WWI: Canada helps out Russia

[Mazryonh]

After seeing the films Passchendaele and Dr. Zhivago, I immediately wondered the following:

If the Canadian Corps was really one of the most effective fighting forces in WWI, then could their expertise be transferred from Canadian trainers (and other appropriate personnel) to the Imperial Russian forces? The Imperial Russian forces did terribly in WWI and their performance is certainly one of the main reasons the Russian Revolution got so much support.

In this scenario, the Russians get wind of the Canadian's excellent performance in WWI, and so send word (across the Pacific Ocean) to the Canadians that they need some of their trainers and tactics to modernize their own military. Could Canada respond in time and by doing so avert the Russian Revolution by making the Imperial Russian Army more competent and thus less hated by their home populace? Could Canada also lend Russia industrial support by sending supplies and/or the right industrial machinery to beef up their military infrastructure? Or would diplomatic/political/military considerations within Russia make the concept of asking another nation for help in modernizing its military practically impossible?

I would think that the Canadians, being separated from the Russians only by sea and not by hundreds of miles of hostile territory, would have been in a uniquely favourable position to send aid to Russia. I'd like to hear from some of the history buffs on this forum about how plausible this scenario might be.

[TheNasoRomaLost]

After seeing the films Passchendaele and Dr. Zhivago, I immediately wondered the following:

If the Canadian Corps was really one of the most effective fighting forces in WWI, then could their expertise be transferred from Canadian trainers (and other appropriate personnel) to the Imperial Russian forces? The Imperial Russian forces did terribly in WWI and their performance is certainly one of the main reasons the Russian Revolution got so much support.

In this scenario, the Russians get wind of the Canadian's excellent performance in WWI, and so send word (across the Pacific Ocean) to the Canadians that they need some of their trainers and tactics to modernize their own military. Could Canada respond in time and by doing so avert the Russian Revolution by making the Imperial Russian Army more competent and thus less hated by their home populace? Could Canada also lend Russia industrial support by sending supplies and/or the right industrial machinery to beef up their military infrastructure? Or would diplomatic/political/military considerations within Russia make the concept of asking another nation for help in modernizing its military practically impossible?

I would think that the Canadians, being separated from the Russians only by sea and not by hundreds of miles of hostile territory, would have been in a uniquely favourable position to send aid to Russia. I'd like to hear from some of the history buffs on this forum about how plausible this scenario might be.

Russia was just not prepared for war in any way whatsoever. They had no problem modernizing forces; it was modernizing government Russia did poorly at.

When well supplied and well led Russian forces did well; for example they knocked out the Austrian Army. The problem was the nation was not prepared for war so poorly supplied was very common for Russian forces.

By 1917 only foreign intervention in the Russian Front that managed to achieve some type of victory could have salvaged the situation because the army had lost confidence in the war, and a victory would have been needed to revive them, which is why the Provisional Government sent Admiral Kolchak to America to ask for an intervention.

During the Russian Civil War nearly the entire Imperial Army stayed home forcing both Red and White to recruit from scratch; there is a reason. One of the units that no longer saw the point of the war being elite wouldn't have changed the infrastructure and other flaws of Nicholas IIs government.

[DarthShizNit]

First of all, the Russian army, all things considered, did very well in the war. They effectively knocked out the AH Empire as a threat in a few months in 1914 (and dealt the death blow in 1916) and pulled German divisions and focus away from the west with a startiling swiftness in their attack. The Russian army did fine, it was the Russian economy that failed them. Even in 1915, when the supply shortages were at their worst the Russians still handled the tactical and strategic operations with great success against a better armed and equipped opponent, and launched one of the more effective and meaningful offensives of the war in 1916. It was not the training, it was the economy. So unless Canada had a fix for that I don't think it would have helped all that much at all.

[Col. Tartleton]

The problem was the Western front. That's what ed up everything.

The Eastern Front was huge, the armies were big of course, but there was room to fight a proper maneuver and shoot war. Unfortunately their allies got bogged down like idiots in France and determined to kill their entire armies in months long campaigns that accomplished so little besides killing their own army about as bad or worse than the enemy they were termed quagmires.

Russia could do it's part very well, for a while, but obviously they couldn't keep the war going indefinitely.

The only competent country in WW1 was Germany, and that didn't mean it could win. Especially when America piled on (ie the accumulated effect of American involvement, not military advantage. More that our Neutrality was essentially pro Entente, by virtue of British naval supremacy blockading the Central Powers.)

[DarthShizNit]

Germany was the only competent country? Hardly, they launched stupid attacks that cost them dearly and gained them nothing more than enough to disqualify them from being the only competent country in the war if that's how we measure competence. Germany gave a great showing for the odds stacked against her, but in the end she started off the war on the wrong foot and never did all that much to dig herself out.

Russia's problem was this: At the beggining of the war her economy was in no way shape or form ready for total war. In 1914 the standing army was mobilized and conducted itself in a acceptable manner, basically crippiling Germany to be forever stuck with an ally that had her starting armies defeated to a point where they would never be fully repaired. And despite Tannenberg, the Russian Army still had their defensive and offensive capabilites, and the Germans gained no more great victories over them that year. In 1915 however, with more men called up and obviiously more supplies needed, her economy still dragged FAR behind where it needed to be (though to be fair, almost every country experienced this in 1915 in some form or another) and as such her armies, though capably lead, lacked the equipment to defend themselves from the CP armies. By 1916 the Russian economy is actually able to produce enough arms and munitions for her armies and you get such great showings as the Brusilov Offensive (started out great but he failed in the end) but the economy is not counter balanced and is ineficently managed and as such you get massive inflation and other parts of the economy fail to catch up.

So you have a very desperate civilian front, mixed with an army that is taking large casualites for seemingly little gain (though still up until late '16 early has still managed to perform well given the situation) mixed in with some overly archaic goverment and you get the perfect storm that lead to the Russian Revolution, which created such a hellish political landscape back home, that whatever further effectivness the Russian Army could have had is basically made mute as the army starts splintering along political lines and the military industry back home is disrupted.

Russia's defeat was economic, social, and political, but I would not say she suffered a classic military defeat as say Germany did in ww2 (unless you count the Germans going "Hey there, we're going to march across half your country because you're not being quick enough with the written surrender, which I would say is more the Germans rubbing salt into the lemon soaked wound).

John Keegan gives probably the best account of the Eastern Front in WW1 in his book about the great war as you are going to get from western historians of note (I'm sure there are more detailed books and if anyone knows of some feel free to throw them my way) I would recommend it for anyone looking for a sort of "begginers" introduction to the war, and even more veteran Great War studiers.

[Turtler]

After seeing the films Passchendaele and Dr. Zhivago, I immediately wondered the following:

If the Canadian Corps was really one of the most effective fighting forces in WWI, then could their expertise be transferred from Canadian trainers (and other appropriate personnel) to the Imperial Russian forces? The Imperial Russian forces did terribly in WWI and their performance is certainly one of the main reasons the Russian Revolution got so much support.

In this scenario, the Russians get wind of the Canadian's excellent performance in WWI, and so send word (across the Pacific Ocean) to the Canadians that they need some of their trainers and tactics to modernize their own military. Could Canada respond in time and by doing so avert the Russian Revolution by making the Imperial Russian Army more competent and thus less hated by their home populace? Could Canada also lend Russia industrial support by sending supplies and/or the right industrial machinery to beef up their military infrastructure? Or would diplomatic/political/military considerations within Russia make the concept of asking another nation for help in modernizing its military practically impossible?

I would think that the Canadians, being separated from the Russians only by sea and not by hundreds of miles of hostile territory, would have been in a uniquely favourable position to send aid to Russia. I'd like to hear from some of the history buffs on this forum about how plausible this scenario might be.

There are a huge number of problems with this. Not the least of which being that by this point in time, it would probably have been too little too late. The implosion of the Tsarist regime and Russia as a whole was already well underway, and the internal infrastructure of the country were already strained or overwhelmed. Just transferring a few Western units- even from as close as Canada, Newfoundland, the US, Australia, or New Zealand- to Russia would've been a colossal challenge that the Russians were in no way ready to do while tending to their own gardens. Considering the Dominions were already well committed on the Western Fronts (Western Front/Alpine Front/Macedonian Front/Middle Eastern War), that diversion would've been politically unsustainable. Keep in mind that the Western Allies were unable to transport the Portugese Army from Portugal to Western Europe because their transport capacity was tied up and they were busy transporting the Americans/Canadians/Newfoundlanders to the Western Front. And that's a LOT easier than transporting them to the Russian Front.

Factoring in the need to replace casualties on the Western Front (including psychological ones, by sending people home for leave, etc), a divergence might well have screwed the troops being deployed over, whether they were in Eastern or Western Europe.

And finally, you have to factor in the major ideological as well as strategic disconnect between the Western Allies and Russia. They did not play well with each other before the war, they did not play overly well with each other during the war, and in the event of the Tsarist system surviving WWI it would have emerged as the next great threat, much like the Soviet Union did. That, coupled with the more pressing commitments at home meant that it was infeasible for this sort of large-scale commitment while open war is still ongoing.

On top of that, you have to understand that this isn't necessarily going to be some stereotypical "mighty whitey" cliche where the presence of a few thousand- even a few tens of thousands- of Canadians and/or other Westerners could somehow "bring training" or advancement to the hordes of barbaric Russians, which will magically make them carbon copies and just as effective as the supposedly more advanced Westerners. If that was how it worked, we'd have seen that in the upcoming Russian Civil War.

For one, the Russians might have been simpletons and might have even been idiots sometimes, but they weren't idly sitting by with the only exception being a stereotypical and idiotically human wave charge. They were one of the largest and most powerful military forces on the planet, with their own ingrained systems (which sometimes helped do them in, but sustained them as much if not moreso).

In the couple decades leading up to this time, they had been able to occupy huge swaths of China, fight Japan to a stalemate and possibly win a strategic victory, and even on the heels of massive catastrophes like the East Prussian campaign deliver a number of hammer blows to not just the Habsburgs and the Turks (who everybody knows about) but also to the Supposedly Uniquely Competent Germans, like at the Vistula. Brusilov in particular was an absolute visionary, and it wasn't like every other commander was a maroon. The Russian system had a number of very good, very big advantages, but it also had crippling, endemic failures ingrained into the system itself. Militarily, politically, economically, etc. It is that system and the armies that it raised and the people who served it that ultimately lost the war, and it could not magically be flicked on and off.

The training of the military by veterans or those familiar with more advanced tactics (which both sides did, both within their own and to allied militaries) is a step in the right direction, but at this stage I believe it would be too little, too late. For one, what the Canadians were used to would've been undermined by a number of factors. The terrain was different, the type of war tended to be different, the tactics and strategies they used were reliant on supplies that were reliant on a technological/logistical/industrial base that *just didn't exist* at this point in time in Russia, they would have faced extreme opposition from both the hardline Whites for various reasons as well as Leftist and pacifist segments, and above all fixing what was wrong with the Russian military and other institutions would've been beyond the means of a military/advisory mission-cum-expeditionary force.

For the most gob-smackingly optimistic? A few Canadian forces would at most have been in time to bash some spectacularly wrongheaded military org decisions; forcing Kerensky to see reason about the soldiers' councils and disbanding them or at least making them more beniegn/unable to undermine effectiveness or loyalty (like what the Czech Legion developed), dealing with the potted Tsarist plants who were often ludicrously mismanaging the war, being able to provide expertise that might counter the CP "artillery virtuosos" and strategies like Hutier's infiltration tactics which historically seized the Baltic area for Germany in one fell swoop.

At most, they might be able to sort the Russian Provisional Government's military out into a sort of lackluster, middle-tier army with the organization, dedication, and just-good-enough ability to trade blow for blow and endure the sort of punishment that would let them outlast the war. But that's being INSANELY optimistic, and based on some of the most dramatic such events in military history (like the Portuguese in Ethiopia, the European support to the American revolutionaries, the support to the Dutch and Greeks in their wars of independence, etc). Most likely, it would end far more disastrously, with the Canadians just becoming another bunch of Entente troops (like the Czechoslovaks) caught in the Russian collapse, which they might well not survive.

Though given their quality vis-a-vis the Bolsheviks, I'm not placing bets against them.

Col. Tatleton: I'm sorry, but this is like waving a Red Flag to me. this is one of the most inaccurate, ignorant, in-and ill-informed opinions I have ever seen on this subject, and considering the sort of moronic "Oh What a Lovely War" mythos WWI has been cursed with, That is Saying a Lot.

The problem was the Western front. That's what ed up everything.

Um, No. Just no. The Western Fronts were the cockpit in which the modern military system as we know it was born, and well before things bogged down Russia was already starting to get in trouble.

The Eastern Front was huge, the armies were big of course, but there was room to fight a proper maneuver and shoot war. Unfortunately their allies got bogged down like idiots in France and determined to kill their entire armies in months long campaigns that accomplished so little besides killing their own army about as bad or worse than the enemy they were termed quagmires.

*HEADDESK.* Seriously?

Yes, the Eastern Front was big. It was also a war of relative fluidity and maneuver. However, in terms of casualty rates and operation, it was THIS front that saw entire armies get killed or obliterated PRECISELY BECAUSE of that, and it was this front that was run by idiots, at least on the high command of the Russian, Romanian, and Habsburg sides.

In case you didn't notice, take a look at the actual casualty rates on the Western Fronts, including the big disasters like Cap and early Michael and what have you. What you find is that they're generally huge, but far from overwhelming and closer to equal even in spite of the vaunted defensive advantages of trench warfare. Take a look at the Nivelle Offensive, something that's (not inaccurately) viewed as a massive disaster for French Arms. Now compare that to Lake Naroch, which is probably the best comparison between the two. The gaps are pretty staggering. Heck, even take stock of Cap, where the Western Allies lost about a third of a million men in a very short and lopsided exchange, and compare that to the East Prussian campaigns when the technological balance was a lot more equal (with the Germans not having developed as heavily while the Russians had not yet degenerated as much as they would).

The bottom line is that Russia lost the war in large part *because* it was a "proper maneuver and shoot war", and the Germans were ALWAYS going to be able to do that better unless Russia could modernize and reform properly to sustain it, and to do so ahead of German innovations. They didn't, and we know how that turned out.

Russia could do it's part very well, for a while, but obviously they couldn't keep the war going indefinitely.

Not really. They had a few shining moments, and they probably saved the West's bacon a few times, but overall they were way out of their playing field and they remained wedded to a system that could not competently innovate and lead, and by the end they were basically reduced to putting Brusilov in charge and saying "Hey Comrade Soldiers' Councils, we have Brusilov in charge! Maybe he'll be able to do what he did earlier? Pretty please?"

That is a schiesteny substitute for actual reform and for technological and doctrinal innovation. And that is why even in relatively equivalent situations, we see things like the "Great Retreat" on the Western Front amount to a somewhat panicky but ordered fighting retreat against a numerically superior foe, before they could finally regroup and take advantage of the enemy's exhaustion and mistakes to throw their veterans and the Garrison of Paris at them. In contrast, the "Great Retreat" on the Eastern Front was the single largest loss of land in the entire war, and amounted to the main body of the Russian military running for the hills out of Poland and the central position to try and get out ahead of two massive German/Habsburg pincers.

That's also why they never got far enough to modernize and organize to see the full potential, like the Western Allied and German campaigns of 1918 did.

The only competent country in WW1 was Germany, and that didn't mean it could win. Especially when America piled on (ie the accumulated effect of American involvement, not military advantage. More that our Neutrality was essentially pro Entente, by virtue of British naval supremacy blockading the Central Powers.)

I'm sorry, but no. Just no. Germany was not the only competent country of WWI. if it were, they would have won. And we would not be debating this now on a free forum.

The Germans weren't *morons*, just the opposite. They were one of the most powerful, most dynamic, and best led military forces in the history of the world, even up to today. But they also made exceedingly glaring mistakes and had glaring flaws, many of which they tried to fix (and some of which they never really did). Like everybody, they weren't prepared for the sheer scope the war would take, or the promises and costs it and modern technology would have.

The problem was that while in the West they ran up against a combination of systems that started out with flaws like their own system did, but which tried to remedy those as much as possible, and which eventually out-competed and out fought them. In the East they ran up against military systems in the Rusian and Romanian militaries that started off with many of the same flaws their system had, but which either didn't try to fix them, or simply lacked the ability or resources to do so. That's why they won against the latter, and failed against the former.

By the end of the war, the Western Allies (such as they were) were by far the most advanced, best trained, best equipped, and one of the best led war machines the world had ever seen up to that point, and that's partially to their credit for getting their, but also to Germany's fault for not being able to keep up (and not merely because of the tired "they spammed us until they overwhelmed us" canard, as the campaigns of 1918 show). It's hard to fault the Germans *too hard* for that, given their disadvantages and who they were up against (and how they couldn't directly hit a lot of them), but on the other hand they largely did bring their fate on themselves.

Case in point?

You're forgetting another reason why the US was pro-Allied and anti-German: namely Germany's incompetent attempt to play bushfire war in Latin America, which ticked the US off but didn't have an appreciable effect beyond providing the USMC and US Army will yet more experience.

In other circumstances, it's quite possible to see the Russian military and government being able to evolve enough to take advantage of those same flaws and ride it out, just like it's possible to see Germany emerging as the leader of the world from WWII. But there's a reason those didn't happen.

[DarthShizNit]

A well structured post by someone who has an idea of what they're talking about. +Rep.

[Turtler]

A well structured post by someone who has an idea of what they're talking about. +Rep.

Thank you. It's very flattering indeed. However, I feel obliged to correct a few problems with your previous post, which I forgot to cover earlier.

Germany was the only competent country? Hardly, they launched stupid attacks that cost them dearly and gained them nothing more than enough to disqualify them from being the only competent country in the war if that's how we measure competence. Germany gave a great showing for the odds stacked against her, but in the end she started off the war on the wrong foot and never did all that much to dig herself out.

Agreed with one minor caveat. Namely, that that isn't how we measure competence, or at least isn't *only* how we measure competence. I'd be hard pressed to think of a single nation in WWI or WWII that didn't suffer from that at one point or another, but we don't hold that the US is incompetent just because of the farrago that was the Hurtgen Forest.

Germany wasn't incompetent, but it wasn't hypercompetent either.

Russia's problem was this: At the beggining of the war her economy was in no way shape or form ready for total war.

Agreed, but there's more to the story than that. I don't think any nation really had their economy fully ready for Total War, but the Russians were just especially behind the curve. But that didn't stop them from fighting the Japanese to a standstill when the latter absolutely was on a total war footing, and it didn't stop them from beating the Turks. So there's clearly something more endemic and deeply rooted at play. I'd posit that that was the culture of aloof and arrogant disregard for their own manpower, and how it felt. It wasn't anything *new* exactly or unique to the Tsarist system, but it's just that this was the time that it caught up with them, after it very nearly did following the Crimean and Russo-Japanese wars.

You simply can't count on elan or the ruggedness of your individual soldiers as an end all to be all in a modern war (or even a non modern war, for that matter), and you can't go without adequately provisioning both them and the homefront, or by completely severing the feedback connection that's so necessary for adaptation. The Tsarist government did all of these things, and against the Central Powers it was their doom.

In 1914 the standing army was mobilized and conducted itself in a acceptable manner,

Eehhhhhh.......... agreed with caveats. The showing in East Prussia was absolutely inexcusable by any standards whatsoever, and it probably at least had as much of an effect as the Galician campaign (which was overextended, disproportionately costly, and basically incapable of being held or exploited) because it opened the way to the Baltic, and the German Balt elite there were given the chance to start flirting with defection.

basically crippiling Germany to be forever stuck with an ally that had her starting armies defeated to a point where they would never be fully repaired.

Absolutely not. If anything, the Belgians and Serbians absolutely got it worse than the Habsburgs did, and yet both not only survived, they lasted until the end of the war, with the former in particular entering into the select few nations that- as part of the Western Allies- could claim to be a per-eminent military power in the world. By 1917 the Habsburgs were back and probably more or less capable of doing anything the Germans could (for both good and bad, as they learned very readily).

At the very least, if the campaigns of 1914 defeated the Habsburgs toa point they could never be fully repaired, it was more because of the culture and nature of the Habsburg empire than because of the objective results of the battlefield.

And despite Tannenberg, the Russian Army still had their defensive and offensive capabilites, and the Germans gained no more great victories over them that year.

Agreed with caveat; the late 1914 campaigns were clearly setting the stage for the general implosion of the Eastern Front that'd cumulate in the "Great Retreat", and by the end of the campaign even the Habsburgs were getting their acts together. The "Winter offensive" to try and crack the Carpathians wasn't exactly a defeat but it was a fiasco, and certainly didn't bode well for what was to come.

In 1915 however, with more men called up and obviiously more supplies needed, her economy still dragged FAR behind where it needed to be (though to be fair, almost every country experienced this in 1915 in some form or another) and as such her armies, though capably lead, lacked the equipment to defend themselves from the CP armies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... but here's the thing: more or less all the militaries suffered from this, but it was really only the Russian army that suffered the sort of major, intense partial collapse that we see in 1915, leading to them basically abandoning everything they had won or managed to hold on to in 1914 and retreating the heck out of Poland and part of the Baltics. In contrast, we all know what the CPs were doing, and by this point in time the Western Allies were actually launching attacks with a relatively even Kill-Loss ratio (outside of the Alpine campaign, more or less).

So clearly there is something wrong here with the Russian military that can't be just written off as a simple lack of equipment even if that did play a major role. Rather, we should probably be asking why there was such a chronic mishandling of the equipment stocks and especially troop positioning to compensate for this. Yet because nobody fixes things or does whatever they need to, we basically see *both* North and South wings of the Russian army collapse from the Central offensives, leading to the entire Polish salient caving in on itself and the entire Russian army being forced to pack up stakes and flee to avoid getting encircled.

And that's before we get in to singularly bad showings like the 2nd Masurian Lakes, and the singularly bad failure to consolidate what had already cost so much to take in Galicia during the last year, which led to the loss of all of it. These sorts of fiascoes weren't limited to the Russians, but they were especially bad in their case.

By 1916 the Russian economy is actually able to produce enough arms and munitions for her armies and you get such great showings as the Brusilov Offensive (started out great but he failed in the end) but the economy is not counter balanced and is ineficently managed and as such you get massive inflation and other parts of the economy fail to catch up.

And before the Brusilov Offensive? We get the lovely farqup at lake Naroch. And after and during it, we get the singular failure in Romania. Witness! as the brave soldiers of Mother Rossiya fail to have any coordination with their local allies *At All* up until they basically can't get around it from the Romanian army crashing in to them during its' rout. Stand in awe at how various Armenian militias were for all intents and purposes holding huge swaths of the Caucasian Front by their lonesomes. Stand it horror as even the Brusilov offensive causes losses at rates that Russia ultimately cannot afford, especially in terms of equipment and will to fight.

The industrial windfall of 1916 was impressive and deserves lauding, as does Brusilov for one of the war's immortal victories. But in the end, all of the above were squandered, incapable of being exploited, or otherwise too costly. While in the meantime, the Central Powers continued to nip away at the Tsarist Empire from all sides and more or less overran Russia's only possible ally with next to no action from the Russian command.

The last one is especially bad, considering Romania's natural resources, and the fact that so much of Russia's problems tend to get written off (with varying degrees of validity) as being "We had to do this in order to take pressure off of the Western Allies on X Front!" This is true, and coalition warfare is a royal pain in the arse because it requires you take pain and help each other out. But by any standards, the failure to assist the Romanians was a major failure to do that properly.

And finally, take a look at the Christmas Offensive in the Baltic Front, where the Latvian Riflemen more or less- in an independent attack on their own- managed to go out of the trenches, *break through* the German line, and start overrunning a few defensive lines on their own. To the best of our knowledge, the Russian army did....nothing. It wasn't just that they failed to exploit the breach or opportunity, God knows even the best militaries by this point in time had problems with that. It's just that they never even *Tried* to to the best of our knowledge.

Compare this to the Western Fronts- be they in the Actual Western front, in the Alps, on the Greco/Macedonian-Bulgarian border, or in desert of the Middle East- where this sort of initiative was de rigueur for both sides. In contrast, the Russians absolutely failed to exploit a victory that was *given to them* more or less for free. With the absolutely predictable result that the Germans regrouped, closed ranks, and eventually pounded the Latvian units until they were back to where they began.

This was a major, direct reason for the Bolshevik coup, because it is this event that estranged and embittered huge segments of the Latvian riflemen to the Tsarist government, and that is why when the Bolsheviks started raising a stink they flocked to their cause, handing Lenin one of his most potent weapons. So no, it is absolutely not just the fault of the civilian population, or the economy, or industry. Those were all just symptoms of the greater problem, which by this point in time was becoming epically obvious due to the military missteps happening at times like this.

So you have a very desperate civilian front, mixed with an army that is taking large casualites for seemingly little gain

True.

(though still up until late '16 early has still managed to perform well given the situation)

Ehhhh... only if we're really ignoring Romania and Lake Naroch, or more to the point everything outside of the Caucasus and the Brusilov offensive. The Brusilov Offensive was pretty much the sole glimmer of light in a very sorry year for the Russians on the Western front, and by this point in time Central Asia was burning up and the Baltic Sea was something of a German lake, on top of the other failures I've already mentioned.

Like I said: the Latvians in the Russian Army more or less gave the Tsarist government and army a free victory, and they were so paralyzed or lethargic they weren't even capable of *trying* to follow it up.

mixed in with some overly archaic goverment and you get the perfect storm that lead to the Russian Revolution, which created such a hellish political landscape back home, that whatever further effectivness the Russian Army could have had is basically made mute as the army starts splintering along political lines and the military industry back home is disrupted.

*Pats wrist* Time out. Yes, that's basically, true, But Come On! Let's be frank here: the Russian military screwed the pooch. Brusilov and the Caucasian Front is not nearly enough to justify a non-critical verdict of Russian military accomplishments. The real problem didn't just come from the civilian society in the rear, it came from the military itself. That's why when the time came for them to restore order, they didn't or couldn't. And why even by this time military efficiency was dropping like a stone, to the point where we have the only thing between the Central Powers and Petrograd not only failing in performance, but outright failing To preform altogether. Why the Romanian army was basically left to hold the Russian Left flank in Moldova and part of Romania on its' own. This is why after 1916 was over the Russian military in the Caucasus would basically fold up and do no more major actions against the Ottoman Turks and their allies until they withdrew.

By any account, this isn't just a failure on the home front. This is a catastrophic military failure, and one*WELL* predating the Russian Revolutions.

Russia's defeat was economic, social, and political,

And military.

but I would not say she suffered a classic military defeat as say Germany did in ww2

I would. I absolutely would. After the Kerensky Offensive the Eastern front was Germany's, and Austria-Hungary's, and Bulgaria's, and even the Ottoman Turkish Empire's. The Russian Army had given it one last go, and it had failed catastrophically, and as a result it and the government it upheld collapsed, resulting in the installment of someone who was all but a satilite for the Central Powers (at least in many, many ways). If that is not a classic military defeat, I do not even know what is. It's like saying Carthage wasn't defeated militarily after Zama, or the British after Yorktown. It's preposterous.

(unless you count the Germans going "Hey there, we're going to march across half your country because you're not being quick enough with the written surrender, which I would say is more the Germans rubbing salt into the lemon soaked wound).

*SPITTAKE.*

Ok, there is so much wrong with this little sentence I don't even know what to start.

A. Do you seriously think major powers act like this? "We are still capable of holding you off, we still feel like holding you off, and we don't like the idea of agreeing to your terms or allowing you to seize yet more, but we randomly decided we're going to let you advance over yet more of our territory and then sign an even less favorable peace even though you could do neither if we wanted to stop you. Kay, thanks, bye."?

Nations- and especially major powers- do not even *Get* into that sort of position in the first place without something seriously, seriously wrong. The fact that the Central Powers were able to DICTATE such terms and conditions- And then credibly and fully follow up on them- is proof in and of itslef that yes, Russia suffered a classic military defeat.

B. That isn't what happened in the first place. This wasn't just "Sign by this time OR WE'LL KILL YOUUUU!" The Central Powers basically installed Lenin- or helped him install hismelf- with the intent that he'd be a sort of Eastern satilite that would finally sign the terms of peace and allow them to focus on sending most of the military back West while what was left would consolidate the new German Empire in the East.

Instead, Lenin and the Bolsheviks stalled, and stalled pretty obviously with the transparent intent of holding out until pro-Bolshevik/Communist revolutions broke out in the other major combatants and forced the Centra Powers to collapse, paving way for the great Communist utopia yadda yadda.

Unsurprisingly, the German and Habsburg Empires were less than enthused with this prospect, and decided to force Trotsky etc. al. to sign the terms by cutting through the stalling, seizing yet more territory, and forcing the Bolsheviks to concede to their terms and give up their pretentions of launching the worldwide revolution, at least for then.A

The result saw the Central Powers gobbling up hundreds upon hundreds of square miles within a couple of weeks, to absolutely no or trivial resistance by and from anybody. Hoffmann's diaries on the subject have all the dignity of somebody rolling on the floor laughing his @$$ off about how easy it all was.

That's the final line about Russian military prowess and preformance by the end of the war: reduced to a punch line in the diary of the German Staff Officer who defeated them.

John Keegan gives probably the best account of the Eastern Front in WW1 in his book about the great war as you are going to get from western historians of note (I'm sure there are more detailed books and if anyone knows of some feel free to throw them my way) I would recommend it for anyone looking for a sort of "begginers" introduction to the war, and even more veteran Great War studiers.

Keegan's great, make no mistake, but he's not the only one, and in many ways I'd say he's a bit limited and overly materialistic (ie attributing victory more to things like industry while factoring out preformance on the field in the East). For the other side of the coin, Pygmy Wars, Cyril Falls, and Mawsdley's book on the Russian Civil War are great. For a single, good example of why the Central Powers defeated Russia and why that defeat was absolutely military in part, check out Michael Barret's book about Operation Albion, which was what made the Baltic a German lake and opened up Petrograd to direct assault.

It's really compelling stuff, and really damning as well.

[Cyclops]

After seeing the films Passchendaele and Dr. Zhivago, I immediately wondered the following:

If the Canadian Corps was really one of the most effective fighting forces in WWI, then could their expertise be transferred from Canadian trainers (and other appropriate personnel) to the Imperial Russian forces? The Imperial Russian forces did terribly in WWI and their performance is certainly one of the main reasons the Russian Revolution got so much support.

In this scenario, the Russians get wind of the Canadian's excellent performance in WWI, and so send word (across the Pacific Ocean) to the Canadians that they need some of their trainers and tactics to modernize their own military. Could Canada respond in time and by doing so avert the Russian Revolution by making the Imperial Russian Army more competent and thus less hated by their home populace? Could Canada also lend Russia industrial support by sending supplies and/or the right industrial machinery to beef up their military infrastructure? Or would diplomatic/political/military considerations within Russia make the concept of asking another nation for help in modernizing its military practically impossible?

I would think that the Canadians, being separated from the Russians only by sea and not by hundreds of miles of hostile territory, would have been in a uniquely favourable position to send aid to Russia. I'd like to hear from some of the history buffs on this forum about how plausible this scenario might be.

1. Russia fell because its economy was in ruins, after the closing of the Dardanelles.

2. Canadian trainers were not the reason the Canadian Corps was so highly rated. Like the other highly rated colonial force (the ANZACS) the raw Canadian manpower may have been of decent quality but the training and equipment was British.

Canadians and Australians and Kiwis got more of it because as Dominions they were prickly about autonomy and being used by the mother country as cannon fodder. They were given the best training and given tough battlefield assigments in part as a PR exercise to show they were valued and valuable. The Canadians riose to the occasion and fought about as well as any in the British Armies, although I've never heard anyone over-rate themselves like the Canadians do. You'd think they beat the Kaiser and Hitler solo.

Canadian material aid had no more chance of reaching Russia than all the rest of the British Empire had. The Russian Far East was an isolated outpost, not a hub for feeding into the Great Russian heartland.

Stupid as the Gallipoli campaign seemed, it had a concrete Grand Strategic purpose, and had it suceeded, the war would've finished quicker.

[DarthShizNit]

Agreed with one minor caveat. Namely, that that isn't how we measure competence, or at least isn't *only* how we measure competence. I'd be hard pressed to think of a single nation in WWI or WWII that didn't suffer from that at one point or another, but we don't hold that the US is incompetent just because of the farrago that was the Hurtgen Forest.

Germany wasn't incompetent, but it wasn't hypercompetent either.

Never said Germany was incompetent anywhere in that statement, simply said that they weren't the only competent power waging the war.

Agreed, but there's more to the story than that. I don't think any nation really had their economy fully ready for Total War, but the Russians were just especially behind the curve. But that didn't stop them from fighting the Japanese to a standstill when the latter absolutely was on a total war footing, and it didn't stop them from beating the Turks. So there's clearly something more endemic and deeply rooted at play. I'd posit that that was the culture of aloof and arrogant disregard for their own manpower, and how it felt. It wasn't anything *new* exactly or unique to the Tsarist system, but it's just that this was the time that it caught up with them, after it very nearly did following the Crimean and Russo-Japanese wars.

You simply can't count on elan or the ruggedness of your individual soldiers as an end all to be all in a modern war (or even a non modern war, for that matter), and you can't go without adequately provisioning both them and the homefront, or by completely severing the feedback connection that's so necessary for adaptation. The Tsarist government did all of these things, and against the Central Powers it was their doom.

I did mention the political defeat of the empire, I simply felt no need to go on to explain it more. The Tsarist goverment was terrible inept, never said it wasn't, just avoided going into the details of everything it did wrong.

Eehhhhhh.......... agreed with caveats. The showing in East Prussia was absolutely inexcusable by any standards whatsoever, and it probably at least had as much of an effect as the Galician campaign (which was overextended, disproportionately costly, and basically incapable of being held or exploited) because it opened the way to the Baltic, and the German Balt elite there were given the chance to start flirting with defection.

The East Prussia campgain was ill managed but the strategic worth of the invasion when it occured balances out the disaster of Tannenburg in my opinion as it diverted troops aways, and the Russian 1st army was able to extract itself in hostile terriroty from a superior enemy with better logistics and more men to a defensible position, certainly not a military disaster, just a clear defeat. As for the Galacian campaign, disagree completely. Disporportionately costly? The Empire suffered more casualties than the Russians and they had less men to lose. They lost a good portion of their trained officers and their best divisions were wrecked covering the retreat of the army. I would not look at the Galacian campaign in the ground it was able to hold but the military and political defeat it was for the Empire. It's armies had been beaten on every front in a matter of month with huge losses of their best men and officers, something that the Empire simply couldn't justify and politically it just went downhill. Sure the Empire was able to counter attack a Russian army that was suddenly more focused and recovering from the first German incursion into Poland at the end of 1914 but it was the last offensive operation they started without German help (which was needed by the end of the operation). The AH Empire, if it hadn't been for Germany being able to to send support, would have lost the war in 1914 or early 1915.

Absolutely not. If anything, the Belgians and Serbians absolutely got it worse than the Habsburgs did, and yet both not only survived, they lasted until the end of the war, with the former in particular entering into the select few nations that- as part of the Western Allies- could claim to be a per-eminent military power in the world. By 1917 the Habsburgs were back and probably more or less capable of doing anything the Germans could (for both good and bad, as they learned very readily).

At the very least, if the campaigns of 1914 defeated the Habsburgs toa point they could never be fully repaired, it was more because of the culture and nature of the Habsburg empire than because of the objective results of the battlefield.

First of, I wouldn't say the Sebs got it worse than the Hapsburgs, they were the ones making so harsh on the Hapsburgs. The Sebs weren't effectively dealt with until the Germans and Bulgarians came to the aide of the Hapsburgs. The initial offensive against Serbia was terribly executed and horrendously underestimated the Serbs. That said, when the Serbs did get it, they were for all intensive purpouses were knocked out of the war, same with the Belgians. Sure, they still had a group of fighting men who carried their own flag and could launch attacks on the tactical front, but lacked any abilities to make a change on the strategic front of the war. And the Habsburgs were capable of doing anything the Germans could do in 1917...assuming the Germans were the ones doing it for them.

Agreed with caveat; the late 1914 campaigns were clearly setting the stage for the general implosion of the Eastern Front that'd cumulate in the "Great Retreat", and by the end of the campaign even the Habsburgs were getting their acts together. The "Winter offensive" to try and crack the Carpathians wasn't exactly a defeat but it was a fiasco, and certainly didn't bode well for what was to come.

The 1914 campaign dictated that the Germans would have to take the offensive, but the actual operations themselves I wouldn't say immediatly lead to the thought proccess of the Great Retreat. The first German invasion of Poland was by all means a costly kerfuffle that left the Germans with a bloody nose and the Russians no the worse off. The reasoning for the Great Retreat was apparent to anyone who knew how to exploit the Russian command system and more importantly, the lack of any developed rail system in Russian Poland to facilitate the needed movement of vast amount of troops (lets face it, the Germans wiped the floor in the east because they had the logistics mastered above all else), but I wouldn't say one looks at November 1914 and goes "obviously the great retreat is going to happen." The Russian command failed to prepare adequetly and responds efficently in the moment of the offensive sure, but aside from the political repercussions, I wouldn't say the Great Retreat was a massive defeat that impeded the Russians ability to wage war. In fact not having the Polish salient to defend is something I would look at as a good thing, it shortend their lines of defense and pulled the army back to a more developed area for defense. But politically it was indeed a blow that hampered the Russian war effort (no, just because you are the Tsar doesn't mean you should assume direct control of the army you fool).

Yeah, yeah, yeah... but here's the thing: more or less all the militaries suffered from this, but it was really only the Russian army that suffered the sort of major, intense partial collapse that we see in 1915, leading to them basically abandoning everything they had won or managed to hold on to in 1914 and retreating the heck out of Poland and part of the Baltics. In contrast, we all know what the CPs were doing, and by this point in time the Western Allies were actually launching attacks with a relatively even Kill-Loss ratio (outside of the Alpine campaign, more or less).

So clearly there is something wrong here with the Russian military that can't be just written off as a simple lack of equipment even if that did play a major role. Rather, we should probably be asking why there was such a chronic mishandling of the equipment stocks and especially troop positioning to compensate for this. Yet because nobody fixes things or does whatever they need to, we basically see *both* North and South wings of the Russian army collapse from the Central offensives, leading to the entire Polish salient caving in on itself and the entire Russian army being forced to pack up stakes and flee to avoid getting encircled.

And that's before we get in to singularly bad showings like the 2nd Masurian Lakes, and the singularly bad failure to consolidate what had already cost so much to take in Galicia during the last year, which led to the loss of all of it. These sorts of fiascoes weren't limited to the Russians, but they were especially bad in their case.

Agree with most of this except you're putting to the side the effects of the lack of equipment. The Russian army, when armed well and competently lead could handle the Germans, and though a retreat from the Polish salient was inevitable given the logistics of it, the lack of equipment was obviously a major factor into why the retreat got as bad as it was. The war had not evolved to a point where the Russians were completly behind yet, in fact it was arguably one of the first times the Germans and Habsburgs got their acts together. And the Russians did manage to get their armies out which is a feat in and of itself, so yeah, I would say not having equipment was one of the bigger reasons.

And before the Brusilov Offensive? We get the lovely farqup at lake Naroch. And after and during it, we get the singular failure in Romania. Witness! as the brave soldiers of Mother Rossiya fail to have any coordination with their local allies *At All* up until they basically can't get around it from the Romanian army crashing in to them during its' rout. Stand in awe at how various Armenian militias were for all intents and purposes holding huge swaths of the Caucasian Front by their lonesomes. Stand it horror as even the Brusilov offensive causes losses at rates that Russia ultimately cannot afford, especially in terms of equipment and will to fight.

There are so many things wrong with the Romanian theater that you can't even begin to start at blammin the Russians for "not coordinating" with the Romanians. The Romanians screwed up the Romanian front Militarily all by themselves, and all of the powers involved on the Allies screwed up on getting the Romanians in when they did. The Russians were in no real position to help the Romanians when the Romanians went to war, something the Romanians should be faulted for for not taking into bigger consideration when they entered, especially when they left their southern border under maned in face of the Bulgarians, that's something you can't blame on the Russians. Politically the involvment of Romania was pointless after the Brusilov Offensive. They should have gone in at the beggining and attacked at the same time as Brusilove kicked things off.

And finally, take a look at the Christmas Offensive in the Baltic Front, where the Latvian Riflemen more or less- in an independent attack on their own- managed to go out of the trenches, *break through* the German line, and start overrunning a few defensive lines on their own. To the best of our knowledge, the Russian army did....nothing. It wasn't just that they failed to exploit the breach or opportunity, God knows even the best militaries by this point in time had problems with that. It's just that they never even *Tried* to to the best of our knowledge.

Compare this to the Western Fronts- be they in the Actual Western front, in the Alps, on the Greco/Macedonian-Bulgarian border, or in desert of the Middle East- where this sort of initiative was de rigueur for both sides. In contrast, the Russians absolutely failed to exploit a victory that was *given to them* more or less for free. With the absolutely predictable result that the Germans regrouped, closed ranks, and eventually pounded the Latvian units until they were back to where they began.

If we are going by the Russians failure to follow up a local success properly as a sign of theirn ineptitude in all things war then my friend everyone in this war was inept (not to much of a stretch mind you ). Yes it was an rather obvious failure if you just look at it, but by December 1916/Jan 1917 the Russian homefront was alrady collapsing. Several regiments the Russian commander had refused to go into battle at all, let alone the Russian front find enough men to actually exploit any advances. And the "victory" was by no means given to them for free. The attacking units suffered heavily, and what exactly do you think more men would have done that they never seemed to do before? I certainly wouldn't highlight the Christmas battles as this massive failure, if you want to do that look at lake naroch as a moment of utter failure of an offensive then feel free, but also accept that the good ol Russian goverment shares and equal amount of blame with the actual military commanders, with the Tsar picking crappy generals and consenting to politically motivated plans. The Tsar should have never gotten involved, the Russian military would have been all the better without him.

So no, it is absolutely not just the fault of the civilian population, or the economy, or industry. Those were all just symptoms of the greater problem, which by this point in time was becoming epically obvious due to the military missteps happening at times like this.

You seem to see the civilian and economics as a sympton of the military, I see the military as the sympton of the diseas that was the Russian economy, culture and above all politics. I see the Economy, population and Politcal scene as the chief cause of the Russian defeat, because in the end they directly impacted the Russian military effort, I don't see it as the other way around.

In 1914 the Russians did fine. In 1915 the military situation was heavily impeeded by the economics of the country, and by 1916 when the economics were better the damage had been done and the increasing political BS involved effectively halted whatever recovery the army could have made. By Winter 1916 I already see Russia as having lost the war, any of the stuff that happens after the February revolution I see as the repercusions of the war that was already lost, even if it did take a few German mop up operations before a peace deal was officialy signed.

As for the rest it's nothing you haven't alrady said or is simply not worth talking about (no idea what that was about with my obviously sarcastic and purposly simplistic statement about the events that took place after the revolutions, you are clearly just looking for a fight there but I'm sorry I have none to give).


Good day my good sir

[Turtler]

Never said Germany was incompetent anywhere in that statement, simply said that they weren't the only competent power waging the war.

That wasn't what I was saying. I was rejecting the idea that launching costly and ultimately futile attacks in and of itself determines competence or lack thereof in war.

I did mention the political defeat of the empire, I simply felt no need to go on to explain it more. The Tsarist goverment was terrible inept, never said it wasn't, just avoided going into the details of everything it did wrong.

I wasn't talking about the political defeat. I was referring to why it was militarily defeated.

The East Prussia campgain was ill managed but the strategic worth of the invasion when it occured balances out the disaster of Tannenburg in my opinion as it diverted troops aways,

At the expense of effectively removing two entire armies from the OOB, as well as setting up the Northern wedge of a salient endangering Russian Poland, that would evnetually act as a springboard for the conquest of both it and the Baltic States, depriving the Empire of the conquests it made in 1914 and vital resources to continue the war?

That isn't even remotely balanced out, mate.

Add insult to injury by the fact that the thing you're citing- the transfer of troops- happened mainly because the OHL panicked, and that it had ultimately zero effect on Tannenburg because by the time they arrived the campaign was all but over? That's just sloppy argumentation and reading history backwards. Ask just about any ROTC about whether this outcome is acceptable or balanced out. They would laugh anyone proposing this out of the room. You cannot write off two catastrophic tactical and strategic defeats- resulting in the loss of huge amounts of your standing army- which help pave the way for the conquest of your frontier districts based on ex post facto reasoning that the enemy was forced to transfer troops over. It just does not even REMOTELY work like that.

and the Russian 1st army was able to extract itself in hostile terriroty from a superior enemy with better logistics and more men to a defensible position, certainly not a military disaster, just a clear defeat.

Are you missing the point where the First Army LOST most of its' strength and effectively all of its' heavier equipment?

Doing some basic number crunching, the Russians invaded East Prussia with somewhere on the tune of 400,000+ men divided into two armies, with the accompanying equipment. They took around 360,000+ casualties. Over half of that came from the Second Army, which numbered around 200,000 or so men and was basically completely annihilated as a fighting force. Do the goddamned math, because this means that at minimum, the First Army suffered at least four out of every five of its' soldiers becoming a casualty, with the attempted encirclement at the Masurian Lakes primarily being avoided by Rennenkampf ditching all of his heavy gear and anything else that would seriously slow his retreat, and then having his men bolt back across the border.

That's an effectively mission killed army, which has lost all military effectiveness or capacity to do pretty much anything more than be a resource drain (due to rebuilding it) for the foreseeable future.

And all of this against an enemy that was vastly, vastly outnumbered (around 1:3), which was largely stripped of resources for the push West, and which was facing the early war Russian military, which was far closer to parity.

That is a military disaster by any objective meaning of the term. You have lost absolutely all credibility on this subject.

As for the Galacian campaign, disagree completely.

I Don't Give a Damn. You've already gotten it into your head that retreating with one soldier out of every ten that marched in isn't a military disaster. Why would i trust your judgement?

Disporportionately costly? The Empire suffered more casualties than the Russians and they had less men to lose.

Riiiight. Nevermind the fact that this ignores how the battlefield losses were almost dead even. Nevermind the fact that the Russians more than made up for it by trying and utterly failing to break through into the Hungarian plains and so the casualties balanced out.

Nevermind the fact that ultimately, the Russians would give up absolutely all of this territory just a year later, After suffering 220,000+ casualties out of a mobilized army strength of 1.2 Million.

Bringing the overall total to 580,000 out of 1,200,000. In other words: over half of Russia's mobilized strength became a casualty from these opening campaigns alone, with the net result of occupying largely indefensible Gallicia (which was lost just a year later) and not only getting routed out of Eastern Prussia, but *loosing territory in the Baltics and Northern Poland to the Germans.* Keeping in mind that those 1.2 milllion represented the core of the Russian military, including those that had the equipment, that had the experience from prior wars, that had the proper officer corps, and that had the actual supplies and heavy equipment that Russia by your own admission could not replace effectively.

They lost a good portion of their trained officers and their best divisions were wrecked covering the retreat of the army.

Yeah, and?

The thing is that the same thing happened to the Russians. Again, by mobilization the Russian military lost a sixth of its' size (actually somewhat over that) in these glorious victories, chasing said army and wrecking said good portion. Including a good portion of their trained officers lost (like in the disasterous attempt to storm Prz at first) and their best divisions mangled.

Let's at least keep uniform standards, ok? It was a victory, but it was a horrendously costly one. Inexcusably so, given how little came of it to justify the cost.

I would not look at the Galacian campaign in the ground it was able to hold but the military and political defeat it was for the Empire. It's armies had been beaten on every front in a matter of month with huge losses of their best men and officers, something that the Empire simply couldn't justify and politically it just went downhill.

Ok, fair enough. I can see your point here. BUT here's where we get to the bugbear.

What happens when we turn that around? When we take a look at the fact that 1915 did more or less the same thing to the Russians that the Galician campaign did to the Habsburgs?

Up to and including the little fact that in fact, it wasn't just downhill from there for either side. The Habsburgs were able to resteady themselves to some degree, and fight on with some degree of reliability (as shown by the Italian, Romanian, other Eastern Front campaigns). Just like the Russians were able to like you pointed out with the 1916 resurrection.

The bottom line is that both Empires took appallingly heavy- even crippling- losses in the first year or two of the war, especially heavy in the professional core of the military, and in their equipment. Both Empires were able to have a second lease at life, with mid-war resurrections, reorganizations, and what have you (the Habsburgs in large part because the Germans started defacto annexing their war machine, the Russians because of men like Brusilov and a spurt of life from Russian industry) that allowed them to keep fighting, often with good results.

But in the end, both sides collapsed in on themselves from their pre-existing (probably terminal) flaws and military defeat, after expending the resources given by those second wind and having nobody left to save them.

Now, pray tell me why am I supposed to only grade the Habsburg humilation in Galicia by this yardstick but not the 1915 Great Retreat for the Russians with it? Because isn't that what you're doing?

Sure the Empire was able to counter attack a Russian army that was suddenly more focused and recovering from the first German incursion into Poland at the end of 1914 but it was the last offensive operation they started without German help (which was needed by the end of the operation). The AH Empire, if it hadn't been for Germany being able to to send support, would have lost the war in 1914 or early 1915.

Saying that would be sort of me saying that "if it weren't for Western aid the Russians would've lost the war in 1915 or early 1916" or "if it weren't for Britain, France would've lost the war in 1914", etc etc etc. For one, you can't really parse those separately from the big picture. All of nothing.

And combined with that? I'm not sure it's entirely true.

The Russian offensive into the Carpathians was stalling well before the Germans really got involved, and when you add it all up, the standing armies of the various combatants- just counting the Habsburg fronts alone- were more or less of equal proportions. The Russians had lost over a fifth of their standing army just driving through Galicia, and the Serbs and Montinegrins had suffered exceedingly in their repulse of the Habsburgs there, probably around half their strength. The Habsburgs had taken more losses from a smaller pool, absolutely; but overall considering that there was really no easy way to crack the Captathians for the Russian Army (as shwon by the failures to force the passes) and the fact that the Balkan allies were on the defensive at this time from lack of manpower, it's quite possible the Habsburgs could've held the Russians at least long enough on the ountains to defeat the Serb-Montinegrins and then return tot he fight with Russia. Especially if they managed to swing Bulgaria onto their side.

Is this necessarily LIKELY? No. BUt it's possible, and that's why I'm saying that blanket assumptions do you no good whatsoever, especially when you try to phrase them like unqualified, undisputed fact.

This idle divergence aside, it also ignores the fact that ultimately, the same rubric could be applied just as easily to the Russians in 1915 or early 1916, with equally skewed and misleading results. Which you have yet to acknowledge.

First of, I wouldn't say the Sebs got it worse than the Hapsburgs,

Let's make one thing absolutely clear: I Don't Give a Flying Fork About What You Say. You've already catagorically destroyed any credibility you might have ever had to judge on the subject when you blathered about the East Prussian invasion somehow not constituting a military disaster. Military Science and History does not give a flying fork about someone with an axe to grind and the hubris that thinks their ramblings on an internet forum matter a damn against what actually happened.

And again, the Serbs and Montenegrins- in terms of overall demographic casualties- were the Poland of WWI. Yes, they killed more Imperial troops than they lost themselves. It doesn't matter. What matters is the rate of depletion, and the size of the pool we're working with.

they were the ones making so harsh on the Hapsburgs.

"Making so harsh?" Seriously? It's called spellcheck. Use it.

Secondly, they were in 1914, but at what cost! Again, we have losses somewhere in the range of 40-60%. From a far smaller pool than the Habsburgs had, with no real direct route for reinforcements. That's bad enough even if we just include the Austro-Hungairans, but when we throw the Bulgarians into the mix it's a recipe for disaster, which is more or less what happened on that front in 1915 and 1916.

The Sebs weren't effectively dealt with until the Germans and Bulgarians came to the aide of the Hapsburgs.

Who having been severely weakened demographically and militarily by the losses they took earlier against the Habsburgs, were completely unable to withstand the new, fresh enemy forces popping up like daisies to attack them from multiple directions. Game Set Match, please withdraw to Albania or Die. A defeat is a defeat.

The initial offensive against Serbia was terribly executed and horrendously underestimated the Serbs.

Not disputing that, or the fact that Putnik and his men were doing a virtuoso preformance. But keep in mind that even with that spectacular blundering by the Habsburgs, even with that virtuooso preformance, even with the initial success... the Serb-Mont armies sitll suffered severely and disproportionately heavy casualties.

That said, when the Serbs did get it, they were for all intensive purpouses were knocked out of the war, same with the Belgians.

*Headdesk.*

You really, really, Really have no idea about the Belgians do you?

No, No, No, And No. The Serbs were reduced to playing second tier roles, but they were still remarkably powerful on the Macedonian Front, and the Belgians only grew stronger after the loss of most of Belgium. Somehow, but they were one of the premier military powers of the day by the end of the war.

Sure, they still had a group of fighting men who carried their own flag and could launch attacks on the tactical front, but lacked any abilities to make a change on the strategic front of the war.

Except no.

They were the second largest contributor to the Southeastern African front- behind the freaking British Commonwealth itself- and had a *very* sizable role in the West. During the Hundred Days, King Albert and the Belgian Army were tasked with taking point with the entire Flanders subsector (the Left Wing near the channel) of the Western Front, which they promptly rode right up until the German surrender. You. Are. Wrong.

And the Habsburgs were capable of doing anything the Germans could do in 1917...assuming the Germans were the ones doing it for them.

I'm not sure what the point of this is besides an attempt at childish hah-hahing trying to take the place of a proper argument, but whatever it is it failed.

A. Pray tell me how do you mean by "assuming the Germans were the ones doing it for them"? Yes, it's safe to say that by this point in time the Habsburg military was more or less completely dominated at the high command level by the Germans, who more or less made all the big policy and strategic decisions. That's true. It's also true that by and large the Habsburg units always lagged behind the Germans in overall efficiency. However, that in no way changes the fact that the Habsburg military did and remained a very active, very important overall part of the war effort, and well capable of winning victories.

In particular, the battle of Kowel was basically waged and won mostly by Habsburg troops, with the German support very much taking a secondary role (mostly as adviisors, superiors, etc).

B. It is completely beside the point. Even if the Habsburgs were extremely dependant on German propping up, it doesn't change the fact that by the high point of the war they were just as capable of trading blows with their major antagonists- be they Western or Eastern Allied- and doing ok. In very saunch contrast to the Russian Army at the tail end of this period.

The 1914 campaign dictated that the Germans would have to take the offensive, but the actual operations themselves I wouldn't say immediatly lead to the thought proccess of the Great Retreat.

Agreed, but it was a building action. And it certainly indirectly led to it later, by basically establishing large Dual Alliance positions to the North as well as the South and West of the Polish Salient. It was still a long ways away form forcing the Russians out of the salient- as Lodz and the Silesian Offensive showed- but it was certainly a step in that direction.

The first German invasion of Poland was by all means a costly kerfuffle that left the Germans with a bloody nose and the Russians no the worse off.

Besides the severe depletion of resources, the destruction of several fortified positions, and various manpower and equipment losses the Russians weren't able to make up for yet?

They did very damn well overall, let's be frank with that. But it hardly left them off "no worse off."

The reasoning for the Great Retreat was apparent to anyone who knew how to exploit the Russian command system and more importantly, the lack of any developed rail system in Russian Poland to facilitate the needed movement of vast amount of troops (lets face it, the Germans wiped the floor in the east because they had the logistics mastered above all else),

Agreed with reservations. I think part of the reason is asking ourselves why they had the logistics mastered above all else, especially given the things Russian industry was capable of achieving even at this point in time.

but I wouldn't say one looks at November 1914 and goes "obviously the great retreat is going to happen."

Agreed. I think the situation could still have been salvaged. But it wasn't. The fact that it didn't end up een worse off is cold comfort.

T

he Russian command failed to prepare adequetly and responds efficently in the moment of the offensive sure, but aside from the political repercussions, I wouldn't say the Great Retreat was a massive defeat that impeded the Russians ability to wage war.

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Let me put it this way, governor.

Those 580,000 casualties out of a pre-existing "Core" army of 1.2 million from the Galician and East Prussian campaigns alone-The units consisting of the Tsar's regular officer corps, regular and elite units, and equipment - , that the Russian Army took seizing Galicia, Prz, and the rest in the great battles of 1914?

They didn't accomplish anything lasting. The net gain of 1914 amounted to at least half the Russian Core Army as casualties. Nothing else. Those same casualties- consisting of the people the Russian government needed to bring the newcomers up to speed, to provide leadership, and a reliable officer corps- were all but thrown away because of the Great Retreat.

And that's before I even get into the abandonment of Poland's forts and infrastructure, the gaining of a new recruitment and ecconomic base for the CP in the form of Poland and many, many other places, and what have you.

If you cannot see how this is a crushing strategical defeat that severely impeded the Russian ability to wage war, that is because you are trying very hard not to see.

In fact not having the Polish salient to defend is something I would look at as a good thing, it shortend their lines of defense and pulled the army back to a more developed area for defense.

What you think does not matter, especially since the second half of that sentence is completely false. The Russians had spent the pre-war period beefing up Russian Poland into an interlocking set of fortifications to keep their enemies out and the Poles themselves down, with a correspondingly heavy investment of the Tsarist state's limited resources. Which given the industrial centers of Lodz, Warsaw, etc. al. was hardly difficult to understand.

The Russians abandoned all of that when they had to turn tail and run in 1915, turning all those resources over to the Central Powers. If you think that's a good thing, you need to study military history. It's defensible to have abandoned the salient for the shorter lines you mentioned, but the problem is that that the Russians didn't choose that willingly. They decided to hold on to the Salient, and wound up loosing it and all the worth they'd poured in to it. That is a defeat.

But politically it was indeed a blow that hampered the Russian war effort (no, just because you are the Tsar doesn't mean you should assume direct control of the army you fool).

It was more than just a political blow, it was a gross strategic and military one that helped play into that. Again: the Russian military and people had invested and paid GREATLY in the campaigns of 1914 and early 1915. And in return they got *Nothing.* Hundreds of thousands of casualties only to have only a net loss. In life, in equipment, in prosperity, and in territory. All of Russia's efforts outside of the Caucasus prior to this all passed under the bridge.

Agree with most of this except you're putting to the side the effects of the lack of equipment.

And you're completely ignoring the net effect of the Russian army bashing its' head against hard targets and losing vast amounts of its' regular military and pre-war equipment stocks in Galicia and East Prussia, huge costs out of all proportion to what they accomplished. Then agian, you are the person who paints the picture of the East Prussian campaign featuring less than a tenth of its' starting strength and virtually none of the heavy equipment surviving as being something *other* than a bonafide disaster, so you've put other things to the side than just the causes of said equipment shortfalls.

The Russian army, when armed well and competently lead could handle the Germans,

Agreed.

and though a retreat from the Polish salient was inevitable given the logistics of it,

Not agreed.

the lack of equipment was obviously a major factor into why the retreat got as bad as it was.

Curious; we go from a more or less fully kitted out Russian Army at the outbreak of WWI to one facing serious shortfalls as early as less than a year later. Why is that? Could it have a military reason in addition to the sociopoliticalecconomic reasons? Like the umpteen dozen trains the Germans had to gather to cart all the cr@p the Russians left behind in East Prussia? I wondeeeer.....

The war had not evolved to a point where the Russians were completly behind yet,

Wholly agreed.

in fact it was arguably one of the first times the Germans and Habsburgs got their acts together. And the Russians did manage to get their armies out which is a feat in and of itself, so yeah, I would say not having equipment was one of the bigger reasons.

Agreed, but you're using a most one dimensional analysis of the reasons *why* that equipment was so scarce. You're ignoring the effectively full kit out of the Russian army at the outbreak of the waran dhow it got to here, and ignoring anything that doesn't have to do with the homefront. In particular, the major equipment attrition that was suffered in the 1914 campaigns and especially in East Prussia. Was it the only reason? Absolutely not. But it certainly was a major reason.

There are so many things wrong with the Romanian theater that you can't even begin to start at blammin the Russians for "not coordinating" with the Romanians.

Except Yes I can. The Romanian theater was royally screwed up, and Romania's entire strategy for the first year of its' involvement was basically hopeless beyond all belief, but just because one side screws up doesn't mean that exonerates any other parties from responsibility for their own screwups. Especially after the Romanians had actually stopped acting like idiots and were basically holding the Southeastern flank of the Eastern Front. It's like me saying that we can't blame Mazapa for his spectacularly poor showing in the Poltova campaign because it was Charles XII's idea to launch a landborne invasion of Russia with grossly inferior forces against Peter the Great's newly reformed military.

The Romanians screwed up the Romanian front Militarily all by themselves,

Yes, yes they did.

You don't seem to realize that that is the entire problem right there. Why in God's name were they left to wage their little minifront alone with a handful of hugely under-supported Russian units, even after the lines had settled down to make it practical?

and all of the powers involved on the Allies screwed up on getting the Romanians in when they did. The Russians were in no real position to help the Romanians when the Romanians went to war, something the Romanians should be faulted for for not taking into bigger consideration when they entered, especially when they left their southern border under maned in face of the Bulgarians, that's something you can't blame on the Russians. Politically the involvment of Romania was pointless after the Brusilov Offensive. They should have gone in at the beggining and attacked at the same time as Brusilove kicked things off.

Yes, agreed with all. However, that's ignoring the greater point.

After 1916 and the occupation of most of the country, the Romanians were actually able to sort of their army, dig in, and hold the far flank of the Eastern Front up until Brest-Litovsk itself, with basically no coordination with or from the Russians, against a usually superior enemy force. So why in God's name was the right hand not talking to the left hand with all of this? The lack of coordination over things like Kerensky's initiatives or the provisioning/ordering of the Russian units on the Romanian front are especially, Especially bad. Witht he end result that neither Russians or Romanians knew what the other was doing, and that eventually led to the Central Powers being able to exploit it.

The Romanians screwed up the Romanian Front all by themselves. I can't fault Russia for that fact in 1916, but I can fault them for that fact in 1917.

If we are going by the Russians failure to follow up a local success properly as a sign of theirn ineptitude in all things war then my friend everyone in this war was inept (not to much of a stretch mind you ).

And now we see the graduation to outright missing the point and slander. For one, yes it is a massive stretch. You yourself said it earlier, in regard to the Col.

Secondly, the problem wasn't failure to follow up a local success properly persee, since that happened everywhere. It was a catastrophic failure to even be able to get that far. It was failure to even *try* or really even recognize the oppertunity Or the stakes.The Russian units did absolutely nothing and stood inert while guarding the direct route to Petrograd, the most important city in Russia at the time. Compare and contrast to what heppened with the Germans just about anywhere, the Austro-Hungarians in Italy and at Kowel, the Western Allies on Mont Grappa and outside Paris and Salonika, and countless others.

Or for that matter, the Russians at Port Arthur, Mukden, and in the Caucasus.

Does it sound normal to you for an army guarding the main route to the national capitol to have all the initaitive and ability of a loaf of bread?

Yes it was an rather obvious failure if you just look at it, but by December 1916/Jan 1917 the Russian homefront was alrady collapsing.

And war front, as shown by the failure of the Brusilov Offensive at Kowel, the problems in Romania, and the other operations like the lovely failure of Lake Naroch, each of which resulted in the loss of men, material, and the rest that could not be replaced or equalled. Looking at this all and just blaming the homefront is one dimensional to the extreme, since it focuses only on the supply side of the equation rather than the demand and the reasons for it.

Several regiments the Russian commander had refused to go into battle at all, let alone the Russian front find enough men to actually exploit any advances.

Again, why is that? You can't just blame the homefront, because that's just one half of the equation. The entire system had sowed the seeds for its' desintegration, and the military preformance has to be factored in.

And the "victory" was by no means given to them for free. The attacking units suffered heavily, and what exactly do you think more men would have done that they never seemed to do before?

It was given to them for free in the sense that they didn't actually have to gather together the entire immediate area to plan a combined push. Sort of like the Australians were known for doing with their independent pushes on the Western Front. And given Russia's logistical problems that is something.

And if this were a reasonable situation, I would think they would have won at laest temporarily, that is what I think. God knows that is precisely what happened plenty of other places, even during the Kerensky Offensive and absolutely on the Western Fronts (on both sides). However, we were not dealing with a reasonable situation, were we?

I certainly wouldn't highlight the Christmas battles as this massive failure,

That depends on what we're classifying as a failure. It's a massive failure *precisely because* there is no good military or tactical reason for it turning ou the way this did. There was ample time for the breach to be exploited, the other units were not seriously depleted in terms of men and material, and the enemy had suffered a serious early defeat from being hit on the head with the element of surprise. Even a few units breaking to join on their own would have been better than nothing.

That is why this is a massive failure, but in a different sense than the tactical catastrophe that was Lake Naroch. There was no valid reason for this.

if you want to do that look at lake naroch as a moment of utter failure of an offensive then feel free,

I have, multiple times in this very thread. But that said, how do you square the East Prussian campaign- which was far more disasterous than Lake Naroch- as being something that wasn't a military disaster whille this clearly is?

but also accept that the good ol Russian goverment shares and equal amount of blame with the actual military commanders, with the Tsar picking crappy generals and consenting to politically motivated plans. The Tsar should have never gotten involved, the Russian military would have been all the better without him.

I've never had a problem doing that, and I have gone so far as to point it out (for the same reason Caporetto was the perfect storm of the Italian military's problems). The problem from what I've seen in your posts is that you haven't been accepting that the commanders on the field had a relatively equal share of the blame with the home front and the government itself.

You seem to see the civilian and economics as a sympton of the military,

I am sorry if I gave that impression, but I do not. At least not completely.

The civilian and the economics were symptoms of the military, but the inverse was true as well. It's an interlocking, multi-faced relationship, after all. They all share the laurels of victory, and they share the blame for defeat. I've tried to make that as clear as possible like in the above post.

I see the military as the sympton of the diseas that was the Russian economy, culture and above all politics.

That depends on how we define such things, especially culture and politics. However, I am torn between agreeing and saying it is ultimately one dimensional; in your construct there is only one causal relationship: the society to the military. This really is inadaquate to explain this, especially given how the Russian Civil War saw how the military (or parts of it) could affect all of them.

I see the Economy, population and Politcal scene as the chief cause of the Russian defeat, because in the end they directly impacted the Russian military effort, I don't see it as the other way around.

And you are wrong to do so. Because that is a straightjacketed, shortsighted, and one dimensional view of how the social affects the military and the military affects the social.

In 1914 the Russians did fine.

They lost half of their standing military and a huge chunk of their equipment base for gains that would ultimately do them no good in the wider war. That is a very low bar for success! In particular, you vastly underestimate the disaster that was the Masurian Lakes.

In 1915 the military situation was heavily impeeded by the economics of the country,

Which was heavily impeded by the military situation, as a result of having to do things like replace lost equipment and in particular resurrect the First Army from the shadow of itself that got out of East Prussia.

and by 1916 when the economics were better the damage had been done and the increasing political BS involved effectively halted whatever recovery the army could have made. By Winter 1916 I already see Russia as having lost the war, any of the stuff that happens after the February revolution I see as the repercusions of the war that was already lost, even if it did take a few German mop up operations before a peace deal was officialy signed.

Agreed overall, but that doesn't change the fact that that is a classical military defeat, as I have said.

As for the rest it's nothing you haven't alrady said or is simply not worth talking about (no idea what that was about with my obviously sarcastic and purposly simplistic statement about the events that took place after the revolutions, you are clearly just looking for a fight there but I'm sorry I have none to give).

Good day my good sir

You clearly do not understand me. I am not looking for a fight with you, clearly or not. If I were clearly looking for a fight, I would have clicked the little button that would send this to the Moderators for evaluation. I have not and will not do so.

So can we please continue this discussion like gentlemen, flaws and all? It's actually quite interesting, and I'd prefer not to have the ceiling cave in on it.

Pretty, pretty please?