Eastern Front (World War I)
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A German trench in the swamp area near the Mazuric Lakes on the Eastern Front. Picture taken in February 1915, just before the German winter-offensive started in heavy snowstorms. |
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The Eastern Front, as it was in 1914 |
The
Eastern Front refers to a theatre of war during
World War I in
Central and, primarily,
Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the
Western Front. Both terms refer to
Continental Europe. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theaters strongly influenced each other.
The geography of Eastern Europe in general has played a key role in how both World Wars' Eastern Front conflicts played out. Eastern Europe is, for the most part, physically similar to Western Europe as both belong to the same European plain. The key difference was the level of economic development. While Belgium and Northern France were among the most industrially advanced areas in the world,Eastern Europe was undeveloped in comparison.
Furthermore, the length of the front in the East was much longer than in the West. The theatre of war was roughly delimited by the
Baltic Sea in the West and
Moscow in the East, a distance of 1,200 kilometers, and
Saint Petersburg in the North and the
Black Sea in the South, a distance of more than 1,600 kilometers. This had a drastic effect on the nature of the warfare. While World War I on the Western Front developed into
trench warfare, the battle lines on the Eastern Front were much more fluid and Trench War never truly developed. This was because the greater length of the front ensured that the density of soldiers in the line was lower so the line was easier to break. Once broken, the sparse communication networks made it difficult for the defender to rush reinforcements to the rupture in the line to mount a rapid counteroffensive and seal off a breakthrough. In short, on the Eastern front the side defending did not have the overwhelming advantages it had on the Western front.
Because of this, front lines in the East kept on shifting throughout the conflict, and not just near the beginning and end of the fighting, as was the case in the West. In fact the greatest advance of the whole war was made in the East by the German army in the summer of
1915.
At the outbreak of the war, Tsar
Nicholas II appointed his cousin,
Grand Duke Nicholas as commander in chief. Although not without ability, the Grand Duke had no part in formulating the war plans. This led to disaster.
The war in the East began with the Russian Army attempting to invade Germany's
East Prussia province and the Austro-Hungarian province of
Galicia. The first effort quickly turned to a disaster following the
Battle of Tannenberg in August
1914. However, the second incursion was completely successful, with the Russians controlling almost all of Galicia by the fall of
1914. Under the command of
Nikolai Ivanov,
Aleksei Brusilov the Russians won the
Battle of Lemberg in September and began the
Siege of Przemysl, the next fortress on the road towards
Krakow and the Austro-Hungarian border.
This early Russian success in 1914 on the Austro-Russian border was a reason for concern to the Central Powers and caused considerable German forces to be transferred to the East to take pressure off the Austrians, leading to the creation of the new German 9th army. In the fall of
1914 the main focus of the fighting shifted to Central Poland, west of the river Vistula. The October
Battle of the Vistula River and the November
Battle of Łódź brought little advancement for the Germans, but at least kept the Russians at a safe distance.
The Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies continued to clash in and near the
Carpathians throughout the winter of 1914/1915. Przemysl fortress managed to remain unoccupied deep behind enemy lines throughout this period, with the Russians bypassing it in order to attack the Austro-Hungarian troops further to the west. They made some progress, crossing the Carpathians in February and March
1915, but then the Germans sent relief and stopped further Russian advance. In the meantime, Przemysl was almost entirely destroyed and the
siege of Przemysl ended in a defeat for the Austrians.
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The Eastern Front, as of 1917 |
Despite these successes, the effectiveness of the Russian army at the same time rapidly declined as the underdeveloped Russian arms industry proved unable to meet the demands of the front. Furthermore, as the situation on the Western Front stabilized, the German command decided to make its main effort on the Eastern Front in
1915, and accordingly transferred considerable forces there.
To eliminate the Russian threat the Central Powers began the campaign season of
1915 with a successful
Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in Galicia in May of
1915. After the
Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the German and Austro-Hungarian troops in the Eastern Front functioned under a unified command. The offensive soon turned into a general advance and then a strategic retreat by the Russian army. By mid-
1915 the Russians had been expelled from Russian Poland and hence pushed hundreds of kilometers away from the borders of the Central Powers, removing any threat of Russian invasion of Germany or Austria-Hungary.At the end of
1915 the main part of the front reached a line which in general outline did not change until the Russian collapse in
1917.
In
1916 the Russians attempted a large counteroffensive under the leadership of general
Brusilov (
Brusilov Offensive). The attack, aimed against the part of the front held by Austro-Hungarians, was initially a spectacular success. However, a successful counteroffensive by German units halted the Russian attack.Also during
1916, Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente, but was
rapidly conquered by German-Austrian-Bulgarian-Ottoman forces.
By
1917, the Russian economy finally neared collapse under the strain of the war effort. While the equipment of the Russian armies actually improved due to the expansion of the war industry, the food shortages in the major urban centres brought about civil unrest which led to the abdication ot the Tsar and the
February Revolution. The large war casualties also created disaffection and mutinous attitudes in the army, which was fueled by
Bolshevik agitators and the
Russian Provisional Government's new liberalization policies towards the army (stripping officers of their mandate by giving wide sweeping powers to "soldier committees", the abolition of the death penalty). The very last offensive undertaken by the Russian army in the war was the brief and unsuccessful
Kerensky Offensive in July of 1917.
In November of 1917, the Communist
Bolsheviks took power under their leader
Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's new Bolshevik government tried to end to the war but the Germans demanded enormous concessions. Finally, in March,
1918, the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed and the Eastern Front ceased to be a war zone. The Germans were able to transfer some of their divisions to the West, in order to mount an offensive in France in
1918. However, by then the arrival of
American units in Europe was sufficient to offset the German advantage. Even after the Russian collapse about a million German soldiers remained tied up in the East until the end of the war, attempting to run a short-lived addition to the German empire in Europe. In the end, Germany and Austria would end up losing all their captured lands, and more, under the
Treaty of Versailles.
The Russian casualties in the
First World War are difficult to estimate, due to poor quality of available statistics. Some official Russian sources list 775,400 battlefield fatalities. More recent Russian estimates give 900,000 battlefield deaths and 400,000 dead from combat wounds, for a total of 1.3 million dead. This is about equal to casualties suffered by France and Austria-Hungary and about one-third less than those suffered by Germany. When Russia withdrew from the war, 3.9 million Russian POWs were in German and Austrian hands. This by far exceeded the total number of prisoners of war (1.3 million) lost by the armies of Britain, France and Germany combined. Only the Austro-Hungarian army, with 2.2 million POWs, came close.
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WWI Eastern Front Foto.
