For those of you who may have only recently joined us or those of you who watch us faithfully
but need a reminder of what’s gone on before, we’re doing a series of recaps – now every
three months- so you can get a general idea of what you’ve recently missed or forgotten,
and this is one of them.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War Recap special covering the months of August,
September and October 1915.
August began with a great deal of chaos. On the Eastern Front, the Russians had been in
full retreat throughout the summer from the German war machine and were even evacuating
Warsaw and Riga. In the west, the Germans had just introduced flamethrowers, but the
stalemate continued, as it had for nearly a year. Italy was on the move trying for a
second time to break the Austrian defenses at the Isonzo River, in Anatolia the Armenian
Genocide continued, way down south, South Africa annexed German Southwest Africa, and
at sea the German campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare sent tons of civilian ships
to a watery grave.
It wasn’t just flamethrowers that the Germans introduced; from the beginning of August began
the Fokker Scourge, as German synchronization gear gave Germany- for many months- mastery
of the skies. This was gear that allowed the pilot to fire his machine fun between the
propellers, so he could aim the gun just by aiming the plane, and it ushered in the era
of the flying ace, although the first flying ace- someone who shot down five enemy planes-
was Frenchman Adolphe bPégoud. Pégoud would die August 31st when he himself was shot down.
Though on the ground the stalemate in the west continued throughout August without any
major engagements, on the eastern front it was very much in motion.
Warsaw fell to the Germans on August 5th, after a century of Russian control, and as
the month rolled on so did the Germans, taking Ivangorod, Kovno, Brest-Litovsk, Bialystock,
and Grodno fortress. By the end of the month, the Germans had their sights set on Vilna
in Lithuania, and Dvinsk, the gateway to Moscow and Petrograd. In total, on all of its fronts,
1.5 million Russian soldiers had by now been taken prisoner in just one year of war.
Further south, the battle at Gallipoli had been a stalemate for months, but the allies
were really trying.
One of the biggest and most bloody offensives of the whole campaign was the landings and
advance from Suvla Bay, where for a couple of days New Zealander forces had even managed
to take the high ground at Chunuk Bair, from where they could see the straits below them.
They were driven off by Mustafa Kemal and his Turkish forces. Toward the end of the
month the allies would try and fail again, this time at Scimitar Hill. By this time,
though, the allied troops were also being decimated by disease, with hundreds of sick
troops being evacuated every day, and there would be no more large offensives.
The Italian battle at the Isonzo River would end mid month with a tactical Italian victory,
but no real gain of ground, and a loss of 40something thousand men on each side.
And September came on, and the heat of the summer faded.
The German advance in the east continued for most of September, taking Vilna mid month,
and indeed driving the Russians out of Poland and Galicia, but by the end of the month,
as the ground turned to mud, the shrinking Russian front line allowed the Russians to
reinforce and improve their defenses, and the German advance was finally halted, but
the Russian army, now under personal command of the Tsar, was no longer an immediate threat
to the Germans, who could focus more on the Western Front.
And it was indeed dire times for Russia; the summer Austro-German offensives had created
nearly a million and a half casualties over a few months, and Russia’s industrial and
agricultural output was certainly hurt by the loss of Poland. Social unrest at home
grew and grew.
The Western Front exploded into action late in the month, as the British and French launched
offensives at Loos, Artois, and Champagne.
The British would deploy poison gas for the first time, and though they would- for a time-
take their objectives, the stupidity of their leaders in still failing to recognize the
effectiveness of German machine guns, caused devastating British casualties. British Commander
John French would, partly as a result of the carnage at Loos, lose his position and be
replaced by Sir Douglas Haig.
The French, whose offensives sent in greater numbers of troops and lasted until November,
would see greater casualties and would be unable to dislodge the Germans from their
positions more than temporarily.
The Germans finally announced the end of unrestricted submarine warfare; partly because of increasing
American protests following American civilian deaths, and many U-boats would subsequently
be sent to the Mediterranean to wreak havoc there.
In the Middle East, the British advance on Baghdad continued, as at the end of September,
Charles Townshend’s forces took Kut al-Amara.
They set their sights on Ctesiphon and continued marching upriver.
On September 6th, Bulgaria made a deal to join the Central Powers in order to gain land
at Serbia’s expense. The Austro-Hungarian, German, and Bulgarian invasions of Serbia
would come in early October, along with the formal Bulgarian declaration of war.
Serbia had held off Austro-Hungarian invasions three times so far this war, but they are
so greatly outnumbered and outgunned this time, that the end of Serbia is pretty much
a foregone conclusion. Belgrade fell almost immediately and throughout the month the invaders
advanced. French troops landed at Salonika and headed north to help the Serbs, but they
too were woefully outnumbered. Still, the French and Serbian troops bravely mounted
defenses throughout October.
A lot of the October action was in the south, as in addition to the Serbian invasion Italy
tried once again at the Isonzo River. The battle was still in full force as the month
ended, with both sides taking terrible casualties and the Italians unable to take much ground.
At Gallipoli the stalemate continued, though by this time, the new commander Charles Monro
and his superior at home Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener were seriously considering
finally evacuating the men.
And so the autumn dragged on, and fall began to turn to winter, and at the beginning of
November here’s what we see:
The French offensives still grinding out bodies in Artois and Champagne; the Germans still
trying and still failing to advance toward Riga and Dvinsk as the land turns to impenetrable
mud; the Russians harassing the Austrians further south, the Italians trying again and
again at the Isonzo River; the Serbs and French up against gargantuan odds in Serbia as the
Serbian civilian population flees toward the mountains of Albania; more depression and
sickness at Gallipoli, and a British army- with no prospect of reinforcement- marching
up the Tigris River toward Baghdad.
If you want to see any of this, and much much more in detail, you can of course check out
our regular weekly episodes from those three months, but I can even sum it up for a lot
more tightly than I just did: the war grows bigger, more countries enter, new offensives
break out all the time all over the world, the weapons get more and more terrible and
the killing becomes ever more anonymous, and millions of men die without ever really knowing why.
If you also want to refresh your memory of the first year of World War 1, check out our
other two recap episodes in the playlist right here.
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