The New Year has begun the same way the last one ended, with thousands upon thousands of
men dying, and the war seems only to expand. As the year changed from old to new we saw
an entire army destroyed, many of its soldiers freezing to death in the mountains of the
Caucasus, and now, weeks later, we see something else; that no matter how the war changes many
military leaders were unwilling or incapable of learning from the mistakes of others, and
just made the same ones again.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
When we left off, the Germans were successful in Southeast Africa but would in future resort
to guerilla warfare, the British were successful in the Middle East, but were bombed by Zeppelin
at home. The French had some minor successes on the Western Front, and the Turks were defeated
again by the Russians, who had also made an advance in northwest Poland.
Geography cannot help but play a large part in war. You use different troops and maneuvers
on a large flat plain then you do in a dense forest. I’d like to start off today by looking
at some European geography for a minute; specifically, the Carpathian Mountains.
We’re looking at a barrier about 100km wide with a median elevation of over 1,000 meters.
That’s a formidable natural barrier for any army to get through, and even in the main
passes of the Carpathians there were only a handful of poorly constructed roads and
railway lines. It’s always cold and damp up there, but once the snows come in November,
they remain there till the spring, with occasionally sudden rises in temperature that cause large
scale flooding.
Mountain warfare has a whole series of other unique difficulties- troops obviously have
to be specially trained and equipped, maintaining supply lines and maneuvering can be real problems,
artillery often has to be left behind since it’s so heavy and the ground uneven. Stuff
like that. Stuff that should deter large-scale military operations. In winter.
Well, that setting was where this week, on January 23rd, the Austro-Hungarian army launched
an offensive against the Russians. This was the brainchild of Austro-Hungarian Army Chief
of Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf, who believed that Austria now needed a major victory over
Russia to show her strength so that neutral countries like Italy and Romania wouldn’t
enter the war against her. This makes sense, I suppose, because the Imperial army had suffered
some seriously embarrassing defeats so far during the war, and the second invasion of
Serbia in November and December had ended in humiliation so Austria-Hungary didn’t
have a whole lot of military prestige left.
Also, a whole Austrian army, well over 100,000 strong, was surrounded and under siege at
Przemysl and all of the Habsburg gang thought that losing that army might in fact lose the
whole war, so the offensive had breaking the siege as a main objective.
The basic plans called for the Third Army to attack along a front of over 150km in the
Northern Carpathians, while simultaneously, the newly created Southern Army- which included
three German divisions- would attack the Russians’ extreme left flank. The element of surprise
was supposed to be a big factor in a quick success. I think we can also agree that luck
was going to have to be a big factor too.
The combined offensive forces were about 175,000 men, and right away they proved incapable
of accomplishing their initial tasks, which were to take and secure the communications
and railroads around the towns Lisko, Sanok and Medzilaborce, and I’m sorry if I’m
mangling those names.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t some progress and positive results, because there
were initially, as the Austrians advanced against a numerically inferior foe, and by
the 26th, the third army’s actual front extended for over 100km from the Dukla to
Uszok passes. Conrad’s army managed to capture the Uszok pass that day, which had been held
by the Russians since the beginning of the year, but that same day the Russians began
to launch massive counter attacks, and as the week ended, a sudden and severe change
in the weather began to seriously mess with the Austrian plans.
But plans, especially war plans, have a way of going wrong, and this was also the case
this week in the North Sea.
Last month, German ships under the command of Franz von Hipper had bombarded the British
coast and successfully escaped back to Germany. Since that day- Britain had been clamoring
for revenge against the German navy, when the first civilians were killed in Britain
by enemy forces for over 200 years-nd on January 24th, they got it.
Von Hipper set out to attack the British fishing fleet at Dogger Bank, whom he suspected of
gathering intelligence on German fleet movement, but the British had intercepted and decoded
German radio traffic about the raid, and Vice Admiral David Beatty led his battle cruiser
squadron out to trap von Hipper. The Germans were outnumbered and surprised, though they
managed to make it back to port with only the loss of the armored cruiser Blucher, coincidentally
the last armored cruiser the Germans built.
See, there was a signaling mix-up and the British fleet broke off pursuit of the German
fleet to sink Blucher, so the opportunity to do huge damage to the German navy was lost,
but with only 15 British sailors lost against nearly 1,000 Germans this was a big morale
boost for the British, and the Kaiser was so angry that Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl,
commander of the German High Seas Fleet, was replaced by Admiral Hugo von Pohl.
Here’s something else, the Germans realized that the British appearance at dawn at Dogger
Bank was suspiciously coincidental, but they did not believe that their radio codes had
been cracked, and instead thought that an enemy agent must have provided intelligence
about their plans.
The Germans were fighting on land as well this week, in a series of battles with the
French on the Western Front.
At the beginning of the week there was heavy fighting in Alsace and the Argonne, but it
was indecisive. The Germans were repulsed at Ypres the 25th and the French lost ground
at Craonne the same day. On the 27th the French were also finally losing ground in the Argonne,
but pushing forward in Vosges, and at the end of the week, on the 29th, yet another
German attempt to cross the Aisne River was foiled. One thing that I haven’t had a chance
to mention that I’ll throw in here which was a big improvement for the French this
winter and spring was the issuance of new uniforms. The new light blue uniforms were
far less visible on the battlefield. Any little advantage, you know?
Here’s also a little anecdote from this week in the west about a character who would
play a larger part in a different world war.
On January 29th, during the fighting in the Argonne, a German Lieutenant named Erwin Rommel
led his platoon out to capture some French blockhouses. He crawled through the French
wire and shouted for his men to follow, but they didn’t. So he crawled back and told
the commander of the leading platoon, “Obey my orders instantly or I shoot you.” Then
the whole company followed him out, and they took the blockhouses. For this action, Rommel
won the Iron Cross, First Class and it soon became a saying in his regiment, “where
Rommel is, there is the front.”
The fronts in the west were pretty easy to spot without Rommel, though; you just had
to look for the endless lines of trenches. There was another region, though, whose fronts
were not nearly so obvious: that in the Middle East and the Caucasus.
By this time the Ottoman 3rd army, destroyed at Sarikamis, numbered fewer than 13,000 effective
soldiers and maybe 20,000 total, but there was still plenty of action going on in other
parts of the Ottoman Empire. On January 23rd, two Ottoman divisions were defeated at Khorsan.
A few days later, Ottoman assaults were renewed but on January 27th, the Russians took Gorness
and actually captured the Turkish staff. Thing were still looking pretty grim for the Turks.
And here are a few notes of interest from around the world. The French took Bertua in
Cameroon this week. They also decided on the 26th to participate with the British in an
attack on the Dardanelles that was still in the planning stages. On the 27th, Britain
loaned five million pounds to Romania. Also this week, Britain offers Greece concessions
in Asia Minor if Greece will help out in Serbia; a few days later the Greek government says no.
And that was this week. The Austrians, Germans, and Russians clashing in the Carpathians,
the Russians still beating the Turks further south, the German fleet turning tail and running
home in the north, and the French and Germans banging heads again and again on the Western Front.
Another winter assault in the mountains; that’s what we’re seeing on the Eastern Front.
Had Conrad not paid attention to what just happened to the Turks in their mountain assault?
Or did he think the situation was so desperate that it didn’t matter? It certainly seemed
that neither he, nor many of the other leaders were learning from others’ mistakes. The
Turks failed to make coordinated attacks and lost again and again. The British navy kept
letting the Germans get away even though they cracked their radio codes and knew where they
were going to go. And it’s painfully obvious what the result of not learning from mistakes
is in modern war; it’s tens of thousands of dead soldiers, many of whose loss of life
was completely avoidable if only their leaders had been paying attention.
This was not the first time that Konrad von Hötzendorf had lead the Austro-Hungarian
Army into disaster. Check out our episode about the Battle of Galicia right here where
Hötzendorf’s plans failed dramatically.
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See you next week.