The shape of the future world after August 1914
would now be decided by force. At the outset of
the war all the major nations launched offensives
to knock out the enemy quickly, and every one
of these offensives had failed by the autumn of
1914 with great loss of life. War ended four years
later not by defeat of the armies in the field alone,
as in the wars of the nineteenth century, but with
the breakdown of the political and economic
structure of the defeated, their societies weakened
or shattered.
On the eastern war-front in August 1914 the
two Russian armies assigned to invade East Prussia
were badly led. Fulfilling their undertaking to the
French, the Russian armies, superior in numbers,
invaded East Prussia. After some initial Russian
success General von Hindenburg was called from
retirement to take command of the German
defence and he selected General Ludendorff as his
chief of staff. The myth of Hindenburg the heroic
war leader was born. At the battle of Tannenberg
on 28 and 29 August one Russian army was prac-
tically destroyed; the other was mauled in a subse-
quent engagement – the battle of the Masurian
Lakes – but was able to withdraw to Russia in
good order. Tannenberg is celebrated by the
Germans in the tradition of the ancient Teutonic
knights defeating hordes of Slavs. What followed
was as important as the battle itself and is less
heroically Wagnerian. The pursuing German army
of the second Russian army was, in its turn,
thrown back by the Russians. The end result of theyear’s fighting was heavy casualties on both sides
and neither a German nor a Russian decisive vic-
tory but a stalemate.
Farther south, the Russians more than bal-
anced their defeat in Prussia by proving their mil-
itary superiority over the Habsburg armies.
Austria-Hungary had launched an offensive into
Polish Russia and in September suffered a crush-
ing defeat; almost half (400,000) of the Austro-
Hungarian army was lost and the Russians
occupied Galicia. Russia also suffered heavy casu-
alties, a quarter of a million men. The ‘forgotten’
war in the east for three long years from 1915 to
1917 sapped Germany’s military strength by
forcing a division of Germany’s armies between
the two major fronts, east and west. German
victory in the east came too late to save it.
Another military campaign which is forgotten,
though it cost France 300,000 casualties, was the
1914 French offensive into Lorraine. The French
initiative came to be overshadowed by the German
breakthrough in north-west France. In accordance
with the (modified) Schlieffen Plan the German
armies attacked Belgium and were pouring into
France in a great enveloping move. At the frontier
the French armies were beaten and the small
British army, right in the path of the Germans,
withdrew from Mons having suffered heavy casual-
ties. The French commander-in-chief, General
Joffre, did not lose his nerve despite these almost
overwhelming reverses. The French armies with-
drew in good order and escaped encirclement.(^1) Chapter 8
THE GREAT WAR I
WAR WITHOUT DECISION, 1914–16