Walls Closing In : The First World War: December 1914-April 1915

By Frank B. Whelan III

This book is the third in a series that summarizes World War I for general readers. The author's first two books---Explosion and Roll of the Dice---respectively covered the events leading to the war's outbreak and the conflict's first four months (August to November 1914). Walls Closing In addresses the period of Decem

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francis Bernard Whelan III
• Release date: Sep 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087991665

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cover-image, Walls Closing In

WALLS CLOSING IN

The First World War:

December 1914 –April 1915

Frank B. Whelan III

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, such as electronic, mechanical, magnetic, photographic (including photocopying), recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors and omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Copyright © 2021 by Frank B. Whelan III

ISBN 978-4958-0121-1

Printed in the United Stated of America

CONTENTS

PREFACE……………………………………………..…..…

KEY FIGURES………………………………………………

THE CENTRAL POWERS’ DILEMMA AND A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE LAND WAR THROUGH NOVEMBER 1914

A. The Odds Against the Central Powers………………

B. German Strategic Ideas for Fighting a Two-Front War………………………………………………..…

C. German Failure in the West; Austrian Disaster in the East…………………………………………….….…

THE CENTRAL POWERS’ MILITARY STRATEGY FOR 1915

A. The West, the East, or Serbia?………………………

B. The Eastern Clique Pushes Back………….….….….

C. Falkenhayn Under Siege……………………….……

D. Continued German, Austrian, and Turkish Strategic Planning…………………………………………..…

THE ENTENTE’S MILITARY STRATEGY FOR 1915

A. The Situations of Britain, France, and Russia………

B. Westerners and Easterners …………….…..……

C. Russia: Northwest or Southwest?…………..……….

THE FIGHTING IN THE WEST AND THE MIDDLE EAST FROM DECEMBER THROUGH EARLY APRIL

A. The Western Front…………………………………

B.  The Turkish Front…………………………………

THE WAR AT SEA: GERMANY UNLEASHES SUBMARINE WARFARE

GERMANY’S EFFORTS TO REACH A SEPARATE PEACE WITH RUSSIA OR FRANCE

ITALY CONSIDERS MILITARY INTERVENTION

EMERGENCY IN THE EAST: FALKENHAYN

ALTERS HIS STRATEGY

MAPS……………………………………………………

WORKS CITED…………………………………………

PREFACE

This book is the third in a series that summarizes the First World War for general readers. The first book, Explosion: The Outbreak of World War I, outlined the events leading up to the conflict. The second book, Roll of the Dice, discussed the war’s first four months. Walls Closing In addresses the period of December 1914 through April 1915.

As with Roll of the Dice and future books in this series, Walls Closing In focuses more on broader topics—such as strategic military planning and diplomacy—than on the specifics of particular battles. It also does so largely from the perspectives of Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Habsburg Empire, or simply Austria). Indeed, the general theme of Walls Closing In is the deterioration in the German-Austrian alliance’s (the Central Powers) military and diplomatic situations in early 1915.

A few portions of this book are taken nearly verbatim from Roll of the Dice. I apologize for this repetition. For readers to fully understand the war situation in early December 1914, however, a discussion of how things got to that point is necessary.

Our narrative begins in July 1914 with the decaying Habsburg Empire determined to crush her small southern neighbor, Serbia, the country that Vienna held responsible for the June 28 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg throne. Austria believed that only harsh, decisive action against the Serbs would restore her prestige and preserve her existence. Germany wholeheartedly supported her main ally and urged her to take powerful measures against Serbia. Berlin felt that Austria’s collapse would leave Germany isolated and alone in the face of what Berlin believed was a hostile coalition of Russia, France, and Britain.

The Austro-Serbian crisis rapidly escalated in late July, and at its culmination Germany and Austria found themselves at war with Russia, France, and England (the Entente powers), who combined had substantially more manpower and material resources than the Austro-German pact. Knowing this, and recognizing that the Central Powers were ill-equipped to fight (much less win) a lengthy war of attrition against the Entente, Germany implemented her pre-war military plan that aimed to quickly defeat her enemies in Western Europe (the West) so as to turn an attritional two-front war into a much more manageable one-front war against Russia in the East. The plan was an enormous gamble. It promised rich rewards if successful. Failure, however, could leave Germany and her feeble Habsburg ally overmatched and destined for defeat.

KEY FIGURES

For Christy

"Where are we headed?

Never victories; always defeats."

Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II

December 1, 1914

I

THE CENTRAL POWERS’ DILEMMA AND A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE LAND WAR THROUGH NOVEMBER 1914

A. The Odds Against the Central Powers

W

hen examining the relative strengths of the two warring coalitions in early August 1914, the Austro-German pact’s chances of victory appeared minimal for several reasons.

One involved manpower. The approximate populations of the five combatant Great Powers were as follows: Germany-65 million; Austria-51 million; France-40 million; Britain-46 million; and Russia-167 million. This gave the Entente an advantage of 253 million to 116 million (or a nine-to-four preponderance). Adding Serbia (4.5 million), Belgium (7.5 million), and Britain’s principal English-speaking dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—19 million combined) to the Entente side resulted in a nearly five-to-two advantage. The superiority in population was reflected on the battlefield. The Entente and its allies began the war with a 246-to-158 advantage in army divisions. ¹ They had at least 10 million men in the service by early September, whereas the Central Powers had a little over seven million. This roughly three-to-two Entente edge was made greater because (1) Russia had an enormous population from which to draw more military manpower and (2) Britain’s small pre-war army had room to grow much larger. ² The second reason was the weakness of the Habsburg Empire. Although technically still one of Europe’s Great Powers, she had many flaws. For starters, the Empire consisted of two virtually independent states, Austria and Hungary. The two shared a common monarchy, foreign ministry, and army, but in practically all other areas they governed themselves; each, for instance, had its own prime minister and parliament. ³ Hungary was fiercely protective of its rights and interests, even establishing its own industries so that it could remain as economically independent from Austria as possible. ⁴ Indeed, Austria-Hungary never reached her full economic potential because the two states failed to sufficiently integrate their respective economies and resources. This was not all. The Habsburg realm’s army was nowhere near as well-trained, well-led, or well-organized as Germany’s. The Empire simply had not devoted the human and financial resources to her military that other Great Powers had, in part because Austria and Hungary often disagreed on the appropriate military budget; to illustrate, before the war only 20 percent of the Empire’s liable young men had received military training—far lower than Germany’s 50 percent and France’s 85 percent. ⁵ Both states agreed, of course, on the need to preserve Austrian and Hungarian control of the Empire. But they remained divided on many other things, and there was frequent tension between them.

Also problematic was that the Empire was comprised solely of minorities. Not even the ruling Austrians and Hungarians constituted a preponderance of the population of their respective states. Austrians (of German origin) represented merely one-third of Austria’s total population; the rest of Austria consisted mostly of Ruthenes, Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, and Italians. ⁶ The figure was somewhat higher for the Hungarians, but they still constituted only about 40 percent of Hungary’s population. ⁷ True, many of the Habsburg realm’s non-Austrian and non-Hungarian minorities were at least modestly loyal to the Empire as a whole and to the octogenarian Emperor Franz Josef I in particular. Yet they wanted more autonomy and were irritated at being ruled by two nationalities that were themselves minorities in their own states. Given the Empire’s large number of ethnic groups, there were fears in Vienna that some of them would eventually revolt against Austro-Hungarian domination and even the Habsburg realm itself.

In short, the Empire’s delicate ethnic and political framework restricted her ability to become a real economic and military power. The Empire was not as strong as she once was, and many in Vienna, Berlin, and elsewhere wondered how much longer she could survive.

Austria’s weakness was made worse for Berlin in August 1914 because Germany had no one else to turn to. Her other allies, Italy and Romania, had declined to enter the war alongside the Central Powers and effectively remained neutral. Whereas the British, French, and Russians each had two very strong allies to assist them, Germany was stuck with the frail Habsburg realm. Berlin would therefore have to bear a very disproportionate share of the Austro-German pact’s war effort against the enormously powerful Entente coalition.

A third reason involved the material means of war fighting. To be sure, as substantial as the population differential between the two alliances was, the disparity in economic and industrial capacity—thanks to Germany’s prowess in these areas—was less considerable. In 1913, for example, Britain, France, Russia, and Belgium produced about 22.8 million metric tons of pig iron; Germany and Austria produced around 18.5 million. ⁸ That same year, the Entente’s edge in coal production was only about 390 million metric tons to 330 million, and the two sides’ respective outputs of crude steel were roughly the same. ⁹ Germany had amazing industrial might. She individually out-produced by a significant margin every other European Great Power in many categories.

But the Central Powers’ problem was this: the British navy, which was the world’s foremost. England would undoubtedly attempt to cut off the Central Powers’ access to the seas via naval blockade. This could devastate the Austro-German pact’s war effort. Germany, for instance, imported from America almost all of her cotton, 60 percent of her copper, and 75 percent of her mineral oils. ¹⁰ She also imported rubber, manganese, tin, and many other crucial materials by sea. ¹¹ As for food, Germany herself could supply 75 to 80 percent of her needs, but the remainder had to be imported—as did large quantities of the fertilizers needed to grow her food. ¹² The Habsburg Empire was generally self-sufficient in food. ¹³ However, this depended in large part on Hungarian cooperation, for Hungary held much of the Empire’s agriculture. Hungary in wartime might withhold food from Austria to extract concessions from the latter. ¹⁴ Also, though the Empire had deposits of important natural resources, many materials had to be imported via sea. Moreover, she lacked the economic and industrial wherewithal of Germany and Britain. With these material and economic deficiencies—combined with her dual-state status and multi-ethnic makeup that could make it difficult for her to centralize, coordinate, and organize her war effort—the Habsburg realm was poorly-equipped to fight a lengthy world conflict. And while the Central Powers were blockaded, Britain (with her control of the seas) would have continued access to the vast resources of her territories (such as India) and to all overseas markets—particularly America, which had the world’s largest economy and was absolutely overflowing with goods and materials. Furthermore, with both Russia and France strong agricultural nations and England able to import what she needed, the Entente’s food situation was bound to be better than that of the Central Powers. To summarize, Germany’s military and industrial strength would probably enable the Central Powers to at least hold their own against the Entente in the war’s early stages. But if the conflict dragged on, the Entente’s manpower superiority, access to materials, and blockade of the Central Powers could wear down and defeat the Austro-German pact. A long, attritional war was not in the Central Powers’ interests, something that many German generals well understood.

B. German Strategic Ideas for Fighting a Two-Front War

In the 1870s and 1880s, the German army’s chief of the general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, faced a difficult question: how should Germany conduct a future two-front war against Russia and France? He believed that Germany lacked the strength to attack and defeat Russia and France simultaneously. He thus concluded that Germany should strike one enemy while temporarily remaining on the defensive against the other. He felt that Russia should be Germany’s initial target for offensive operations. ¹⁵ Not only did he want to assist Austria’s armies against the Russians but also he believed that there were better opportunities for offensive success in the East than in the West. ¹⁶ He surmised that: (1) Russia’s presumably slow mobilization of her armies (given the country’s enormous size) and poor transportation systems (such as railways) would hinder her ability to stop a German assault; and (2) the wide-open spaces of the East would give German armies plenty of room in which to maneuver. ¹⁷ Conversely, Moltke’s reluctance to invade France via neutral Belgium and Holland left the Franco-German border—with its relatively short length, difficult terrain, and strong French fortresses—as the only path of invasion in the West. This made France’s east-central frontier a far less inviting attack route than those available in the East. Moltke therefore preferred to initially fight on the defensive against the French.

Moltke believed that because of the immense size of modern armies, future European wars would probably not be decided in a single battle or campaign; rather, wars would be lengthy, attritional, drawn-out affairs. ¹⁸ He thus felt it would be very hard for Germany to annihilate Russia’s armies, conquer large swaths of Russian territory, or so completely defeat Russia that Berlin could dictate peace terms to her. ¹⁹ Instead, he merely sought to push back Russia’s forces far enough to (1) ease the pressure on Germany and Austria, (2) facilitate a peace deal with the Russians, and (3) enable Germany to then focus on France and, hopefully, achieve similar (but, as in the East, likely less than overwhelming) military success in the West. ²⁰ Germany, in other words, would simply strive to inflict enough damage on her enemies such that she could make peace with them on terms reasonably favorable to Berlin. ²¹ In Moltke’s view, this was the best that Germany could hope for; she was not strong enough to do more.

General Alfred von Schlieffen became chief of the German general staff in 1891. In his war planning, he recognized Germany’s shortcomings in manpower vis-à-vis the Franco-Russian alliance. Remaining on the defensive in both the East and the West was a non-starter for him, for he believed the enemy’s superior troop numbers would eventually overwhelm Germany. He consequently shared Moltke’s view that Germany should attack one opponent while fighting defensively against the other. However, he disagreed with Moltke in two important respects. First, we know that Moltke doubted that Germany could completely vanquish Russia or France. Schlieffen felt differently. He believed that if Germany threw almost everything she had against one foe, she could quickly destroy the latter in a single campaign and dictate peace terms. This would