[It appears] that the Austrian forces ranged against us are weaker than those we war- gamed against.
—General Nikolai Yanushkevitch, August 19141
C
arl von clausewitz was right when he said that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. It is equally true, however, that initial plans have much to tell us about a country’s war aims, howevergreatly these are altered by onrushing events—by what Clausewitz called “friction,” that accumulation of unforeseen obstacles, happy and unhappy accidents, and unexpected enemy maneuvers that will overwhelm even the best- laid battle plan. Before the clash of arms begins, we may evaluate a nation’s priorities by asking where it concentrates the bulk of its forces, and what areas it leaves comparatively barren. Other clues may be found in the strategic objectives of the first major offensives, whether or not they succeed, and in the size of the force and the number of resources allo- cated to them. We may also decipher the hidden goals governments have in mind by examining their secret correspondence with allies and neu- trals, especially in the early stages of a war, when all things still seem pos- sible. Paradoxically, it is in the often delusional states of mind charac- teristic of early stages of a con flict that we must look for belligerents’ real objectives. Only in its ideal war- gaming scenarios can we form a picture of what Clausewitz might have called a country’s true war aims, before bat-
Going back to the beginning is particularly im por tant in the case of Russia’s war aims in 1914 because they were so thoroughly smothered by the famous German victory at Tannenberg. The basic template of our diplomatic un der stand ing of the First World War—German expansionist aims on both the eastern and western fronts, as laid out in the notorious “September program”—grew directly out of Germany’s battlefield victo- ries in the first month. Had these battles gone the other way—had the Russians reached the lower Vistula in East Prussia (as General Maximil- ian von Prittwitz, the commander of the German Eighth Army, famously predicted they were about to do before he was cashiered for losing his nerve), and the French plunged deep into Alsace- Lorraine even as the German right wing had gotten bogged down in Belgium, or if the German center had been overwhelmed in the Battle of the Frontiers—then histori- ans would have argued then and even now over the goals of French and Russian expansionism in 1914, rather than about Bethmann Hollweg and the September program. To assume that the crushing German victories of the war’s first month were inevitable is the worst kind of hindsight. It is an assumption belied not only by the well- known réveil national opti-
mism at the outset in the French high command (shared by some though not all generals at Russian Stavka) and Moltke’s correspondingly famous pessimism, but by the material facts: the Germans were greatly outnum- bered and outgunned, with their entire army, however formidable in rep- utation, boasting fewer battalions than the French, let alone the colossal Russian army, and deploying fewer artillery guns than the supposedly in- ferior Russians (6,004 to 6,700).2
Russia’s generals could be forgiven, therefore, for assuring the tsar in July 1914 that Russia could win. Sazonov had brilliantly arranged the en- emy coalitions in what was arguably Russia’s best war- fight ing scenario since the eigh teenth century, if we compare the belligerent blocs of 1914 to the coalitions in Russia’s last great power wars, whether in 1812 (Russia against Napoleonic France at the height of its strength, plus her Prussian and Austrian proxies; Britain only peripherally engaged) or in 1853 (Rus- sia against Ottoman Turkey, Britain, and France, with Austria hostile). If we compare the strategic potential of the coalitions of 1914, it was not even close: the economic output of the Entente dwarfed that of the Central powers, and by a considerable margin—and this was not even to count
superior Entente access to war credit in the bond markets of London and (later) New York.3 To be sure, Russia’s leaders, like ev ery one else, ex-
pected a short war in 1914, but this gave them all the more reason for opti- mism. Under the strain of the inevitable British blockade Germany was not expected to hold out for more than several months.4 During those
months, meanwhile, it was France, not Russia, that would bear the brunt of Germany’s military might, giving the Russians a virtually free hand to settle accounts with Austria or Germany, in whatever order they chose. Of all the myths that cloud un der stand ing of the First World War, the hoariest of all must be the notion that Russia “fell on its sword for France.” Born, like so much of the war’s mythology, in the murky legend of Tan- nenberg and the Russian tragedy of 1917 to which it seemed to point the way, this cliché must be put to rest at last if we are to understand Russia’s war aims in 1914.5 Although it is true that Moltke pulled back two corps
from the western front in the initial panic produced by the Russian inva- sion of East Prussia, in strategic terms this brought the balance of concen- tration between Germany’s main war fronts down from nearly ten to one in favor of the western front to more like seven or eight to one. The whole point of the Schlieffen Plan, after all, was to knock out France before the Russians could mobilize, leaving only a token force in East Prussia. Even as the crucial right wing of Count Alfred von Schlieffen’s original design was subtly weakened by Moltke both before and during the August 1914 offensive, the Schlieffen Plan was the greatest possible gift to the Rus- sian army. The basic facts, though well known, bear emphasis. Even as the Germans threw over seventy divisions into the August 1914 offensive against France and Belgium—seven entire armies, totaling more than a million and a half men—the Russians, wielding by the thirtieth day of mo- bilization some ninety- eight infantry and thirty- seven cavalry divisions on the eastern front, a force larger than 2 million, faced (in addition to Austria- Hungary’s anything but fearsome forces) only one German cav- alry and eleven German infantry divisions, or about “a tenth of [Ger- many’s] total strength.” As Moltke had warned Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, his Austrian counterpart, in February 1913, “the centre of gravity of the whole European war, and consequently the fate of Austria, will be decided not on the Bug [river] but defi nitely on the Seine.”6 Of
the metaphor which best describes the strategic landscape of August 1914 is clearly that of France falling on its sword for Russia, and not the other way round.
This was no accident. From the earliest days of the Franco- Russian alliance, the expectation in both Paris and Petersburg was that France would have to do the bulk of the heavy lifting against Germany. The origi- nal military convention signed in 1892 had envisioned the French army mobilizing 1.3 million men against the Germans, with Russia—despite her much larger population base—contributing only 700,000 or 800,000. General N. N. Obruchev, the Russian signator of the agreement, insisted to Tsar Alexander III that Russia retained “absolute freedom of action” to deploy the bulk of her strength against either Austria or Germany, as it was not clear how a European war would begin (the convention covered the case of a German attack on France, but also that of an Austrian move against Russia, if Vienna were supported by Berlin). The “final text of the Franco- Russian military convention,” concludes George Kennan in his classic study of the subject, “had some strange and disturbing features, placing largely in Russian hands . . . the power to unleash a major Euro- pean war whenever this might suit Russian purposes.”7
Try though the French did in the intervening years with generous in- ducements fi nan cial, po lit i cal, and diplomatic, they never did convince the Russians to concentrate the bulk of their forces against Germany. Al- though Plan 19 did provide a sort of pivot option where the Fourth Rus- sian Army could be deployed by way of the Warsaw railway hub ei- ther north against East Prussia (variant “G” or Germania) or southward
against Austrian Galicia (variant “A” or Austria), Russia’s generals had
rigged this game heavily in favor of the southern option, which was the default or “automatic” deployment (that is, a “G” mobilization, unlike an “A” one, would have to be “specially ordered”). Only in the extremely unlikely event that Germany chose to attack Russia first—a scenario seri- ously entertained by almost no one in either Paris or Petersburg—would the northern variant of Mobilization Plan 19 come into effect.8 The reason
Stavka privileged the southwestern front over the northwestern was as obvious as it was damaging to French interests: Russia simply had no ter- ritorial ambitions in East Prussia, nor a reasonable expectation that she could best the Germans there in a fair fight. By contrast, the Russian sei-
zure of Austrian Galicia was the first operational priority of Russian mili- tary planning against the Central powers, and (especially now that Stavka possessed the Austrian mobilization plan sold by Colonel Redl) was ex- pected to be achieved without much dif fi culty. It should have been no surprise to anyone that Russia concentrated two- thirds of its available forces on the southwestern front in August 1914 (four army groups, alto- gether about 1.2 million men). In contrast, Russia invaded East Prussia with a force barely half this size, comprising only the First and Second Armies. Twenty- two years after the Franco- Russian military conven- tion had first been proposed, Russia had con trib uted almost exactly what she originally promised against Germany (though, sig nifi cantly, 25 per- cent less than her generals had promised the French in 1912–13): about 600,000 troops. This made up less than a third of her available forces in the European theater and constituted barely a third the size of the army that France, from a population base one- fourth the size of Russia’s, was put ting in the field against the common enemy.9
That the Russians were able to get away with this, even while over- matched France and little Belgium (reinforced only by Britain’s tiny ex- peditionary force of six divisions) faced the brunt of the German assault, speaks volumes as to the relative le ver age of each side in the Franco- Russian alliance. Russia could do basically whatever it wanted on the eastern front while France was obliged to accept whatever small assis- tance against Germany she might offer. Untroubled by even the possibil- ity of a German invasion at the outset of the war, Russia could use the Warsaw “pivot” to send more or fewer divisions northward into Eastern Prussia; she could do so with more or less haste; she could deploy them westward from Warsaw instead (as the French would have preferred), tar- geting Berlin directly; her troops could fight their way tooth and claw across East Prussia, or retreat to the Russian border as soon as they en- countered the first serious resistance. Once the dust had settled over the early battles, Russia could then offer to fight on, or threaten to sign a sep- arate peace with the Central powers. With any of these decisions—partic- ularly the last, that of whether or not to continue the war—Russia enjoyed colossal negotiating le ver age with Paris and London, as wartime diplo- macy would soon bear out. By contrast, the only way France could have put pressure on her Russian ally was by succumbing to the massive Ger-
man invasion, which of course was no option at all. The Schlieffen Plan, even in its less extreme version modi fied by Moltke, had put ev ery trump in Russia’s hand. How she would use them was entirely up to Danilov, Yanushkevitch, Sukhomlinov, and Grand Duke Nicholas.
From the view of Stavka, the Russian headquarters established at Ba- ranovichi, the unfolding situation in August 1914 was—at least until Tan- nenberg—almost too good to be true. The token force the Germans had left behind to defend East Prussia, Prittwitz’s Eighth Army, appeared to be just as small—and inviting to attack—as expected. As Yanushkevitch informed Zhilinskii, commander of the northwestern front, on 10 August 1914, initial reconnaissance revealed that the Germans had only four in- fantry corps in Eastern Prussia, plus a few reserve divisions.10 Against
this, even the half- hearted Russian force facing the Germans deployed nine full army corps, including ample cavalry divisions—those fearsome mounted “Huns” which so obsessed the kaiser and other paranoid Ger- mans before the war. In infantry- divisional terms, the Russian advantage was twenty- nine and a half to eleven, and ten to one in cavalry. Because each Russian division contained sixteen battalions, to twelve for their German counterparts, the Russian battalion advantage was still greater, about 480 to 130. In artillery, the breakdown was more lopsided still: 5,800 Russian guns against 774 German.11 As Sukhomlinov wrote in his
diary on 9 August 1914, as these facts were becoming clear, “it seems that the German wolf will quickly be brought to bay: all are against him.”12
Meanwhile, Conrad had botched the Austro- Hungarian mobilization so badly that IV corps of Böhm- Ermolli’s Second Army, supposed to be the hinge of the Galician campaign in the case of a war against Russia, was bogged down in Serbia until the end of August, to the Russians’ delight. Little wonder that Yanushkevitch gleefully reported on 23 August to Gen- eral Nikolai Ivanov, commander of the southwestern front, that extensive reconnaissance showed “that the Austrian forces ranged against us are weaker than those we war- gamed against.”13
In part the Austrian mobilization debacle was owing to logistical in- eptitude. The curious principle adopted by the army’s railway command that trains were all to move at “maximum parallel graphic”—the highest speed of the slowest train on the worst line (about ten miles an hour)— ensured that even in the best- case scenario troops would reach the front
“at a speed less than that of a decent bicycle.” But more fundamentally, the famous botching of the Austrian mobilization was the result of Con- rad’s painful dilemma: Austria’s real strategic objective was to knock out Serbia, but her German ally wanted her to concentrate her forces against Russia. In a revealing demonstration of where the negotiating le ver age lay between the Central powers, Conrad’s demand to keep the Second Army engaged in Serbia, where hard fight ing was underway between 16 and 20 August 1914, was overruled by Emperor Franz Josef under heavy German pressure. To the horror of Austria- Hungary’s beleaguered railway techni- cians, after detraining on the southern front most (though not all) of the Second Army was, on 18 August, at a crucial stage of the Serbian cam- paign, re- routed northward by stages to Galicia.14
France’s generals, by contrast, pleaded in vain for the Russians to mount their principal offensive against Berlin. Instead, the Russians con- ducted a tactical withdrawal from the area of Poland west of the Vistula in order not to risk too exposed a salient between the Austrian and German fronts—a maneuver that certainly did not please anyone in Paris. To be sure, the Russian mobilization on the northwestern front, due largely to its head start, was rapid and even ahead of schedule: Zhilinskii reported by 10 August that both the First and Second Armies would be ready for action by the following day, only the twelfth day of Russia’s (of fi cially pro- claimed) mobilization, nearly four days before Russia was required by her treaty obligations with France to invade East Prussia (although this an- nouncement shortly proved to be premature).15 But Russian superiority
was still much less than it could have been because the northwestern front was given much lower priority than Austrian Galicia. With Pavel Rennen- kampf ’s First Army and A. V. Samsonov’s Second Army advancing sepa- rately into East Prussia, the former heading due west from the Niemen River near Kovno, the latter northwest from central Poland, the Russians threatened to envelop the German Eighth Army in a pincer movement. Unless they could stay in contact, however—a prospect made supremely dif fi cult by the fifty- mile barrier of the Masurian Lakes that would open up between them for several days—the First and Second Armies would individually enjoy at most marginal superiority over the German Eighth Army. As it turned out, many second- line and reserve divisions were dis- trusted by the generals at Stavka, and so were left behind the front “kick-
ing their heels”: garrisoning fortresses, guarding supply lines, and so on. By the time they ac tually came in contact, each Russian army was inferior to the Germans’ Eighth Army: Rennenkampf ’s First Army reduced to six and a half effective divisions, Samsonov’s Second Army to nine and a half. Had several corps from the Russian Fourth Army been seconded to East Prussia, the Russians could have enjoyed superiority vis- à- vis Prittwitz’s Eighth with either their First or Second Army. Zhilinskii might even have been able to bridge the “Masurian Lakes” gap, avoiding the danger of a lasting separation between Samsonov and Rennenkampf that would al- low the Germans to attack them in sequence. Even the new Russian Ninth Army, being assembled in Warsaw from troops arriving from the Russian interior in accordance with Yanushkevitch’s 7 August directive, ostensi- bly in preparation for an invasion “in depth” of Germany—its task, Grand Duke Nicholas promised Paléologue, was that of “bearing down on Ber- lin as soon as the southern armies have succeeded in ‘holding up’ and ‘fixing’ the enemy”—was routed instead to the southwestern front in late August. So far from “falling on the sword for France,” Russia’s generals failed to field even one single army larger than the Germans’ token force in East Prussia, so keen were they to strike instead in Austrian Galicia.16
The Russian armies on the southwestern front, by contrast, enjoyed ev ery superiority im ag i na ble against their Austrian opponents. Conrad, like Moltke but unlike Yanushkevitch, faced a two- front war. Even had Conrad not deployed his Fifth and Sixth Armies (and, until 18 August, his Second) against Serbia, the forty effective divisions of the entire Austro- Hungarian army were inferior to the fifty- plus the Russians were