Winston S. Churchill - The World Crisis: The Eastern Front

Winston Churchill

Copyright

The World Crisis
Part VThe Unknown War
The Eastern Front
First published 192331. Estate of Winston S. Churchill
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright 2013 by RosettaBooks, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Image of Winston Churchill at Stadwald with the Army Council to the Rhine, 1919 reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of The Broadwater Collection, an archive of photographs owned by the Churchill family and held at the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

Electronic edition published 2013 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795331541

To
Our Faithful Allies
and Comrades
In the Russian Imperial Armies

In the five volumes of the World Crisis and the Aftermath I have told the story of the War from the British standpoint, and particularly from those positions of authority which I held myself. The war at sea, the expedition to the Dardanelles, and the campaigns in France and Flanders filled the stage. It was only here and there that brief summaries of the struggles of Russia with Germany and Austria in the East could find a place. In this new volume the proportions are reversed. The tale both of the events leading to the War and of its battles is told from the Eastern theatre, and only brief, indispensable references are made to British and French affairs. I have attempted to give a general account of the whole War upon the Eastern Front, and the distant cannonade in France breaks only fitfully upon the ear. The primary theme arises in Vienna and covers the agonies of Central Europe. The familiar events in the West are seen only in their reactions upon the Eastern Front.

Although I had lived and toiled through the war years in positions which gave a wide outlook and the best information, I was surprised to find how dim and often imperfect were the impressions I had sustained of the conflict between Russia and the two Teutonic Empires. It was not until I studied its problems from this new angle that I began to see the tragedy in its completeness. I believe that British and American readers will also find the narrative of these events necessary to a true understanding.

The sources are abundant. Voluminous histories, memoirs, rejoinders, exculpations and official accounts, some only recently published, are available. Many have not been translated into French. Few have been translated into English. Others are technical, and interest chiefly military students. A whole library exists into which the English-speaking world has scarcely ventured. Yet our own fortunes were powerfully swayed by all that happened in the East, and it is there that we must look for the explanation of many strange and sorry turns in our fortunes.

I must acknowledge the assistance I have derived from the massive records of Conrad von Htzendorf, the virtual Austro-Hungarian Commander-in-Chief; from the works of Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Falkenhayn and Hoffmann; from the Russian accounts by Danilov, Gourko and Sukhomlinov; from the successive volumes of the German and Austrian official histories; from the library of the Royal Institute of International Affairs; and from the long series of searching military monographs which have appeared from time to time in the Army Quarterly. I must also pay my tribute to the statement of the causes of the War by Professor Bernadotte E. Schmitt, of Chicago University, who has marshalled in masterly fashion the whole series of official and authentic documents in an impressive array.

Finally, I am deeply indebted to Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hordern, who for more than a year has assisted me in the assembly and sifting of material with his excellent advice, and in making the necessary translations, and preparing the numerous maps without which the story would be unintelligible.

A list of some of the authorities consulted or cited will be found in . In all cases I have sought to probe the original documents, and have had direct translations made from the German and Russian texts.

I have striven to make the operations of the Armies plain to the lay reader and to show also, as in previous volumes, what happened and why. Every effort has been made to simplify the terminology. Russian, Polish and Austrian names of men and places in great numbers are an inevitable deterrent to English-speaking readers. But the same difficulty would no doubt recur, if unhappily a great war were ever to be fought in Wales! For convenient brevity the word Austrian is nearly always used to cover the Austro-Hungarian Empire. William II is described throughout as the Kaiser, and Francis Joseph as the Emperor. Other abbreviations and symbols will be introduced as the narrative proceeds. It is my hope that in the result the reader who will gaze attentively upon the simple maps and diagrams which illustrate and sustain the text will have at his disposal a continuous and compendious description of these vast and mournful episodes of human destiny.

C HARTWELL ,
K ENT ,
13 August, 1931.

ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLE OF MAPS, DIAGRAMS, ETC.

IN TEXT

NOTE.

The reference numbers printed against the more important quotations given in the text refer to the list of sources contained in .

If for a space we obliterate from our minds the fighting in France and Flanders, the struggle upon the Eastern Front is incomparably the greatest war in history. In its scale, in its slaughter, in the exertions of the combatants, in its military kaleidoscope, it far surpasses by magnitude and intensity all similar human episodes.

It is also the most mournful conflict of which there is record. All three empires, both sides, victors and vanquished, were ruined. All the Emperors or their successors were slain or deposed. The Houses of Romanov, Hapsburg and Hohenzollern woven over centuries of renown into the texture of Europe were shattered and extirpated. The structure of three mighty organisms built up by generations of patience and valour and representing the traditional groupings of noble branches of the European family, was changed beyond all semblance. These pages recount dazzling victories and defeats stoutly made good. They record the toils, perils, sufferings and passions of millions of men. Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain. Ten million homes awaited the return of the warriors. A hundred cities prepared to acclaim their triumphs. But all were defeated; all were stricken; everything that they had given was given in vain. The hideous injuries they inflicted and bore, the privations they endured, the grand loyalties they exemplified, all were in vain. Nothing was gained by any. They floundered in the mud, they perished in the snowdrifts, they starved in the frost. Those that survived, the veterans of countless battle-days, returned, whether with the laurels of victory or tidings of disaster, to homes engulfed already in catastrophe.