December, 1915 Eastern front. More than a
year has passed since the start of the First World War. During this time Russia had suffered
several setbacks and lost part of its territories to the Central Powers of Austria-Hungary and
Germany. These defeats have greatly increased the war exhaustion in Russia. It might not be
able to bear the burden of the war for long. Russia decided to mobilize all its available
resources to go on the offensive and attempt to put an end to the war in 1916, before its
war exhaustion reached critical levels.
But going on the offensive was not easy. The
Central Powers did have less troops on the Eastern Front, but they had built a strong line of
fortifications to defend against Russian attacks. The main difficulty for the Russian offensive
was to break through these defenses.
As time passed, the Russian forces gained
strength and would mount increasingly larger attacks during 1916.
The first attack was launched south of the Pripyat marshes. Here the Russian forces were faced by
Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian army was somewhat inferior to the Russian and Russia hoped
to break through the Austro-Hungarian positions without having a strong numerical advantage.
It attacked on the southern sector of the front at the end of 1915. However the offensive
failed and Russia was unable to make any lasting gains into the Austro-Hungarian defenses.
With this approach not working out Russia decided to rely more on its numerical advantage to break
the Central Powers lines. The next offensive would be launched on the northern part of the front,
where Russia had an overall numerical advantage of 2 to 1 in its favor against the German forces.
This allowed Russia to gather a strong numerical superiority of 4 to 1 on the point of the
main attack. Russia launched the offensive in March of 1916. However the organization of the
defending German army proved to be much superior to the Russian forces. The German forces repelled
most of the Russian attacks and retook all lost positions with a counterattack. Russia made no
progress and this offensive too had failed.
The Russian offensives had not shown much promise
in defeating the Central Powers by the summer of 1916. With the time running low, Russia decided to
launch a major offensive along the whole front. It would be split into separate offensives, one
in the northern and the other on the southern part of the front. The Southern offensive was
first to be launched and it would be known as the Brusilov offensive. Russia had only a small
numerical superiority over the Austro-Hungarian forces. But Russia had learned better tactics
from the earlier offensives and this greatly improved the performance of the Russian army.
The attacks were launched in early June of 1916. In the north the Russian forces broke through
the Austro-Hungarian defenses. In the South, too the Austro-Hungarian defenses were breached.
The third attack was able to make some inroads into the Austro-Hungarian lines and the
fourth attack failed to make any gains. Russia had broken through the Austro-Hungarian
fortifications. The Russian forces attempted to continue the offensive, but they lacked
the numerical advantage to do that. In the north Russia made some more progress, but
soon its advance was stopped by the arrival of the German reinforcements. In the south
the Austro-Hungarians retreated into the Carpathian mountains, where they established
new defensive positions. On these they were able to halt the Russian advance. By that time
Russia had lost 500 000 men as dead, missing and wounded. However it could make two breaches
into the Central Powers defensive positions.
Russia decided to abandon the offensive
in the northern part of the front and deploy all available forces to continue the
offensive in the south. By the end of June Russia now had a numerical advantage of 2 to 1
in this area. But at the same time the Central Powers received reinforcements and rebuilt
their fortifications. Russia proceeded with the offensive in three directions.
In the north Russia attacked an undamaged section of the Central Powers defenses held
by Austro-Hungarian and German forces. The offensive made only very marginal gains and
had to be called off. Further south Russia did only little better. The main location of the
breakthrough was now blocked off by strong German forces. Russia was only able to advance against
weaker Austro-Hungarian forces on the flanks and could not make large progress. In the south the
Austro-Hungarian forces had to give up some ground but they were able to mostly hold the Russian army
back. The offensive could not gain much territory and cost Russia another 400 000 soldiers. But
it also weakened the defending forces.
In August the last group of free Russian forces
were deployed to the southern front for the final offensive. This time the attacks would be limited
only to two areas. In the north against the German forces and in the south against Austria-Hungary.
In the north Russia was only able to make very small territorial gains against the German forces
and the offensive here failed. In the south Russia had much greater success. The Austro-Hungarian
forces had been weakened by previous offensives and under new Russian attacks their front line
collapsed. They had to retreat and abandoned a large part of their fortified positions. Russia
had broken through the Central Powers defenses, but it had lost the manpower to continue
the attacks. Another 540 000 would become casualties during this offensive. With
the Austro-Hungarian positions broken, just one more attack might be sufficient to
inflict a major defeat on the Central Powers.
Russia convinced Romania to join its side in
order to provide these forces. The Romanian army had 660 000 men, which could be enough to
launch another offensive against Austria Hungary. This might lead to the Austro-Hungarian forces
becoming overextended and collapsing. In late August Romania invaded Austro-Hungarian territory.
The Central Powers lacked forces and could counter this by deploying less than half the number of
soldiers than Romania had. However the Central Powers forces had been greatly improved from
the experience of the first two years of the First World War. Romania had been at peace and
its army lacked these innovations. This made the Central Powers forces much stronger despite
their numerical inferiority to the Romanian forces. The Central Powers overran parts of the
Romanian army in the south of the Danube. In the north they pushed the Romanian forces back into
the Carpathian mountains. Romania had the good natural defensive positions of the Danube river
and the Carpathian mountains, but these were not enough to withstand the advantage the Central
Powers had over the Romanian forces. Soon the Central Powers had crossed the Carpathians
and the Danube and entered the Romanian heartland. The Romanian army began to fall back.
Russia had to go on the defensive and redeploy its forces to defend the Romanian front. Between
the Carpathians and the Danube it was able to create another defensive line and stop any further
advance by the Central Powers. This was the last major operation on the Eastern Front during
1916. Both sides dug in for the winter.
The winter brought an internal crisis to Russia.
Russia had failed to defeat the Central Powers and now the war exhaustion had reached critical
levels. This resulted in political turmoil, which we will not go into in this video, but the
main trend was that as the time passed, the war exhaustion grew and decreased Russia's ability
to resist the Central Powers. By the summer of 1917 this had led to a large-scale weakening
of the discipline in the Russian army.
But Russia still had a large advantage over the
Central Powers in numbers and it decided to go on the offensive in July of 1917 on the southern
front. Here Russia had a numerical superiority of 3 to 1. Russia was to attack in one area.
However by that time the process of disintegration had already gone too far. The discipline of the
Russian forces was so poor that a large part of the soldiers began refusing to go on the attack.
The northern attack against the German forces made only very small territorial gains. The southern
attack against Austria-Hungary made more gains, but was eventually stopped. Then the Central
Powers launched a counterattack. It caused the discipline in the Russian army to completely
collapse. Russian forces retreated with minimal resistance and almost all the land taken from
Austria-Hungary was lost to the Central Powers. Eventually Russia was able to regroup its
forces and stop the Central Powers. But the overall situation continued to deteriorate.
During the following months the war exhaustion caused the government to begin to completely lose
control over the country and Russia moved further towards collapse. Germany began a series of
offensives targeting the Russian capital of Petrograd. In September Germany captured the city
of Riga and breached the Russian defensive line. In October it launched an amphibious attack
and occupied the Estonian islands. With the Russian state being near collapse and its army
disintegrating, Russia could not offer effective resistance to the Central Powers. In November
of 1917 a truce was signed between Russia and the Central Powers and this put an end to
the participation of Russia in the war.
Russia failed to defeat the Central Powers in
time and put an end to the conflict. As a result it was thrown into chaos, suffered a defeat from
the Central Powers and had to give up parts of its. But this was not the worst thing about this
situation for Russia. The collapse of the Russian state allowed the Bolsheviks - a radical left
wing faction - to size power in Petrograd and declare themselves the government. As different
factions began fighting for power, the future of Russia would be decided in a new war, the Russian
Civil war. We will cover it in the next video.
