Russia’s army had been badly defeated in Galicia, and the men were in full retreat,
with tens of thousands of deserters.
But what would they find when they reached Russia?
Well, if they reached home now, they’d find chaos and misery.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Central Powers began two offensives in Romania, the Russian army was ever more
chaotic and the political situation at home in Petrograd was deteriorating, and the Allies
continued their huge summer offensive in the oceans of mud in Flanders fields - the Third
Battle of Ypres.
And they continued it again this week.
The action lasted for a couple of days from the 16th.
The French saw success on the northern flank of the sector, and the British attack adjacent
to them gained ground near Langemarck, but the attacks on the Gheluvelt Plateau, the
major objective, failed with heavy casualties.
The Germans knew the strategic importance of the plateau and most of their batteries
were out of sight on its reverse slope.
The heavy casualties, the unending German artillery, and the rains and swampy muddy
ground had seriously eroded British morale.
British General Sir Hugh Gough, in charge of the offensive, said,
(Hart), “The state of the ground was by this time frightful.
The labor of bringing up supplies and ammunition, of moving or firing the guns, which often
sunk up to their axles, was a fearful strain on the officers and men...
When it came time to the advance... across the waterlogged shell holes, movement was
so slow and fatiguing that only the shortest advances could be contemplated...
I informed the commander in chief that tactical success was not possible... and advised that
the attack should be abandoned.
I had many talks with (British Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas) Haig during these days... he
told me that the attack must be continued.”
And further south, some other action on the western front had begun a day earlier.
On the 15th, the Battle of Hill 70 began.
This was the Canadian Corps under Arthur Currie attacking the German 6th Army near Lens in
France.
It was the first major action for by the Canadian Corps under Canadian leadership of the war.
One purpose of this was to pull German troops away from Ypres to make things easier up there.
Currie had been ordered to take the city, which the Germans had held since 1914, but
he reasoned that taking the city while the Germans still held the hill above would put
his men in worse position than they were in already.
The attack had actually been planned to go off in late July, but bad weather had postponed
it, though by this time artillery had taken out 40% of the German batteries.
When the attack finally went off, the Canadians captured many of their objectives right away,
and as the week came to an end they began to secure their hold on Hill 70, with its
commanding view of the region.
Some other Allied forces were also doing well this week, in Romania.
At the Battle of Oltuz.
The Romanians were reinforced on the 11th, and that evening the armored cars and mountain
troops of the Romanian II Corps pushed back the enemy.
On the 12th, they scored a big victory at Ciresoaia Mountain, inflicting heavy casualties
on the Austrians and taking hundreds of prisoners, though the following day on the Oltuz River,
they themselves lost 800 men for little ground.
And the Battle of Marasesti continued elsewhere in the region.
German Field Marshal August von Mackensen crossed the Sereth River the 11th, taking
7,000 prisoners, and through the week had the Russo-Romanian forces retreating in the
Sereth River Valley, though they held their ground in the Suritsa River Valley.
And it seemed that yet another front was about to become active again, the Italian Front.
On August 11th, an Italian air raid on Bainsizza Plateau destroyed the Austrians’ main ammunition
dump there, weakening their artillery support in the region, and that was important because
the Italians were planning something.
The Austrians knew this; for weeks they’d been getting detailed intelligence from Italian
deserters.
Italian army Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna’s plans for what would become the 11th Battle
of the Isonzo River had split objectives.
He had his artillery spread from Tolmin all the way to the Adriatic.
The 2nd Army, under Luigi Capello, was to capture the Bainsizza Plateau.
His attack would for the first time feature Italian shock troops, the Arditi - the daring
ones - and they were drawn from the most physically fit and aggressive of soldiers.
It was they who would spearhead attacks and their first action as units would be the upcoming
battle.
In addition to Capello’s task, the Duke of Aosta was to try again to break through
on the Carso Plateau.
For all of this, Cadorna had put together over 5,000 big guns and 600 battalions of
men.
Opposing him were Austrian General Svetozar Borojevic von Bojna with 2,000 guns and 250
battalions.
They were very much outnumbered, but they were defending home territory that they knew
well and the magnificent Austro-Hungarian engineers had again done miracles repairing
or building fortifications.
But the Italians had something else up their sleeves.
Lieutenant General Enrico Caviglia, in command of the 2nd Army’s XXIV Corps, had chosen
for his attack a 5km stretch between Descia and Logo, north of Plava, right?
This part of the -front had not seen action up until now because any Italians attacking
would have to cross the river under fire from an enemy above the river, and then climb steep
slopes to make their own attack.
Who would do that?
Borojevic thought “nobody”, so - being stretched really thin - he put his weakest
unit in this sector, and was thus ripe for a real surprise.
I said his “weakest” units, but that’s not really true.
It was actually his “most damaged” unit, and it had been a very effective one before
its battles with the Serbs and the Russians.
It was the Czech 21st Rifle Division under Karl Haas, and they had been placed there
for a period of recovery.
And far to the southeast, someone else was planning attacks.
General Edmund Allenby, in charge of the British forces on the Palestine Front, received directions
from the British war Cabinet August 11th.
He was ordered to take advantage of the recent Arab revolt capture of the port of Aqaba and
attack the Ottomans.
“...a good success achieved against them will tend to strengthen the morale and staying
power of this country during a season when important successes in Europe may not be feasible.”
See, they were worried that the collapsing Russian army would suddenly liberate thousands
and thousands of Ottoman soldiers from the Caucasus front to fight in Palestine or Mesopotamia.
It made sense, but the War Cabinet was also relying on Lawrence of Arabia’s assertions
that he could raise the tribesmen in Syria next month to ruin the Ottoman rail network
while Allenby’s troops attacked from the south.
The Ottomans would be trapped in Palestine.
Theoretically, at least, it was a good plan, although the War Cabinet had not given Allenby
enough troops to advance beyond Jerusalem, should he even get that far and take that
city.
And speaking of the collapsing Russian army, things also seemed to be collapsing in Russia
at home.
This week, the former Tsar Nicholas, now just Colonel Romanov, was sent with his family
from Tsarskoe Selo to western Siberia.
While the details of his removal and destination were not revealed to the public at large,
they had bigger things to worry about.
In Petrograd, desperate food shortages continued, and civil unrest was pretty much a daily thing.
Donald Thompson, the war photographer, left Petrograd this week, heading for the United
States.
(Caught in the Revolution), “Five months previously he had seen the people of Petrograd
march with a clearness of intent - for the idealistic revolutionary concept of Liberty,
Fraternity, Equality; but now he could find no more words of hope, “I see Russia going
to hell; as a country never went before.”
Since March, 568 businesses had closed down, laying off over 100,000 workers.
While prices in general had gone up 250% since the beginning of the war, in Moscow they were
now 836% what they had been.
Wages, on the other hand, have fallen by nearly half from their 1914 levels.
In just this month, August 1917, there would be 440 cases of peasants and soldiers seizing
the land from large estates.
It was virtually impossible for the Provisional Kerensky Government to keep up with all the
uprisings, let alone the antiwar activity of the Bolsheviks, and at the end of this
week, a man named Josef Stalin was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks.
And one more note this week, on the 14th, China declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary.
So the week ends, with ever more chaos in Russia, Allied success in France but not so
much in Belgium, success for both sides in Romania, and plans being made in Italy and
the Middle East.
Poor Russia.
From heady optimism at home and success in the field just six weeks ago, they’ve now
gone to an army in full flight on the Eastern Front, and chaos and violence at home.
The Kerensky government was more and more unpopular, and revolutionary activity grew
on the left and the right; nobody knew what the future held.
I’m gonna say something from a 2017 perspective now: once you throw in Josef Stalin, it’s
probably not going to go well.
If you want to know why and how China joined this war, you can click right here for our
China special.
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