Well, we just learne about a bit of WWI in school, but I noticed that there is almost no mention of the Russian front, even though the Russian lost the most in casualties. What were the main battles of the Eastern front?? Who commanded?? etc. etc....

In the battle of Tanneneburg, General Samsonov of the Russians was slaughtered and lost 125,000 men. He shot himself.
In the battle of Masurian Lakes, General Remmenkempf had his army destroyed and lost 100,000.
Both battles were in 1914.
Later, the Russians attacked Austria and made some gains and diverted troops from the battle of Marne. The Germans counterattacked and drove the Russians out.

Ok, here goes - WW1 Eastern Front summary.

OK, assuming your course at least mentioned who declared war on whom, and in what order....

August 1914
Russian forces mobilised and advanced far quicker than German plans had anticipated. As a consequence Austrian units originally destined for the Serbian front, and also later German units destined for the Western Front, were diverted to the Eastern. The former resulted in:
12th August
Austrian forces attack into Serbia, but are badly beaten. In the course of the remainder of 1914 approx 500,000 Austrian troops would fight on the Serbian font; of these almost half would become casualties.
17th August
Russian forces (2 armies) enter East Prussia. Only limited German forces are present to defend the area, the bulk of the German effort being on the Western Front. The Russians were not supposed to attack yet!
18th August
Russian forces under Gen Ivanov enter (Austrian) Galicia.
22nd August
Hindenburg and Ludendorff take over command of German forces in the East. Conrad (Austria) and Ivanov contest the Austro-Russian border area.
30th August
The Battle of Tannenberg reaches a climax; German forces in East Prussia defeat in detail two larger Russian armies, exploiting command rivalries and poor communication security by the Russians. Russian General Samsonov shot himself.
On the Austrian front, however, Ivanov's armie, including the 8th (Gen. Brusilov) drive the Austrians back 200 miles and cause a third of a million casualties to the Austrians.
September 1914
The Russians have retreated from East Prussia, but one of their two armies is in reasonable shape.
The Austrians have lost the fortress-town of Lemberg, and Przemyl is beseiged, with the Russians threatening Silesia.
November 1914
Offensives across the eastern Front. The Germans attack towards Warsaw, but with little success. On the edges of the front the Russians have some success, again invading East Prussia and pushing the Austrians yet further back. But the Russians take horrendous casualties in all these attacks, and begin to suffer the ammunition and equipment shortages that plagued many armies, especially in 1915.

As a consequence of the threat of the Russian forces, and having failed in the West, the Germans decided to make the Eastern Front their primary offensive theatre of 1915...

1915
The newly formed German 11th Army, formed from units taken from the West, and commanded by Mackensen, attacked from the Austrian lines on May 2nd and in two weeks advanced 100 miles; in a month they took 150,000 prisoners.
By August 4th the now-general Eastern Front offensive had taken Warsaw, and on Sept 5th, with Brest-Litovsk having also fallen, the Czar took personal command of the Russian armies. The Germans and Austrians tried some further attacks, but could not press the Russians much more, and indeed suffered increasing casualties in so doing.
Overall in 1915 the Germans and Austrians advanced about 300 miles, took 3,000 guns and 1,000,000 prisoners, with another million or so casualties also inflicted on the Russians. This is generally called the Gorlice-Tarnow campaign.
However these victories were not without their cost, and the casualties suffered by the Austrians, in particular, would be nearly as crippling as those of the Russians.

On oher 'eastern' fronts, although not the 'true' Eastern Front:

Italy chose to "rush to the aid of the victors", attacking Austria in the first four battles of the Isonzo (river). 250,000 casualties were incurred by Italy for little gain.

Bulgaria sided with the Central Powers, declaring war on Sept 6th. Attacked on all sides, the Serbian front collapsed and the remnants of her army were evacuated from the Albanian coast, to find refuge on Corfu.

1916
This year the major German effort would be in the West - Falkenhayn's attempt to bleed the French army white at Verdun.

In May the Austrians attacked into Italy, along the Trentino. Despite initial success, no breakthrough was made, and the result was in the end more casualties the Austrians could not afford to take.
While this attack was petering out, on June 4th the Russians launched the remarkable 'Brusilov offensive', under the command of the general of that name. Attacking along a wide front the rejuvenated Russian army swept the Austrians away, taking almost half a million prisoners by the campaign's end in September. Once again, this success came at a heavy price, something like another million Russian casualties. If the Austrians could not afford the butcher's bill of the Trentino, nor could the Russians pay this one.
As German reserves were drawn the attack gradually drew to a close. Displaying quite atrocious timing the Romanians choose to await the end of the offensive before declaring for the Allies in August. Swiftly overcome by German, Austrian and Bulgarian forces, Romania played little further part in the war.

1917
The winter of 1916-17 was grim across Europe, but probably nowhere more so than in Russian. On March 8th 1917 bread riots broke out in Petrograd (St Petersburg). On March 15th the Czar was forced to abdicate, although it appeared that 'liberals' controlled the government. The Russians even attempted to continue the war, launching the so-called 'Kerensky offensive' (after the Minister for War in the Provisional government), on July 1st. But despite some initial successes German reinforcements soon arrived, and then began an unending series of German victories, with their artillery orchestrated by the brilliant Bruchmuller, which were to bring down the Russian empire.
Transported into Russia with German connivance, the Russian revolutionary Lenin was to overthrow the Provisional Goverment in November, and from that point on the Eastern Front ceased to be significant in the context of the war, although it would be early 1918 before the Russians would agree to the stringent terms of a German peace treaty.

Of course, in a sense the war continued on the Eastern front through to 1919, at least; depending on how one counts the Russian Civil War, the various Allied interventions, and the Russian-Polish war.

Nice summary, thanks!

How was the actual fighting on the ground conducted? I heard that trench warfare was used in the east as well as the west but the distances you mentioned the various advances seem too great to imply any kind of static warfare.

The battles in the East IIRC were far more mobile. Static trenches simply weren't viable as the distances were too great and with Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia sharing long direct borders, with no 'neutral' states betw them. Lots of marching around.

So more about set-piece battles in the old style?

Originally posted by Rodgers
So more about set-piece battles in the old style?

If you mean "like Waterloo", in as much as one can identify a specific location for each battle which is a small(ish) area, with the battle genrally fought to a resolution in one or two days, not really. Even if one were to consider the whole Ligny-Quatre Bras-Waterloo campaign to be one 'battle', then one would not approach the sheer scale of the battles of WW1.

Essentially the eastern Front retained, for much of the war, the characteristics of the Western Front in August and September 1914; a relatively fluid battlefield, where the force density was not so great as to permit total coverage of the front with significant forces. Therefore the possibility remained far more on the East of manoeuvring to attack or to expose a flank, and the continuous trench systems of the Western Front could not have been manned with the forces at hand.

But the inherent power of the defensive remained true; any important place could be held by field fortifications and taken only with great loss in frontal assault. And the ability of each side to move reinforcements quickly to a threatened sector by rail also was present, although the rail nets in Austro-Hungary and Russia were of course less well developed than in France.

It would be better to compare the Eastern Front of WW1 to the set piece battles of WW2. One could draw a parallel between Alamein or Kursk say, and the opening of the Gorlice-Tarnow campaign; a major artillery assault, a relatively restricted battle area (although by no means a battlefield), followed by exploitation of the victory if/when won. The critical difference in the east was the absence of reserves and reserve mobility of the same order as on the Western Front. Similar successes in Western Front set piece battles yielded small gains only, as the enemy reserves stemmed the attack. In the east reserves were thinner on the ground, and could not be so easily fed into the battle, so it was easier to exploit the attacks when successful.

One important note, though: despite the greater fluidity of the Eastern Front the casualties were no less than on the Western. Therefore one should not look to the specific conditions of the Western Front, or to any specific tactics tried there, to explain the casualty lists. The simple gruesome arithmetic was that each alliance had reserves of millions of military age men, and the industrial capability to furnish them arms, and the political will to continue to do so. Whether the Western Front remained stubbornly static, or whether it had ranged back and forth as did that on the East, the result would in all likelihood have been the same; until men were killed and maimed by the million, no-one was prepared to consider peace.

So I supposed cavalry was still used more frequently? I was alway wondering what the Austrian army did for the war, but now I know.... thanks for the info

Nice summary MadScot!

Globber wrote:

So I supposed cavalry was still used more frequently? I was alway wondering what the Austrian army did for the war, but now I know.... thanks for the info

Cavalry played a critical role on the Eastern Front, and indeed would still be used in large numbers in the 2nd World War 22 years later right up to the end in 1945. The Western Front was fought in a very focused region that happened to be bounded by heavy forests and several river systems, but the Eastern Front was fought across a massive area consisting mostly of plains - with the single exception of the opening battles in Mazuria, which ended with the Tannenberg debacle. Another problem facing armies in the East was infrastructure, or the very bad quality thereof: For example, in Poland at the time (which was occupied since 1795 by Russia, Prussia and Austria) there were multiple rail gauges in use which meant a train had to stop each time it encountered a different size gauge, be pulled apart and re-assembled in the new size each time. In the West trains and major roadways played a major role in deploying armies but in the East trains were a hindrance because of this lack of a standard gauge and roads only reliable certain times of the year - and that's where there were roads. Horses were more reliable for transport and intelligence-gathering.

Because of its vast size compared to the Western Front, the "Eastern Front" was really a series of fronts:

1. The Russo-German front in East Prussia and Poland

2. The Austro-Russian Front in Galicia

3. The Austro-Serbian (later Austro/Bulgaro-Allied) front in the Balkans (at Salonika after 1915)

4. After 1916 and a particularly nasty 2 week period, a Romanian-German front opened that settled in Bukovina and Iasi.

5. On occasion, the Austro-Italian front threatened to spill into Istria and Dalmatia.

6. After the Russian Revolutions, sporadic new fronts opened within Russia, as for instance between the renegade Czech legion and Hungarian POWs along the Siberian railway.

"After the Russian Revolutions, sporadic new fronts opened within Russia, as for instance between the renegade Czech legion and Hungarian POWs along the Siberian railway."


Sorry but that is too interesting to just leave dangling like that - can you tell me more??

Originally posted by Rodgers
"After the Russian Revolutions, sporadic new fronts opened within Russia, as for instance between the renegade Czech legion and Hungarian POWs along the Siberian railway."


Sorry but that is too interesting to just leave dangling like that - can you tell me more?? Well, IIRC, the Russians had captured a whole lot of Austrian soldiers, Czechs and so on. When the Revolution broke out, somehow these POWs got free and seized control of part of the Trans-Siberian line. They fought against the Reds I believe.

Also the Japanese landed troops and controlled part of the far eastern Siberia for a time at least. ;) The other great powers too landed troops and occupied various parts of the old Russian empire - specifically the British, French and Americans.

K-D wrote:

quote:
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Originally posted by Rodgers
"After the Russian Revolutions, sporadic new fronts opened within Russia, as for instance between the renegade Czech legion and Hungarian POWs along the Siberian railway."

Sorry but that is too interesting to just leave dangling like that - can you tell me more??
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Well, IIRC, the Russians had captured a whole lot of Austrian soldiers, Czechs and so on. When the Revolution broke out, somehow these POWs got free and seized control of part of the Trans-Siberian line. They fought against the Reds I believe.

Also the Japanese landed troops and controlled part of the far eastern Siberia for a time at least. The other great powers too landed troops and occupied various parts of the old Russian empire - specifically the British, French and Americans.

K-D beat me to it. Many Czechs who had "defected" to the West through the Italian front began actively recruiting among Czech Austro-Hungarian army POWs in Russia, and when the Russian Revolutions broke out they were able to organize. Their first concern was getting out of Russia and back to the Czech lands (which Masaryk and Benes were trying to get recognized as a new country), but the war precluded their taking the simple westward route. The critical moment came when, as they were moving east to Vladivostok to get transport back to Europe, when they slammed into Hungarian POWs along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Battles broke out, and they ended up seizing the rail line. The Western powers were undecided about what to do with the Czech legion and how to use them; i.e., against the Germans, or against the Bolsheviks, etc. The Czech legion occasionally cooperated with one or another of the "White" Russian armies but was just as likely to fight them. As K-D mentioned, the Allies entered Russia from the east and north ostensibly in an effort to save the legion but the mission became bogged down in the civil war, and they eventually withdrew achieving little. (Soviet propaganda portrayed this as a massive Western invasion but the military forces involved were tiny.) The Russian revolutions and civil war distorted relationships, so weird alliances were formed like the Allies asking lingering German soldiers in Latvia to push the Bolsheviks out after the war. The Czech legion did eventually filter back to the new Czechoslovakia, and they would be a powerful political influence in Czech politics for the next couple decades.