What Was Russia Trying to Accomplish with Its 1914 Campaign?

Russian Infantry, 1914

Stephen Walsh, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

The scale of the fighting on the Eastern Front in 1914 is reasonably familiar, but the Russian campaign of 1914, apart from Tannenberg, is poorly understood. The Russian Army’s military strategy, the choices it made, what it was trying to achieve, why and how, are not well known. This article will analyse Russian strategy and operations in a thematic rather than narrative manner, placing the Russian conduct of operations in the context of Russian military thinking at the time. It will argue that the relative importance of the East Prussian and Galician Operations has been misunderstood, especially the Russian operations in northern Galicia. In late August 1914, the Russian Army faced strategic catastrophe on the entire Eastern Front,  because of events in not East Prussia but in northern Galicia, where the chronic lack of correlation between ends and means in Russian military strategy became acute. 

Russian Cavalry

The main strategic objectives of the Russian Army in August 1914 were to divert German forces from the west and defeat the Austrians in Galicia. Stavka and the French Army believed an invasion of eastern Germany would draw substantial German forces on to the Russians, thereby relieving the French and increasing the Triple Entente’s chances of defeating the Schlieffen Plan. In order to achieve this, Stavka tried to manufacture a third operation in August 1914, even though the Russian Army was already committed to the East Prussian and Galician Operations. The East Prussian Operation was an operational means to a strategic end dominated by the compass needle of the French alliance. The Day 15 deadline committed the Russian "steamroller" to a sprint but robbed it of the means to create the strategic and operational momentum that was its greatest asset. It was this chronic failure of strategic and operational thinking that lay at the heart of the failure of the East Prussia Operation in August 1914.

Junior Officers in the Trenches

In Galicia, the Russians teetered on the edge of strategic and operational disaster before securing a decisive victory over the Austrians. The northern sector of the Galician Operation, not East Prussia, was the Russian centre of gravity, the essential point, around which the Russian strategic plan revolved. It was the brush with catastrophe in northern Galicia, not 2nd Army’s defeat in East Prussia, that rescued Russian strategy from its more fanciful aspirations and resolved, albeit temporarily, the dilemmas that plagued Russian strategy. In November 1914, the invasion of eastern Germany, the operation that distorted, influenced and undermined Russian strategy, flattered to deceive but fizzled out against fierce German resistance. It was a strategic gamble to capitalise on an opportunity that never presented itself again, and in December 1914, the Russians conceded western Poland.

Anywhere on the Eastern Front

In August 1914, the Russian Army, whatever Russia’s political aims, confronted strategic objectives that were too ambitious, with insufficient forces to achieve them but too many troops to supply. The story of the Russian campaign in 1914 is one of a strategic failure to correlate ends and means: rapid victories were necessary to gain strategic and operational success, but the Russian Army did not have the means to sustain such operations. The vast bloody campaigns of 1914 took a terrible toll on Russia, inflicting 1.2 million casualties. [The war was entered to maintain tsarist Russia’s status as a great power, but it eventually destroyed the empire.]

Source: British Journal for Military History, February 2016