The Campaign in Russian Poland 6

The Campaign in Russian Poland 6

After about an hour and a half’s brisk fusillade, which was but weakly

replied to, the Germans advanced, fearlessly and without further

precautions, under the impression that their enemy had withdrawn. But

on crossing the frontier-line into Russian territory, their feelings

became too much for them, and, preluded by loud shouts of “Hoch!” they

sang with fervour their familiar _Die Wacht am Rhein_. At that moment

the Russians, who had remained carefully sheltered by their trenches

all the time, poured in a deadly rifle-fire, backed by the immediate

charge of a sotnia of Cossacks. Taken at a disadvantage and utterly

surprised, it was said that not a man of the German force survived to

recross the border.

 

The German Emperor’s beautiful hunting-box at Rominten near Insterburg,

where he had been wont to sojourn every autumn for the shooting of elk

and other big game, fell into Russian hands. The following humorous

extract is from a letter written home by one of the officers who had

the good fortune to be temporarily quartered amid such luxurious

surroundings:

 

“After a series of terrible battles, we are reposing on William’s

magnificent estate. Undreamt-of beauty is all round us. The place is

splendidly equipped, so that we have at our disposal everything we

could wish for, and we are riding his celebrated horses, and enjoying

delicious dinners prepared by his man cook. Especially beautiful is the

park, with its glorious shady avenues. It swarms with rare animals, and

birds are flying free everywhere. By the way, our soldiers have caught

a William parrot in the park. It speaks excellent German, but our men

are teaching it their own language, and it is learning to address its

Imperial master with compliments I should blush to repeat in company.”

 

Another isolated but interesting incident of this Prusso-Polish

frontier fighting was the destruction near Mlawa, on September 5, of

the Zeppelin airship Z 5,--the second Zeppelin known to have been

brought down in this region since the commencement of hostilities.

The Z 5 had been cruising in the neighbourhood for several days, and

it was not until the date mentioned that her movements were observed

to be growing very irregular and uncertain. She tried hard to shape a

course for her own frontier, but finally collapsed in some fields. It

was then found that her envelope had been literally riddled by Russian

bullets. Her crew managed, however, to blow up the airship, whose

commander, severely wounded, requested to be placed out of sight behind

a haystack, so that he “might not witness the end of his dear Zeppelin.”

 

A possible explanation of Von Hindenburg’s advance to the Niemen

was that the German General Staff hoped by a serious threat in this

direction to lead the Russians to diminish the pressure upon Galicia

in order to reinforce their right. At the time of the operations

Colonel Shumsky, perhaps the best-known military writer in Russia,

pointed this out, and at the same time suggested that the menace from

East Prussia could have no serious result. “Will the Germans,” he

asked, “compel us to abandon the operations in the Carpathians and

throw our forces across to the Niemen, or shall we compel the Germans

to restrict their activity on the Niemen, and fling themselves into

Cracow and Galicia to save Austro-Hungary? The advance of the Germans

from East Prussia cannot have any decisive object. A lightning-like

stroke could only be delivered if the Germans were finished with France

and could move all their forces against us.”

 

It appears that something was done to draw reinforcements from the

western theatre of war for the German armies on the Polish frontier.

Reserve and Landwehr troops organised since the declaration of war were

moved in the same direction, and, according to Russian estimates of a

subsequent date, by the end of September the Germans had concentrated

twelve army corps of about 400,000 men on the frontier in the centre

about Thorn and Posen. It appears, however, that at the time the

Russian Staff did not realise that this formidable concentration was

in progress, and thought that their opponents were putting forth their

chief efforts on the two flanks of the long curved line northwards--for

the struggle in East Prussia, and southwards for the defensive campaign

in Galicia.

 

The Germans, however, were preparing for a serious stroke in the

centre of the Polish theatre of war, and, despite his failure on the

Niemen, the chief command of this great effort was entrusted to General

Hindenburg. The fame he had acquired by his expulsion of the enemy from

East Prussia had only been slightly overclouded by the defeat on the

Niemen, and it was thought that the German generals in East Prussia

could be safely left to defend against Rennenkampf’s farther advance

through the wilderness of forest, marsh, and lake which forms the

natural barrier along the frontier of the province.

 

The German plan was to abandon the mere passive defence of their

frontiers, assume the offensive, and strike a blow directly against

Warsaw and the group of fortresses beyond the Vistula that form the

citadel of the Russian power in Poland. The German armies were to

advance from the borders of the provinces of Posen and Silesia in

a converging march upon Warsaw. The left column from Thorn was to

advance along the south bank of the great bend of the Vistula which

runs north-westward from Novo Gorgievsk by Plock. The central column

from the Posen frontier was to march on Lowicz and the great factory

town of Lodz--after Warsaw the largest place in Poland--the third

column, which had already occupied Czenstochowa, just inside the

Russian frontier towards Silesia, was to protect the flank of the

advance and march on the Vistula in the direction of Ivangorod. A

fourth column was to march on Kielce, forming the link with an Austrian

advance through Northern Galicia towards the river San, which was

intended to reoccupy Jaroslav and raise the siege of Przemysl.

 

The country through which the line of advance lay was the undulating

Polish plain, a district with many clumps and belts of forest, and

almost destitute of good roads. Once the weather broke, at the end

of autumn, much of the ground would be reduced to a marshy condition

that would make it impassable until the first frost of winter hardened

it again. The German Staff hoped to carry through the campaign while

the region was everywhere practicable, and, even if Warsaw were not

captured, to make the Vistula their line of defence, where, having

secured the railways behind them, they might hope to hold their own on

a front shorter by many hundred miles than the long curving frontier of

their own territory.

 

It was expected that the first movement into the Polish plain would

have the result of forcing the enemy not only to abandon the advance

already begun towards Cracow, but to evacuate a considerable part

of the ground they had overrun in Galicia, and at the same time to

withdraw some of their forces from the East Prussian border. German

reports went to show that the enemy had no large forces in the country

between the middle Vistula and the Posen-Thorn frontier. The first

stage of the German advance would, therefore, not be likely to meet

with any very serious opposition.

 

Why, it may be asked, had not the Russian military authorities taken

fuller precautions, in the earlier days of the war, for safeguarding

the Polish territory from invasion and spoliation? Why had not the

immensely long and valuable line of the river Vistula in particular

been occupied in heavy force at the time of the mobilisation in

August? A semi-official statement of mid-October replied definitely

to these criticisms. It was pointed out that the consideration was

a purely military one. It was a fundamental rule of warfare to

sacrifice everything of lesser importance to the main issue. Thus,

the first “impudent invasion” from the German side had demanded a

large transfer of troops. Next the Austrian concentration in Galicia,

and their attack in the Lublin district, had needed a big force in

that quarter. Thirdly, the invasion by way of Eastern Prussia had

required substantial means to deal with and crush it. “This temporary

victimisation of the Vistula district is the outcome of a praiseworthy

decision of our strategy. Now the situation is different, and strategic

and other aims coincide upon the Vistula until the enemy has been

finally beaten.”

 

Intense enthusiasm was aroused throughout Russia by the announcement

that the Tsar would proceed in person to the fighting area. In front

of the Winter Palace at Petrograd, thousands of students and others

paraded and demonstrated in honour of their “Little Father,” as well as

to celebrate news of the victories in Galicia and East Prussia.

 

The German columns met with little resistance in their advance across

the Polish plain. Lodz was occupied, and the two northern columns

gained touch east of the town and advanced on a wide front between the

northern bend of the Vistula and its tributary, the Pilitza, their

objective being Warsaw. The right moved forward through Kielce and

Radom against Ivangorod. According to German accounts, the advancing

armies were joined by large numbers of the peasants, who welcomed them

as deliverers; but the Russian story is that the people fled in terror

before the invaders.

 

We have to depend during the war for our news of what is happening in

Poland almost entirely upon Russian accounts official and non-official.

The German wireless reports give only the briefest outline of the

official view of the situation taken at Berlin, and these reports are

often cut down by our own censorship. The few reports from Berlin that

were allowed to be published in England contained, it is true, some

references to a victorious advance of the Austro-German armies into

Poland in the first days of October. But, at the time, these were

treated as fictitious claims of success, for it seemed strange that, in

the numerous telegrams that came from Russian sources, there was not

a word of any important events in the central theatre of war. Official

news told of fighting on the East Prussian border and in Galicia,

and non-official reports were full of detailed statements as to the

complete collapse of the Austrians, an invasion of Hungary through the

Carpathians, attacks upon Przemysl that had reduced the fortress to

desperate straits, and steady progress in the direction of Cracow.

 

It was, therefore, a surprise to every one when, towards the end of

the second week in October the official bulletin from St. Petersburg

admitted that Von Hindenburg had forced his way up to the left bank

of the middle Vistula and overrun all Western Poland--this, too, at

a time when all the rest of Europe believed that the Germans were

still on the frontiers of Poland and Galicia, and busy preparing the

fortresses of Thorn and Posen for a siege. It was afterwards explained

that the Russian retirement to the Vistula was a deliberate “strategic”

movement intended to lure the Germans to destruction. But it is fairly

certain that the Russians had sent such large masses of men northwards

and southwards for the operations in East Prussia and Galicia, besides

providing for an army they were concentrating on the Black Sea coast

and the Caucasus, that their forces in Central Poland had been