Your country has just been shaken by revolution, but you wish to fight back.
But the army isn’t there, the navy that is there has joined the revolution, so what
do you do?
In Russia, you send in the teenagers.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week saw the second Russian Revolution of the year, as the Bolsheviks took control
of Petrograd.
The British army advanced in Palestine, the Germans and Austrians in Italy, and the Canadians
took Passchendaele in Belgium.
Here’s what followed.
The Italians had retreated and regrouped behind the Piave River.
Now, that river begins in the Carnic Mountains, flows east of the Dolomites and the Asiago
Plateau and then into the Adriatic around 35 km from Venice.
In some places, it’s more than 1.5km wide.
The Italian 3rd Army, led by the Duke of Aosta, was in good order still.
The 2nd army, though, had pretty much ceased to exist the past two weeks; it’s men becoming
either casualties, prisoners, or deserters.
And just about all of its equipment was now in the hands of the Austro-Hungarian army.
The 1st and 4th Italian armies were still in reasonable shape, and though the Austrians
made huge efforts this week to force the Piave Lines and take Venice, the Italians held,
and Allied reinforcements were arriving daily.
This battle - the Battle of Caporetto - will not be officially over for over another few
days, but in the book “Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign”, the final Italian numbers
ended up like this: 280,000 men were taken prisoners and another 350,000 deserted their
posts.
However, the casualty numbers are far smaller - 30,000 wounded and 10,000 killed - this
is because they were routed and fled, they weren’t fighting for the most part.
They also lost over 3,000 artillery pieces and 3,000 machine guns.
There were also now 400,000 refugees from the lost territory.
However, you might not think it, but the morale of the Italian people and army actually ROSE
after Caporetto, according to author John McDonald, as the Italians were now fighting
for their homeland, and not for conquest, and the new army Chief of Staff Armando Diaz
proved far more popular than his predecessor Luigi Cadorna.
One advance that continued this week, though, was the British advance in Palestine.
On the 10th, they occupied Medschdel.
On the 11th, new Ottoman defense lines were organized for Jerusalem and Hebron.
On the 14th, the British reach the Jerusalem railway.
On the 16th, New Zealand forces enter Jaffa, it will fall the following day (Gilbert).
Now, the British War Cabinet was a bit leery when receiving almost daily telegrams about
advances; they warned General Edmund Allenby not to outpace his supply lines and end up
in the same disaster that happened at Kut after the advance on Baghdad.
Still, by week’s end, ANZAC troops occupied Ramleh and Lydda.
Lydda had been the crusader town St. George de Lydde, which was the home of St. George
the dragon slayer that the British had brought home as their patron saint hundreds of years
before (Gilbert).
Another British army campaign was ending this week, though, the Battle of Passchendaele.
It ended the 10th as the Canadians consolidated the ground they took last week.
There are different estimates of the casualties in various sources, but Martin Gilbert says
that since the battle began July 31st, Allied forces had gained 7km of ground with 62,000
dead and another 164,000 injured.
The Germans had 83,000 dead and as many as 250,000 wounded.
They’d also lost 26,000 men captured.
The British Official History has the German losses as being near 400,000, but many historians
think that is a big overestimation, but at a minimum, you’re looking at half a million
casualties total for both sides in just over three months.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said to the Supreme war Council, “We have
won great victories.
When I look at the appalling casualty lists, I sometimes wish it had not been necessary
to win so many.”
But his enemies were far from finished, and were making battle plans of their own.
This week, on the 11th, German army Chief of Staff Paul von Hindenburg decided to launch
an all or nothing offensive in the west in the coming year.
This was based on what you could call Bruchmüller’s verified experiment.
At Riga, just recently, Bruchmüller’s artillery had fired without preliminary registration
fire, relying on mathematical aiming, and thus, not giving away their own positions
until the moment of attack, and had created a breakthrough opportunity for the infantry
assault to exploit.
The guns could even be pre-registered beforehand at specially constructed firing ranges, “...producing
data of each gun’s variance from a theoretical norm which, when combined with detailed meteorological
allowance for barometric pressure and wind speed and direction, would insure, as far
as was humanly possible, that all would hit their designated targets, whether enemy trenches
or battery positions.”
(Keegan) They would also mix explosive shells with a variety of gas shells - tear gas, asphyxiating
phosgene gas - that in combination would defeat the enemy gas masks, since tear gas and other
lachrymatory gases was designed to make you take off your gas mask in a reflex action.
The plans would develop all winter.
And a developing story right now was Russia’s October Revolution.
Now, as the week began, ousted Prime Minister and Minister of War Alexander Kerensky had
not been seen for a couple of days, but rumors began to circulate that he was on his way
to Petrograd with the Cossacks and would be there by the 11th to take back the city from
the Bolsheviks.
Moderates on the left had established a “Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution”
to rally the anti-Bolshevik forces and ensure that a legitimate government would be voted
into power by the Constituent Assembly promised for November.
Encouraged by the prospect of Kerensky’s arrival, they called on the officer cadets
to act.
The cadets, just 15 and 16 years old, seized several buildings on the 11th, and engaged
in skirmishes with Red Guards throughout the city and were soon under siege at two of their
bases, the Alexandrovsky Military Academy and the Vladimirsky Military School.
At Vladimirsky the Red Guards brought up field guns and blew holes in the building until
the cadets raised a white flag.
Some of the cadets were beaten and bayoneted to death, but most were taken away as prisoners.
The building was nearly reduced to rubble.
At Alexandrovsky, some cadets hid in the huge woodpiles out front, stacked up for winter.
“Routed out, they climbed to the top and fired into the ranks of the Bolsheviks in
a last desperate attempt to check their advance.
Hopelessly outnumbered, they fought on until their ammunition gave out, then stood... waiting
for death.
It was horrible to watch the Bolsheviks playing with them as a cat plays with a mouse, prolonging
the moment of suspense, carefully singling out their living targets, till they had shot
them all down, one by one.”
That was written by Countess Nositz.
Apparently, the bodies remained there for days.
Now, those inside the academy surrendered, but many had their hands tied and were then
executed from behind.
For the next few days, any cadets found on the streets were murdered by Kronstadt Sailors
and Red Guards.
And where was Kerensky in all this?
Well, he had rallied support from 18 companies of Cossacks under General Krasnov, yes, and
marched on Tsarskoe Selo, yes, but Krasnov pulled back rather than sacrifice 1,200 men
to the 50,000 odd Bolsheviks being raised against them.
So by the 15th, Kerensky had fled; his departure meant the final fall of the Provisional Government.
And another government fell this week.
In France, that of Prime Minister Paul Painlevé resigned after a vote of no confidence.
Georges Clemenceau will be the new PM.
And the week ends, as does the Battles of Passchendaele and Caporetto.
The British still advance in Palestine, though, and the Bolsheviks begin to consolidate power
in Russia.
I want to say a few words about Passchendaele to end today.
It is remembered by many as a place of murder, where countless men died in a futile battle,
and it’s hard to deny that the gains were not worth the costs, but the thing is - the
objectives of the offensive, to clear the Belgian coast, to put pressure on the Germans
while the French army was in disarray early in the summer, to take the high ground, and
maybe even achieve a breakthrough, were valid objectives, and even though only a few objectives
were achieved isn’t necessarily a reason for not having tried, and of course reducing
the German strength and taking Passchendaele Ridge are certainly plusses.
Had Sir Douglas Haig stopped the offensive after, say, Broodseinde at the beginning of
October, his reputation today would be less damaged, yet Robin Neillands argues in “The
Great War Generals on the Western Front”, that though the battle was begun too late
in the year, though it suffered from delays between its phases, though the troops at times
were seriously unlucky with the weather during their attacks - there were long dry periods
when the offensives succeeded, but the rains seemed to always come at crucial phases for
the British- knowing this all NOW, sure, it’s easy to say that the attack should have been
called off after Broodseinde, but Neillands says, and I quote, “...such a halt would
have left the British armies in an untenable position for the winter, particularly on the
5th Army front where the ground... would soon become a morass.
When you cannot stay where you are, and do not wish to fall back, the only alternative
is to push on - and pushing on would at least kill a lot of Germans.”
If you want to know more about the Hindenburg Line Defense System that was seriously challenged
during the Battle of Passchendaele, check out our episode about it right here.
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