarters chose to adopt as their plan they could impose upon the enemy. One factor, however, was already causing anxiety, that of munitions. Although the ammunition expenditure on the eastern front was on a much lower scale, both then and thereafter, than that in the W., yet even so it was far greater than had been foreseen; and Russia, with her low industrial development and her diffi- culties in communication with the outer world, was less 'well equipped than either her allies or her two opponents to meet the strain. Later, the shortage was to become disastrous and tragic; at present it was an additional argument for transferring operations to those parts of the line where trench warfare had not set in. It was not regarded as a reason for suspending the offensive, but rather for choosing for it those areas where con- ditions favoured human manceuvring-power.

On the other side, the problem of 1915 was, like those of 1914, viewed differently by the three men concerned, Falkenhayn, Conrad and Ludendorff. The first named, after a moment of enthusiasm in the Lodz period, had returned to his normal method of conducting the war as a war of endurance, with lim- itations on particular acts of it. One of those limitations in the present instance was the necessity sooner or later of opening a way to Turkey by seizing at least part of Serbia. Another, and the principal, was the necessity of holding firm on the western front. German strategy was now paying the penalty for ha.ving doubled its fighting front there by bringing in Belgian territory. Throughout 1915, the year in which Russia was the principal theatre, just as in 1914 when it was only secondary, we find Falkenhayn working with extremely narrow margins of free strength. At a time when Germany alone possessed some 160 to 170 divisions, the adoption or rejection of operative schemes of the highest importance was made to depend on availability or otherwise of four, six or ten of them. Yet there was no remedy for this, short of a considerable surrender of occupied territory in the W. ; and in the war of endurance, as conceived by the Falken- hayn school, occupied territory is an asset not to be sacrificed for the sake of a showy, but indecisive, tactical victory. The principle of working from situation to situation was, with Falken- hayn, fundamental, and in the winter of 1914-5 his projects in the east did not go beyond the formation of a German " South Army " under General von Linsingen to aid the Austrians in the Carpathian struggle. In this the motive was direct stiffening and not manoeuvre in fact, only half of this army (4 divi- sions) was German. To find these divisions, the German chief had to postpone sine die his Serbian project, to which he attached very great importance; but the condition of the Austro-Hunga- rian army in the bitter winter fighting of the Carpathians left him no alternative, especially as the prevention of a Russian break-through into Hungary was a condition precedent of any Danube operation.

Conrad von Hotzendorff, for his part, was sanguine as ever, and the plight of Przemysl undergoing its second and more terrible siege continually spurred him to activity. While meeting, with local counter-offensives, the growing Russian pressure on the Carpathian front, he proposed, first an offensive in the centre of the Polish salient on Radom (scarcely a promis- ing direction), and then a resumption of the old scheme of an Austrian and Prussian rendezvous near Siedlce. Neither was accepted by Falkenhayn, and Conrad then proposed the direct relief of Przemysl by means of a great offensive from the Carpa- thian line. It was for this offensive and this purpose that the German South Army was formed and, later, Bohm Ermolli's II. Army brought back from Poland. Substantially, then, Conrad, unlike Falkenhayn, was eager for battle as such. But, like Falkenhayn, he had no manceuvre in the true sense of the word to propose, that was in the given conditions practicable and worth the supreme effort.

At Field-Marshal von Hindenburg's headquarters, on the other hand, the idea of manceuvre was always uppermost. Its basis was the fixed conviction that it was possible not merely to lame but to destroy Russia's fighting power on the field of battle.