The war begins, but with some twists.
Chapter VI: The Great War Begins, 1914.
The European powder keg was about to explode and the fuse would be lit in the Balkans. During a visit to Skopje on June 27th 1914, Prince Regent Alexander was assassinated. The population of Macedonia had a pro-Bulgarian stance, and these sentiments still lingered among the Slav majority despite the harsh behaviour of Bulgarian troops during the occupation in the Balkan Wars. King Peter’s 21 year-old nephew Prince Paul became the new Prince Regent and heir to the throne as the king’s brother and Paul’s father, Prince Arsen, declined. Paul was infuriated by the assassination of his cousin and on his orders the Royal Serbian Army occupied Macedonia, implemented martial law and began carrying out measures tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria was outraged by Serbia’s actions and carried out a partial mobilization of its military, threatening to intervene if the Serbians didn’t cease and desist and carrying out threatening manoeuvres within spitting distance of the border. Belgrade wasn’t impressed as they were certain of Russian backing, but hadn’t counted on Austria-Hungary backing up Sofia. Vienna in turn had carte blanche from its ally Germany because German Emperor Wilhelm II misjudged that “another little Balkan scuffle” couldn’t escalate into a European conflict. More precisely, he didn’t think his Russian cousin Nicholas would go to war to rescue Serbia.
Much of July saw diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain. Serbia rejected demands for international supervision over Macedonia and an international commission to decide its fate, taking into consideration the preferences of the inhabitants. Another suggestion was a plebiscite. The Serbs realized such a commission might well decide in Bulgaria’s favour, same for a plebiscite. They’d rather fight over it, confident the other former members of the Balkans League would join them again to confine Bulgarian aggression. Belgrade had also received assurances from St. Petersburg that Austria-Hungary was highly unlikely to intervene knowing that this would trigger a Russian response. What happened next showed the danger of making assumptions.
After the failure of negotiations, Bulgaria completely broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia and declared war on July 28th, invading Macedonia with 150.000 men. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia two days later and began shelling Belgrade, prompting a total mobilization order to be issued by the Russian Tsar. Germany issued an ultimatum demanding Russia to “cease all war measures against Germany and Austria-Hungary” within twelve hours. There was no response and therefore Germany declared war on Russia and not long thereafter on France too. Britain declared war on Germany once the Germans invaded Belgium as part of the Schlieffen Plan, living up to its commitment to the 1839 Treaty of London that required it to defend Belgian neutrality. By early August, Europe was at war.
On the Eastern Front, the war began in earnest with the Russian invasion of East Prussia. Only ten divisions of the German Eighth Army defended East Prussia. The Battle of Stallupönen on August 17th was indecisive, but a hasty German counterattack was defeated in the Battle of Gumbinnen three days later. Regardless of whatever preparations had been made, however, it still remained that the Germans could not let the historical Prussian capital Königsberg fall into Russian hands. The moral, symbolic and military value (since it was a major military hub) of the city meant to lose it was to invite disaster on the home front, in addition to the strategic ramifications. Also, it was very likely that the Russians would use the upper hand thus gained to use their superior forces to overwhelm the static German defences in Masuria. In short, the Germans had to fight back immediately and force the Russians from East Prussia.
The Russian supply situation was abysmal. Short of food and artillery ammunition and incorrectly believing the Germans were in full retreat, Rennenkampf did not pursue, refitted for a couple days, and lost contact. Instead of sticking to the plan and advancing south-westerly to link up with the Second Army under the command of Samsonov, he instead slowly moved his First Army westward. Under pressure to advance and cut off the supposed German retreat, Samsonov's Second Army outdistanced its supplies, resulting in hungry demoralized troops.
The Eighth Army’s commander Prittwitz panicked when the Russian onslaught entered East Prussia and believed his army would be crushed between the pincers of the two Russian armies (as was the Russian plan). He announced his intention of abandoning East Prussia and move behind the Vistula. Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff from 1906 to 1914 replaced Prittwitz with Paul von Hindenburg (brought out of retirement) on August 22nd. Hindenburg, along with his chief of staff, Ludendorff would approach the crisis in East Prussia very differently though they ultimately would end up being defeated all the same.
The climax would take place at Tannenberg. In contrast to Prittwitz, Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided to take the offensive and encircle Samsonov. Following the plans of Colonel Max Hoffmann, Prittwitz’s deputy chief of operations, they chose to wheel eight of their divisions counter-clockwise to attack Samsonov. They took advantage of interior lines and well-practiced ability to move quickly via the rail roads, as opposed to Russia where 70% of the railroads were still single-tracked (based on that, Russia agreed to have 27 divisions on the front two weeks into the hostilities, 52 within three weeks and 90 divisions within twelve weeks). Despite a total Russian strength of 650.000 vis-à-vis 135.000 German troops, it seemed likely that the Russian Second Army would be crushed, producing a brilliant German victory at Tannenberg.
Fortunately, the Northwest Front’s overall commander General Aleksey Brusilov was an excellent leader. Brusilov recognized that Rennenkampf’s First Army was advancing in the wrong direction and painfully slow at that, plundering East Prussia along the way, and he knew why: Rennenkampf and Samsonov had a personal vendetta dating back to the Russo-Japanese War, which meant the former was satisfied to see the latter go down in flames. Brusilov ordered the First Army to march south as fast as his soldiers’ legs could carry them tout suite. Rennenkampf didn’t want to follow this order, but Brusilov threatened to strip him of his command and have him court-martialled if he failed to comply.
The First Army came to the rescue of the Second Army in time, making the end result of the Battle of Tannenberg (26-30 August) a decisive Russian victory. With 230.000 Russian troops facing 150.000 this wasn’t completely surprising. In the end 10.000 German soldiers were killed in action, 15.000 were injured and another 37.000 were taken prisoner or went missing. Russian losses consisted of 12.000 killed in action, 11.000 injured and a mere 7.000 were taken prisoner. In the aftermath, Hindenburg was forced to abandon East Prussia and withdraw behind the Vistula River.
The loss of East Prussia caused consternation and panic in the circles of court, government and the OHL (
Obere Heeresleitung, Supreme Army Command). Fearing the Russians might cross the Vistula and advance further west to the Oder, five corps were transferred from the Western Front to the Eastern Front, creating the German Ninth Army. The reinforcements were unnecessary as Hindenburg managed to block Russian attempts to cross the Vistula before these forces had even arrived.
It, however, affected the Western Front negatively: the German advance through Belgium, the Retreat from Mons and the Battle of the Frontiers culminated in the Battle of the Marne, which reached the outskirts of Paris. Field Marshal Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), began to plan for a full British retreat to port cities on the English Channel for an immediate evacuation. The military governor of Paris, Gallieni, wanted the Franco-British units to counter-attack the Germans along the Marne River and halt the German advance. Allied reserves would restore the ranks and attack the German flanks. On September 5th, the counter-offensive by six French armies and the BEF began. By September 9th, the success of the Franco-British counteroffensive left the German First and Second Armies at risk of encirclement, and they were ordered to retreat to the Aisne River. The retreating armies were pursued by the French and British, although the pace of the Allied advance was slow: 12 mi (19 km) in one day. The German armies ceased their retreat after 40 mi (65 km) on a line north of the Aisne River, where they dug in on the heights and fought the indecisive First Battle of the Aisne.
Following this German retirement, the opposing forces made reciprocal outflanking manoeuvres, known as the Race for the Sea and quickly extended their trench systems from the Swiss border to the North Sea. The territory occupied by Germany held 64% of French pig iron production, 24% of its steel manufacturing and 40% of the coal industry – dealing a serious blow to French industry. On the Entente side, the final lines were occupied with the armies of each nation defending a part of the front. From the coast in the north, the primary forces were from Belgium, the British Empire and then France. Following the Battle of the Yser in October, the Belgian army controlled a 35 km (22 mi) length of West Flanders along the coast, known as the Yser Front, along the Yser River and the Yperlee canal, from Nieuwpoort to Boesinghe. Meanwhile, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) occupied a position on the flank, having occupied a more central position.
From October 19th until November 22nd, the German forces made their final breakthrough attempt of 1914 during the Battle of Ypres. The Entente turned the tide by repelling the German attack and, with numbers on their side, carried out a counteroffensive from Ypres to Nieuwpoort. French forces commanded by Foch, the BEF under Sir John French and the 80.000 Belgian troops that had managed to withdraw behind the Yser successfully pushed the Germans back to the line Roeselare-Thourout-Gistel just south of Ostend.
Neither side had moved forces to Flanders fast enough to obtain a decisive victory and both were exhausted, short of ammunition and suffering from collapses in morale, with some infantry units refusing orders. The autumn battles in Flanders had quickly become static, attrition operations, unlike the battles of manoeuvre in the summer. The Entente, however, was left in a good position for an offensive to take Ostend in the spring of the next year. The position of the harbour of Ostend on the North Sea made it strategically significant, which the Germans recognized too as they used it as a U-boat base.
Meanwhile, Russian successes on the Eastern Front kept mounting as Austria-Hungary received a serious beating. 1.2 million Russian troops faced 950.000 Austro-Hungarian troops. Knowing the Russians were committed to attack Germany first to help their French ally, Austro-Hungarian commander Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf planned an early advance into southern Poland to cut off the massing Russian armies there. The end result would be a massive defeat.
The plan of Russian commander-in-chief Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich entailed the Southwest Front – composed of the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Armies and under the overall command of Nikolai Ivanov - to counter an anticipated Austro-Hungarian offensive thrusting eastward from Lemberg. The Third and Eighth Armies would mount an offensive into eastern Galicia. The Russians could bring 260 trains a day to their front, compared to the Austro-Hungarian’s 152. Needless to say, the Battle of Galicia was a crushing Russian victory: the Russians lost 225.000 men, 40.000 of those as prisoners of war; the Austro-Hungarians suffered 100.000 fatalities, 220.000 wounded and 130.000 men captured. The Russians then advanced to the Carpathian Mountains, where they could clash with Austro-Hungarian forces throughout the winter of 1914-’15. A besieged speck of Austro-Hungarian territory, the fort of Przemyśl, would hold out for another 133 days until its garrison surrendered on March 22nd 1915.
Austria-Hungary had significantly more success on the Balkans Front. Serbian strength amounted to 420.000 men. They, however, not only faced 462.000 troops from two Austro-Hungarian armies (the Fifth and Sixth) to the north, but a total of 600.000 to the south now that Bulgaria had completed its mobilization. Given that Serbia was at a 5:2 numerical disadvantage, it’s no surprise that Belgrade fell in November after Austro-Hungarian victories at Cer, Drina and Kolubara. At the same time, Bulgaria was victorious at Monastir and Skopje and then swung north and launched an offensive toward Pristina, cutting off a planned Serbian retreat into Albania. Serbia was forced to surrender, but it wasn’t over yet: remnants of the Royal Serbian Army would fight a guerrilla war against enemy occupation until final victory was achieved by the Entente.