- from ‘the War Illustrated Deluxe’ vol IV page 1245
- 'The Irresistible March of
- the Great German Phalanx'
The Great Episodes of the War
- German troops resting during the great advance
It was due entirely to the intrepidity and powers of endurance of the southern Russian army in Galicia that the Germans did not again uncover Calais and drive the Franco-British forces once more back towards Paris. For the German Commander- in-Chief, General von Falkenhayn, had constructed by April, 1915, a new war- machine for this purpose. But he was prevented from using it in the way he intended by the disastrous failure of Field-Marshal von Hindenburg in the eastern theatre of war. The Russians had checked every advance made by Hindenburg and exhausted his forces, and had then grimly fought their way over the Carpathian passes, and begun to debouch into the wheat-plain of Hungary. In winter battles, amid six feet drifts of snow on the mountains, the Russian peasant, by his remarkable powers of physical endurance, had worn down German, Austrian, and Hungarian troops, of whom nearly half a million fell sick through frost-bite, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. So disastrous was the condition of things that the Hungarians began to think of suing for peace, and a grand Council of War was held in which Hindenburg and his Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, were severely handled.
The Passing of Hindenburg
Falkenhayn, who had always been jealous of Hindenburg's reputation, was the bitterest critic of the old man. He pointed out that the Russian advance over the Carpathians should not have been met by a counter-attack through the difficult mountain passes, but that the half-million German troops sent to assist the Hungarians should have been massed at Cracow and launched on the river-front, along the Dunajec and Biala, against the short flank and rear of the Russian southern army. This criticism was well founded, and the result was that the Kaiser dismissed Hindenburg and made Falkenhayn commander-in-chief in all the theatres of war.
Falkenhayn appointed the most brilliant of German generals, Mackensen, to execute his plan of attack. The incomparable new war-machine was railed to Cracow. It consisted of 2,000 howitzers, from 6 in. to 12 in. and 17 in. in calibre. In front of this immense siege train were 2,000 lighter field-guns of about 3 in. to 6 in. calibre, formed of the artillery of twelve army corps. The twelve army corps were composed of the finest fighting regiments of Germany, including two divisions of the Prussian Guard, and the Prussian, Bavarian, Wurtemberg, and Saxon regiments, which had most distinguished themselves against the French and British and Belgian forces. Some hundreds of goods trains, with thousands of trucks, were detached from the railway services of Austria and Germany, and handed over to Mackensen's staff. Three million high-explosive shells, and all the heaviest howitzers, were placed upon the railway, so as to leave the roads clear for the advance of the troops and their light artillery. In addition to the twelve army corps of the Phalanx, twenty-five Austrian, Hungarian, and German army corps were sent forward on each side of Mackensen's men, Mackensen being given the general command over the combined mighty force of 1,400,000 troops. A few weeks after the advance was made, five more army corps were attached to the Grand Phalanx, bringing the total number of troops up to 1,600,000.
The Great Machine Begins to Move
In the middle of April the trains began to move with their freights of long-range Skoda guns and steel howitzers, the latter having mostly been built at Pilsen after the war began. There was also an immense number of Krupp guns and howitzers, many of which also were new. Steamrollers and motor-vehicles toiled up the road towards the river-fronts with bridge materials, railway-building materials, and shells for the field- guns. Two weeks were spent in preparation, but it was all done so quietly, much of the work being performed at night, that though the reconnoitring airmen of Russia perceived a stir of movement, little or nothing was discovered of the terribly formidable nature of the preparations; for the Germans had a new and very large fleet of fast and fighting aeroplanes, many of which were designed to direct the fire of the huge siege train. While waiting to perform this work the German aviators, outnumbering the Russians by twenty to one, fought them away from the preliminary scene of operations.
Fourteen Shells to each Russian Bayonet
Against the Phalanx and its assistant armies were 120,000 Russian troops, under the command of Radko Dimitrieff, the famous Bulgarian general, who had left his country to help Russia. Dimitrieff had left one of his army corps with General Brussiloff, and it was fighting south of the Dukla Pass, in Hungary. He called it back in time, bringing his total forces to the nominal strength of 160,000 men. But for six months these men had been holding the seventy miles of entrenchments between the Upper Vistula and the Carpathians, their lines running along the Dunajec to the town of Tarnov, and thence along the Biala River to Gorlice, a naphtha town in the Carpathian foothills. Dimitrierfs men were wasted by war; for in addition to holding their trenches and taking part in the Carpathian battle, they had assisted in the capture of Przemysl. It is doubtful if they numbered on the night of April 30th, 1915, more than forty thousand bayonets. In the armies advancing against them at full strength there were at least 840,000 bayonets. But the odds were not so heavy as twenty to one, for the battle-front was so narrow that Mackensen could not have deployed all his forces for an infantry attack. Moreover, he did not wish to do so. He began by using ten army corps against the four Russian army corps opposed to him.
The great howitzers opened the advance. They were massed along the Biala, from the village of Tuchov to the town of Gorlice—a distance of twenty miles. In four hours 700,000 high-explosive shells were pitched into the Russian trenches occupied by two of the Russian army corps. There were about fourteen shells to every Russian infantryman in the trenches, and fifty Russian guns were struck and smashed in their gun-pits, the exploding shells killing also most of the artillerymen.
Dimitrieff Checks German Infantry
There was no battle. It was an annihilation. All that the Russian corps commanders could do was to draw from the zone of fire what men survived, and get away in extreme haste the field-guns that had not been shattered. Had the Russians then broken and fled, nobody could have blamed them, for at least half the men in the two army corps had been blown to bits. There was a ton shell used by the Germans, which, by the pressure of its expanding gases, killed every living thing in a radius of one hundred and fifty yards. Many men, afterwards reported missing, had really vanished into atoms.
But the Bulgarian general kept his head. He had fought a score of modern battles since his victory at Kirk Kilisse, and, terrible though the situation was, he kept full control over it. He lined his remaining men out beyond the zone of fire, ordered his gunners to use shrapnel, and waited. The infantry of the Phalanx advanced and stormed through the great gap in the Russian line. But they were shot down and forced to retire. Their heavy artillery could no longer help them, as it could not be brought up in time. Their lighter field-guns were dragged out, but the check to the German infantry had given Dimitrieff time to withdraw most of the remnant of his two army corps to stronger positions on the Galician hills.
Happily the other two Russian army corps entrenched along the Dunajec were able to fight to a standstill the Austrian army working with the Phalanx. For a week Radko Dimitrieff held his northern lines near the Dunajec while swinging his southern force away from Mackensen's enormous guns.
Feat that Saved Two Million Men
This unparalleled feat of resistance saved the lives or persons of two million Russian troops. According to Falkenhayn's scheme, Mackensen should have torn a twenty- mile gap in the Russian front, and at once poured through this gap a million or more men. Half a million of them would have attacked in the rear the southern Russian army under Brussiloff, as it was retiring from the Carpathians. The other half-million would have swept up the eastern bank of the Dunajec, wiped out the Russian troops entrenched there, and then have got across the Vistula and on the rear of the central Russian army in Poland, under General Ivanoff. All this was prevented by the heroism of Dimitrieff's troops and the genius of their commander. He kept in touch with Ivanoff on his right and also with Brussiloff on his left. Both generals hurried hundreds of thousands of men to his assistance; and in a long fighting retreat, lasting for two months, Dimitrieff swung back, with the entire Russian battle-front, maintaining close connection with his line.
There is no retreat in history like the retreat of the Third Russian Army that Dimitrieff commanded. His army was more than wiped out; for he began with less than 160,000 men and lost 250,000 men. But his force was maintained by drafts, armies from other parts of the front, and by new formations. With the veteran soldier, Ivanoff, as his commander-in-chief, the general of the Third Army, though constantly giving ground, put half a million of the huge attacking force out of action. Sir John Moore's retreat on Corunna, Sir John French's retreat to the Marne, the Russian retreat through Moscow against Napoleon's Grand Army, are less wonderful achievements than the retreat of the Third Russian Army through Galicia in May and June, 1915.
A Long, Long Way to Moscow
The retreat was made possible by the cause that produced it. Mackensen could only move his heavy guns and howitzers by railway. The Russians blew up the railway as they retired. The German engineers could not rebuild it at a quicker rate than three to five miles a day. This, therefore, was the average rate of progress of the enormous battering-ram. Whenever the German or Austrian troops tried to advance without the help of their monster siege train, they were beaten back. All Mackensen's victories were won in the zone of the hurricane of shell fire. Beyond that zone his troops were continually defeated. So long as the Russian armies retreated with an unbroken front, Falkenhayn's great plan remained unexecuted. In the meantime the Russians had only to wait until the store of many millions of German and Austrian high-explosive shells was exhausted, or until the rifling of the long-range heavy guns and howitzers was worn out. Until this happened the Russians had to conduct a fighting retreat. But it was a long, long way to Moscow, at the rate of only three miles a day.