September 4th 1914
After a month of fighting, the nations of Europe now all knew that this was a new type
of war, with carnage on a scale never before seen, but the technology and logistics of
modern warfare also brought with it a whole slew of unforeseen problems, especially as
the war was about to go global and truly become a world war.
I’m Indy Neidell and this is the Great War.
Here’s how the war looked at the beginning of the week:
A Russian army had been spectacularly destroyed by the Germans at Tannenberg. The British
and French were retreating to regroup around Paris, the Germans on their heels, and the
whole world was now talking about tales of German and Austrian executions of civilians
in occupied territories.
Traditional war had always had its fair share of difficulties, right? Transportation, supplies,
and communications always seem to go wrong, and World War One was no exception, but we
begin to see that almost anything could screw up the best-laid plans on an extraordinary
scale. Let’s look at the war in the east:
The Russian army may have just suffered a catastrophic defeat against Germany, but they
were doing a lot better against Austria-Hungary. The Russians outnumbered the Empire roughly
750,000 to 500,000 in troops and had an even greater advantage in machine guns and artillery.
Austria-Hungary had won two quick victories over the Russians, but it was all downhill
from there. Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf was over-confident, and he
had a complicated plan to let the Russians in the south advance and then swing round
them in the north. Hotzendorf was one of the major Austrian war hawks, dreaming of a glorious
empire that stretched down to Africa and even to the Middle East, but in practical terms
he was a terrible general.
He sort of ignored the fact that the Russians were heavily reinforcing
in the north, and by September 1st they began to bear down on Conrad with close to twice
as many men as the Austrians had. Russia took Lemberg- one of the largest cities of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire- on September 3rd and Austria was forced to retreat to the Carpathian
foothills.
So far this war, Austria-Hungary had been in a constant state of disaster, partly because
of overstretch and partly because of incompetence. This wouldn’t change, but there were also
totally unforeseen problems- chronic language difficulties being a big one. The Austrian
army had soldiers from all the many nations of its empire, Hungarians, Czech, Bosnians,you
name it, and troops from one region would repeatedly attack others of its own army,
mistaking them for Russians because of their unfamiliar language. And the Slavic troops
would simply desert at times because of being made to fight other Slavs, and sometimes even
join the Russian army.
There were also the huge open spaces of eastern Europe- units would become lost, sometimes
for days, and just finding the enemy was a daunting task.
Russia had problems of its own, though- although it had an endless supply of men, it could
only afford to feed and clothe a fraction of them in an army, so you could avoid the
draft for a variety of reasons. Like if you were the family’s main breadwinner. So in
early August, for example, two million Russians suddenly got married, which would be funny
if the ones who went to war weren’t all dying.
The problems of modern warfare were also being felt in the west, but in different ways.
The Franco-British retreat had started. British Commander John French was considering retreating
beyond Paris, though, and when he learned that the last Belgian fortress had fallen
to the Germans, he thought of abandoning the whole thing and retreating all the way to
St. Nazaire, on the Atlantic Coast. Seriously. He had nothing but disdain for his allies,
especially his opposite number French General Lanzerac. Commander French said that the French
army was the sort of people that he did not wish to continue fighting with... which is
insane! They were at war!
But the retreat was really well managed. No big guns were captured and there was never
any threat of being surrounded. Part of this was that the French Army now had a huge advantage-
the French railway system. They could move around troops lots faster than the Germans
could follow on foot.
And follow on foot they often had to do. The automobile was still a fairly new creation,
and most of the thousands of German trucks used broke down this month. The Belgians had,
of course, sabotaged their own railways. It would take weeks for the Germans to get them
in order again.
The Germans had problems not only with their cars, but also big ones with their horses,
which by this point were dropping dead on the roadside from hunger and exhaustion, but
were needed to haul the dreaded German guns.
The German armies were following the sweep of the Schlieffen Plan, but on September 2nd
this changed. Instead of going to the west of Paris, they were now diverted to head east
of it. This was because of good defense. One German army was stopped by Lanzerac at Guise
and forced to head southeast, and the other had faced strong British resistance the whole
way and the sweep was abandoned.
Lanzerac was a very cautious general, and though he was repeatedly ordered by his superiors
to counterattack during the retreat, he wouldn’t, saying he wanted to wait until open ground
to use his artillery. Eventually, even with Lanzerac’s success stopping the German advance,
he was removed from command for being too cautious.
British Commander French was happy when Lanzerac was relieved of command, but he was far from
happy when Lord Kitchener, British Secretary of State for War himself, had arrived in full
Field Marshall dress uniform at the end of August to meet directly with French and tell
him to damn well work together with his allies, and not simply retreat to safety. The British
remained near Paris.
The Schlieffen Plan as it was conceived might have been successful if Moltke hadn’t diverted
so many of his troops away- he had pulled away troops to fight the Russians, troops
for Antwerp, for the fortress of Namur... but that’s war, so as the armies neared
Paris, the German armies were now reduced in size to below that of the French and British
and they were much lower in ammunition.
You can see that this was a bed of roses for nobody at all, and something else we start
to see around now: this was now no longer a European land war, but was becoming an actual
world war on both land and sea.
Japan and Britain had had an alliance since 1902, and in mid August Japan demanded Germany
withdraw her warships from Chinese and Japanese waters and hand over the port of Tsingtao.
On August 23rd, Japan declared war on Germany.The Japanese landed 23,000 troops beginning September
2nd for the siege of Tsingtao, which would last all autumn. Kaiser Wilhelm said, “it
would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians.”
He said a lot of stuff like that.
New Zealand had its first engagement of the war, occupying German Samoa on August 29th
to take the radio station there, one of several stations the Germans had in the Pacific. The
occupation took place without fighting, but it brought the war to the Pacific. This was
not the first seizure of a German colony during the war, though, Togo having surrendered to
the British and French three days earlier.
And for Britain on her home islands this was a dangerous time. Since the entire professional
army had been sent to Belgium, and Germany had plenty of troops available to land in
the east of England, there was a prospect of invasion, and with a bit of luck an invading
force might elude the Royal Navy, but on August 28th, at Heligoland, three German cruisers
were destroyed by the British without a ship sunk, ending the threat. This was the first
real naval engagement of the war, and as you all know, it was very far from the last.
So now we have an actual world war on three continents, which brings with it all of the
new problems of modern warfare, and though many of them are still connected with transportation,
communication, supplies, and even language, they’re on a scale like never before, and
just as all problems in war cost lives, we’ll see millions die as nations try to get a grip
on 20th century warfare. We will see you next week.
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