The Eastern Front – Ww2

The eastern front was an area that stretched for about 1600km (1000miles) between Saint Petersburg in the north and the Baltic Sea in the south, more than three times as long as the western front. The main participants fighting on the eastern front were: Germany, Austria-Hungary, The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria on one side, and Russia and Romania on the other. On the eastern front, unlike on the western front, trenches did not spring up as the troops on both sides were spread out across the large distances. This had the effect of making both sides’ lines much easier to break through. Once the attacker had broken through, however, there were not enough communications to obtain adequate reinforcements and so the breach would close. Because of this, there were no clearly defined lines of battle.

The Russian army, commanded by grand duke Nicholas, was vast; it contained over 110 infantry divisions and almost 40 cavalry. The war truly began when Russia invaded eastern Prussia, as well as the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. The first invasion was a complete disaster on the Russians’ part, but a success for the Germans.

A major battle of this invasion was fought at the battle of Tannenberg in August/September 1914. This battle was fought between the German 8th army, and the     Russian 1st and 2nd armies. In the initial conflict, the Russian 2nd were all but wiped out, and the 1st were destroyed in the smaller battles that followed over the next few days. One notable feature of this battle was that the German 8th were able to deploy almost entirely by train, allowing their full capacity to gradually whittle down the Russian armies as they arrived. The Germans were aided in their victory by Colonel Max Hoffmann, an excellent military strategist who used his inside knowledge of the Russian army to secure a crushing victory over them. He discovered that the two Russian generals (Alexander Samsonov and Paul von Rennenkampf) had a fierce rivalry between them, and so deduced that they would divide their forces. This gamble could have gone either way, but fortunately for Hoffman, his theories (and the decoded Russian transmissions of their march plans) held true, and he was able to draw the Russian forces into a cunningly planned series of traps that resulted in the retreat, and eventual defeat of the Russians.

The battle of the Masurian lakes was a follow up offensive by the Germans that succeeded in pushing the Russians back out of Germany in disarray. The battle truly began on the 7th of September 1914, and occurred when the German XVII corps met with the Russian 1st. The conflict started well for the Russians, who outmanoeuvred the smaller force of Germans, but it soon turned upside down when the Russian army tried to retreat back, allowing the Germans to counterattack alongside the I corps with an attempted pincer movement attack. This was only prevented by the Russians pulling a hasty retreat, accompanied by a hefty rearguard. The Russians were forced backwards until they were behind the safety of their own lines. However, the Germans’ reinforcements had to be drafted in from the western front, causing disaster at the upcoming Battle of the Marne, which was decisively won by the British and French.