Russian victory at Tannenberg/Masurian Lakes

Don Quijote

Banned
The Russians weren't quite the inevitable failure that many think they were. They had successes against Austria-Hungary and the Ottamans in the first half of the war. The average Russian soldier, provided he hadn't been exposed to Socialist propaganda, was a lot more motivated than most Austro-Hungarians were, and the equal of a German.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
The Russians weren't quite the inevitable failure that many think they were. They had successes against Austria-Hungary and the Ottamans in the first half of the war. The average Russian soldier, provided he hadn't been exposed to Socialist propaganda, was a lot more motivated than most Austro-Hungarians were, and the equal of a German.

No they are not and people underestimate just how difficult the East Prussian operation really was. The Russians in August 1914 are clearly better than the Austrians, the French, the British and the Belgians

First, the difficulty for the Russians is that the Lakes force the Russians to split their forces into two flanks which let the Germans grab the central position and attack each army in turn. In each case, the Germans outnumbered the Russians

That said, there are numerous PODs that would allow for a Russian victory

Zhilinsky could have been more aggressive and done better to commit his forces. His poor use of reserve divisions of 1st army (six were left far to the rear), his failure to strip the fortresses and advance, the premature advance of 1st army and the poor placement of 2ndarmy troops (which left about 5 unable to participate in the battle) all were major factors in the defeat

Norman Stone does a good job discussing the problems in TheEastern Front chapter 3

Other smaller PODs which would help would be improved communications or simply sending some aircraft to 1st Army. Aerial patrols would have quickly picked up the German move towards 2nd Army allowing Rennenkampf to advance on the flank dealing the end of the German 8th

The German Francois could actually have followed orders and been out of position and been destroyed.


The military ramifications of a Russian victory are obvious- the Russians would have secured the Vistula (and probably the Oder line) line with reserve units used to mask the German fortresses at Koningsberg and Thorn.

That would allow the remainder to swing south for the much easier attack on Seliesa. The Austrians would be done for- especially if the Russians win by better securing their communications as the same problem allowed Conrad's escape

So the end of September would see the Russians secure on the Carpathian passes and the Vistuala threatening the very heart of Germany and Austria

Politically, the results are equally obvious The Ottomans would not join the war, the Italians and the Romanians would pounce on the Austrians and the war would be over rather quickly
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
So you do not have any sources claiming that there was no feud between the two?

In this case I think I continue to believe the story that there was a feud. Because in the meantime I have been reading about the politics of the Russian army (trying to find an non-hoffmanian source for the feud), and while I could not find other sources for this I did find others describing the disputes albeit not due to a personal feud but in the context of the politics of the Russian army. Rennenkampf was a friend of grand duke Nikolas while Samsonov was a protégé of the war minister Sukhomlinov. The latter tried to modernise the army, and the former tried to sabotage and undermine him at every turn. For instance the duke got the Tsar to cancel war games that were planed by the War minister. Nikolas and Sukhomlinov both had their loyalists which were feuding.

This would be disastrous during when war broke out as both fractions had to be given equal representation, e.g. the two armies in east Prussia got Rennnenkampf (as a partisan of the Duke) and Samsonov (as a supporter of the war minister).

So even if the incident described by Hoffman did not happen there are other reports of a feud between Rennenkampf and Samsonov.

There was a previous (short) thread on this very subject: - https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=258889

I too have recently read (in the last year) that the story of the fierce exchange at Mukden railway station was a myth - believe it was "Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front" by Prit Buttar but will need to check my Kindle copy.
 
I'd like to see the Creveld info if you have it.

Right, Crewald, here is what he has to say about the two corps making it to the Marne. Turns out the bottleneck wasn't the roads per-say, but the time it would take to transport them and march them to the front:

Page 136-137 said:
In 1914, it took 240 trains, with fifty wagons each, to transport two German army corps. Assuming that this many trains were, in fact, available, that all four lines could have been cleared of all other traffic to carry sixty military trains per day, and that there were enough quays to allow the simultaneous loading and unloading of all these trains within short distances from the troops under these ideal conditions, it should have been possible to cover the 150 miles from the Metz-Diedenhoffen area to Aix-la-Chappelle in about four days, en- and disentraining times included. The movement would thus have been completed on the evening of 27 August.

Apart from the obviously impossible demands made above, this calculation assume a clockwork efficiency in carrying out all movements. What is more, it does not take account of the fact that 90,000 troops would have had to cover a considerable area in order to find railway stations capable of handling them. Nevertheless, assuming that they could have left Aix-la-Chapelle on 26 August, the two corps would have had just 13 days to march the 300 miles to the Marne and arrive at the end of the battle there on 9 September. Even if they could have sustained a pace of twenty miles per day, they would have arrived too late.
At this time it was impossible to transport troops forward from Aix-la-Chapelle by rail. Only one double-tracked line was available to 1. and 2. Armies and this could handle only some 24 trains per day, of which 4 were needed for the operation of the railways themselves. To bring up the fighting elements of two corps, 120 trains were required. Even assuming that one-third of the normal traffic along the line had been stopped, the two corps would not have arrived until after the retreat to the Aisne had been completed - this, at a time when Groner was repeatedly warning the armies dependent on the line to reduce their demand for supplies to the indispensible minimum.

It has been suggested that, instead of marching on foot, the two corps might have used motor-lorries to travel at '100 km. a day' to the threatened right wing. To carry the combat units involved, however, no less than 18,000 vehicles would have been needed, and there were only 4,000 available to the German army in 1914. Such an idea was obviously impracticable.

He also does note in the conclusion that:

Page 140 said:
Had the battle [of the Marne] gone in Germany's favour, however, there is every reason to believe that the advance would have still petered out. The prime factors would have been the inability of the railheads to keep up with the advance, the lack of fodder, and sheer exhaustion. In this sense, but in no other, it is true to say that the Schlieffen Plan was logistically impracticable.

Also, I re-read the relevant Keegan pages and it turns out I misremembered: he was discussing a point where Schlieffen, in his "Great Memorandum" that had the final unofficial revision of his plan, added 8 new army corps to the advance in another attempt to strengthen the right wing. What he says:

Page 35-36 said:
Schlieffen yearned for more troops at the decisive point, the right wing of the great wheel though Belgium and northern France: "Still greater forces must be raised... Eight army corps must be raised... We continue to boast of the density of our population, of the great manpower at our disposal; but these masses are now trained or armed to the full number of men they could yield... the eight army corps are most needed on or behind the right wing." Schlieffen urges the creation of these eight corps, an addition of a full quarter to the strength of the army, from the reserves, the Ersatz (untrained contingents) and Landwehr (over-age reservists), even though he apparently shared his brother generals' fear of enlarging the army through the enlistment of unreliable elements. The note of desperation grows stronger: "How many [of the eight corps] can be transported [to the right wing] depends on the capacity of the railways... [they] are needed for the envelopment of Paris... How they advance and the attack on the position are shown on Map 3."

It is at this point that a careful reader of the Great Memorandum recognises a plan falling apart: Map 3 in no way shows how the new corps are to advance or to invest Paris, the central strongpoint of the "great fortress" that was Schlieffen's France. The corps simply appear, with no indication of how they have reached Paris. The "capacity of the railways" is irrelevant; railways, in Schlieffen's plan, were to carry the attackers no further than the German frontier with Belgium and France. Thereafre it was the road network that led forward, and the plodding boots of the infantry that would measure out the speed of advance. Schlieffen himself reckoned that to be only twelve miles a day. In the crisis of August and September 1914, German French, and British units would all exceed that, sometimes day after day-the 1st Gloucestershire Regiment averaged sixteen-and-a-half miles during the great retreat from Mons to the Marne, 24 August-5 September, and covered twenty-three and twenty-one miles on 27 and 28 August respectively-but Schlieffen's mean was not far short of the mark. Von Kluck's army on the out wing of the great wheel achieved a little over thirteen miles a day between 18 August and 5 September 1914, over a distance of 260 miles. For the "eight new corps," needed by SChlieffen as his plan's clinching device, to arrive at the decisive place of action, they would have actually needed to march not only farther and faster, which defied probabilities, but to do so along the same roads as those occupied by the corps already existing, a simple impossibility.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find buried in the text of the Great Memorandum its author's admission that "we are too weak" to bring the plan to a conclusion and, in a later amendment, "on such an extended line we shall still need greater forces than we have so far estimated." He had run into a logical impasse. Railways would position the troops for his great wheel; the Belgian and French roads would allow them to reach the outskirts of Paris in the sixth week from mobilisation day; but they would not arrive in the strength necessary to win a decisive battle unless they were accompanied by eight corps-200,000 men-for which there was no room. His plan for a lightning victory was flawed at its heart.

There is one further thing I should note: Keegan quotes Schlieffen (at the end of the paragraph immediatly before the starting one above) as saying: "if the French give up the Oise and the Aisne and retreat behind the Marne... the war will be endless." So... yeah... that rather speaks for itself, now doesn't it?
 
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Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
There was a previous (short) thread on this very subject: - https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=258889

I too have recently read (in the last year) that the story of the fierce exchange at Mukden railway station was a myth - believe it was "Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front" by Prit Buttar but will need to check my Kindle copy.

All Buttar says is that stories of them coming to blows are "certainly exagerrated"; the dispute arose when Rennenkampf accused Samsonov's unit of not supporting his troops at Mukden.
 
I suspect that Hoffman ( former head of Russian Section in the General Staff) probably has a good idea that relations between Samsonov and Rennenkampf are not the best but he is as said an endless self promoter and vivid writer. And given the way the Russians did not commit forces in the Russo Japanese war its entirely feasible that there was resentment.
However They did have genuine technical problems communicating with each other and with the Front command that make coordination difficult and deviation from plan dangerous when opposed by an agile manoeuvre oriented army like the German,

But the Russians don’t have to win just not lose. The strength of the advance, even on a limited basis is a strategic surprise and forces the German reaction prior to Tannenburg as does the collapse of the AH armies in Galicia. Having intact 1st, 2nd, 10th Russian Armies present on Germany’s eastern border reduces their freedom of action, just a tad.

There is a best case with some fairly minor POD as Kalvert says of a complete Austrian collapse in 1914.

In general the Imperial Russian army has an underserved bad reputation 1914/15. It can be spectacularly incompetent in places but all the accessible histories tend to be written by its enemies (either German or Soviet) and seen in the light of the later collapse.
 
In general the Imperial Russian army has an underserved bad reputation 1914/15. It can be spectacularly incompetent in places but all the accessible histories tend to be written by its enemies (either German or Soviet) and seen in the light of the later collapse.

Sanborn makes some rather convincing arguments about the strong areas and the fundamental flaws of the Russian Army.

In 1914 the operational and strategic level leadership were so badly compromised by political rivalries, unwillingness to learn from past mistakes and lack of cooperation between army-level leaders, that the bravery of the trained and motivated Russian soldiers of 1914-vintage was not enough to save the army. This led to the string of defeats that more or less killed off the trained cadres of the pre-war army, leading to a vicious cycle that slowly destroyed the cohesion and fighting spirit of the army. The fact that Britain and France repeatedly requested Russians to conduct new offensives the Russian Army could ill afford did not help either.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/imperial-apocalypse-9780199642052?cc=fi&lang=en&
 
Keegan is not the best source on WW1, he's much more a Steven Ambrose style historian. I'd like to see the Creveld info if you have it.

Keegan's reputation though is irrelevant if he is directly quoting from Schlieffen no?

EDIT: Oh, you were referring to the clogged roads claim rather than the quotes about Schlieffen. Never mind.
 

Deleted member 1487

There is a best case with some fairly minor POD as Kalvert says of a complete Austrian collapse in 1914.
The Austrians did basically collapse and run away in the Summer of 1914, but logistics and weather saved them from defeat, as the Soviets had the problem of rail gauge changeover at the border and terrible roads, plus September mud that stopped them short of the Carpathians. So it was pretty hard to knock the Austrians out before the Germans reinforced from the west.


In general the Imperial Russian army has an underserved bad reputation 1914/15. It can be spectacularly incompetent in places but all the accessible histories tend to be written by its enemies (either German or Soviet) and seen in the light of the later collapse.
That and the crushing defeats of OTL in 1914-15.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
The Austrians did basically collapse and run away in the Summer of 1914, but logistics and weather saved them from defeat, as the Soviets had the problem of rail gauge changeover at the border and terrible roads, plus September mud that stopped them short of the Carpathians. So it was pretty hard to knock the Austrians out before the Germans reinforced from the west.

Difficult but possible- especially if the Russians had more secured communications. But with a German defeat at Tannenberg, the Germans would have nothing left to spare for the Austrians


Keeping this simple and using smaller tweaks- the Russians replace Zhilinsky with someone competent. The Russian reserves are deployed with first army and the second army's dispositions allow it to commit its full force. Finally, some aircraft are diverted to the Northern front allowing the Russians to pick up the German move towards the 2nd Army. The first Russian army advances against the exposed German flank leading to the collapse of the German army. We'll assume the Austrian front goes OTL

This would leave the Russians free to bring up their own fortress troops to mask the Germans at Koningsberg and Thorn and have a force of 30 divisions on the Vistula. The Germans would have to end their Western offensive and send at least an Army to the East.

At this point, the Russians are in command and could offer the Germans very good terms for an armistice-

The Germans would have little hope of victory
The Russians have no real quarrel with Germany and a Germany strong enough to threaten France would prevent the emergence of a Anglo-French alliance against Russia
Russia would desire the end of Austria

So they offer terms-

Germany pulls out of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace and Lorraine, releases the prisoners and interns her fleet (preferable in a Russian port) and leaves Austria to her fate. In return, Germany can receive compensation from the Germanic areas of Austria
 

BooNZ

Banned
Right, Crewald, here is what he has to say about the two corps making it to the Marne. Turns out the bottleneck wasn't the roads per-say, but the time it would take to transport them and march them to the front:

He also does note in the conclusion that:

My previous reading of Crewald convinced me the reality of logistics meant the 'Schlieffen Plan' was doomed from the start. As such, the 'Schlieffen Plan' was the worst blunder of either world war.
 

Gstbschef

Banned
Would the the Russians have pursued, or turned soouth and attacked Austria-Hungary, a much weaker opponent?


The qualitative power of the Russian army against the Austro-Hungarian army (in WW1 OTL), is directly proportional to (dependent on) the power of mendacity Russian historians and their perseverance.

The proportion of both armies (Austria-Hungary, Germany) in 1915 OTL:
Gorlice Offensive: A-H 65%, G 35%
 
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