Solidarity. That’s the word, right? That’s what we all know was a defining aspect of
the First World War. In every warring nation. The British were totally unified against the
Germans; the Serbs were as one against Austria-Hungary, the Germans were a single
machine against the French. Or were they? Perhaps at one point, but after six months of nothing
but death and destruction, cracks were appearing around the world and this week we
see the results.This week we see the first large scale mutiny in the ranks.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week we saw the Austro-Hungarian Empire fighting the Russians in the freezing snows
of the Carpathian Mountains, while further north the Russians were being routed in East
Prussia. In the Middle East the Ottoman army was retreating from the Suez Canal, and in
the West there was fighting in the Argonne.
Actually, if we look over to the Western Front we see that the back and forth is in no way
diminished this week as the battles continued from the trenches.
On February 13th, the Germans took the village of Norroy and attacked in the Lauch Valley,
taking Sengern and Remsbach the following day. A French counter attack at Norroy the
16th was repulsed, but they managed to successfully re-take the village the 18th. There is also
heavy fighting during the week in the Vosges and northwest of Verdun.
Now, this might sound like small potatoes compared to some of the other things we discuss,
but keep in mind something here; this was a non-stop offensive by the French, and in
February they would suffer nearly 100,000 casualties, according to Jack Sheldon in “The
German Army on the Western Front, 1915”, but according to the R.T. Foley, who wrote
of the development of the war of attrition, that figure is more like 250,000 for the month,
so all of these little battles for a trench, or a signal station, or a tiny village add up quickly.
But the big battle news this week was not in the west, but rather far to the northeast
in East Prussia, where since February 7th, when General von Hindenburg’s German offensive
started, the Russians had been in big trouble.
First, the Russian southern wing had been pushed back 100km, then the Russian right
flank had been pushed in and the Germans threatened to encircle the Russians and inflict a military
disaster on them on the scale of the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914 where Russia
lost nearly an entire army.
By Valentine’s Day, with the Russians in complete disarray, the Germans took Lyck.
East Prussia was now completely free of Russian troops, as 5,000 Russians were taken prisoner
that day alone, in addition to over 10,000 the week before. By the 16th, it really was
looking like Tannenberg, but nobody reckoned with the Russian XX Corps.
While the rest of the entire Russian army had been routed throughout the region, the
XX Corps was holed up at Augustow Forest under General Bulgakov, and eventually surrounded
by the Germans. For two weeks they held out, in one of the most heroic stands of the entire
war, before finally surrendering February 21st. This was a high price to pay- 70,000
prisoners by some estimates- but their resistance had given the rest of the Russian army a chance
to escape and regroup. A day later, Russia counter-attacked and stopped the German advance,
ending Hindenburg’s plans for a drive that would knock Russia out of the war.
You have to wonder what might have happened without the XX Corps heroism. Even the way
it happened, the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes cost the Russians over 150,000 casualties,
perhaps even 200,000. The Germans lost a fraction of that. How far might they have pushed into
Russia, without XX Corps to stop them? Without really anyone to stop them. Food for thought.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire had also launched a winter offensive against Russia, which had
so far been far less successful than that of the Germans, and had resulted in over 100,000
casualties, many of them not from battle, but soldiers frozen to death in the Carpathian Mountains.
Things certainly had been looking very grim for Austria, and here’s actually a newspaper
quote from the Northern Advocate from February 16, 1915:
“Fighting continues in Bukovina. The Russians, reinforced, repulsed a series of attacks...
Three Russian counter-attacks shattered the Austro-German line at three points, compelling
the enemy’s retirement. The temperature is twenty below zero, and piercing, ice-laden
winds make it difficult to distinguish friend from foe at 100 yards. The Austro-Germans
succumb to cold more quickly than the Siberians do. Exposure is causing the wounded horrible
sufferings. Thousands are enveloped in snowdrifts. The Russians are fortifying Czernowitz.”
Sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? And yet, almost miraculously, the Austrians and Germans
were keeping it going, and this week even made gain after gain. On the 12th, they forced
through the Jablonitsa pass and poured into East Galicia and managed to take Czernowitz,
despite it being fortified by the Russians, on the 17th and had surprisingly driven the
Russians from the Eastern slopes of the Carpathians.
But it was only window dressing and it wouldn’t last; they simply could not keep the offensive
going, now matter how valiant they were, and as the winter offensive came slowly to a halt,
the Austro-Hungarian army could take stock of its recent adventures: in spite of some
successes in the field, they had failed to free the 100,000 troops under siege in Przemysl,
they had failed to hand the Russians a great defeat to convince Italy and Romania not to
join the war on the other side, and they had suffered casualties of over 75%, most of them
not from battle, but from illness, frostbite, and exposure.
We mentioned the other week the despair some of the men felt in the Carpathians, that would
lead them to commit suicide even, but despair is felt in other ways, and one of those can
be open rebellion.
This week saw the first large-scale mutiny of the war, as Indian soldiers in barracks
in Singapore mutinied. The organizers had planned it to be a part of a general Sikh
uprising against British rule in India. Now, this was encouraged by the Germans who really
hoped that India was ready for revolution, much as they’d hoped for a similar uprising
in Egypt during the fighting over the Suez Canal two weeks ago, but again, it was not
to be. British soldiers carried out the executions of the ringleaders of the uprising in Singapore,
and 37 of them were shot. In India, where the revolt was to be on a much larger scale,
the whole plan had actually been betrayed by a police spy before it could begin, and
the people in charge were rounded up. 18 of them were hanged.
The British overseas possessions saw more action this week, in the Sinai, where British
and Egyptian troops secured Tor from Turkish attacks and influence.
Tor is a small port down the Red Sea Coast from the Suez Canal, which the Ottoman Empire
had failed to capture a couple weeks ago, but Tor had been another objective of theirs,
since from that tiny port, mines could be floated out into the Red Sea to wreak havoc
with Allied shipping coming to and from the canal.
Also this week, the German submarine blockade began, on the 18th. And so that’s where
we stand, with the Russians driven out of East Prussia and the slopes of the Carpathians,
but with the Germans and the Austrians finally unable to advance and breaking off their offensives,
while in the west the French continue their policy of countless attacks against small
strategic targets as the death toll rises and rises.
And a mutiny, of course; the first large-scale one of the war. Far from Europe; heck, far
from India even, at the edge of the British Empire, but you have to think that things
like this are to be expected, right? It would continue over the years; we’d see it in
the French army, the Australians, the German navy, but you’d see it everywhere else in
smaller form. For an organized mutiny is just a group version of “I quit!” and that
we see every single day of the war in every single army as soldiers desert, or hide to
wait out a battle, or walk into an enemy bullet intentionally, or just shoot themselves. Just
saying, “I quit. I am in a tiny metal tube beneath the sea, and the only time I come
to the surface it’s to kill a ship full of sailors that aren’t even from the country
I’m at war with. I quit. I’m from the south of India and now I’m fighting in snow,
which I’ve never even seen before. I’m looked down on and belittled as sub-human
by many of the men on my side, but I’m expected to lay down my life for them as I’ve seen
dozens of my mates do in the past week.” Ten million stories of despair; this was modern war.
A few weeks ago, on Christmas, soldiers from both sides of the trenches decided to quit
at least for the night. Brits and Germans exchanged small gifts and for just one night
there was a kind of peace. Click here to check out our episode about the Christmas Truce.
What do you think about those soldiers that decided they cannot take it anymore? Let me
know in the comments. If you like our show, please subscribe to our channel. See you next week.