III
Germany had gone to war in good part from fear of Russia—specifically, fear of a massive Russian invasion. How real had the anxiety been? With hindsight sharpened by exile, Russia’s military memoirists described their 1914 offensive as a sacrificial gambit made to fulfil a moral obligation to their French ally by relieving the German pressure in the west. Soviet scholars too present the relationship between France and Russia in terms similar to George and Lenny in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: the weak-minded, good-hearted giant, more or less controlled by his smaller and smarter comrade. In fact, an offensive into East Prussia made strategic sense in its own right. The alternate possibility of a direct attack westward into Silesia from Russian Poland looked promising on maps—especially French maps. Russia’s ally had repeatedly urged such a blow in the years before 1914. Launching it, however, would expose the force involved to counterattacks from north and south against increasingly long flanks. A Napoleon, facing Napoleon’s opponents, might have taken the risk. Russian planners had too much respect for the German army not to seek an easier solution, one exploiting advantages bestowed by geography and history. The salient was Germany’s most obvious geographic weak point. Apart from this, East Prussia’s assumed cultural and political importance in the Second Empire seemed to guarantee that the German army—or at least that part of it left in the east—would stand, fight, and be crushed.
The operational plans for that happy contingency were the product of a series of ambiguities. The size and hererogeneity of the Rusian officer corps combined with the army’s broad spectrum of missions to enhance professional diversity. More than any of their European counterparts, Russian officers differed strikingly from each other in status, education, and attitudes. In the face of its unpopularity among the intelligentsia and the middle classes, in the face of aristocratic contempt for a military career except within strictly limited parameters, the Russian army tended to accept and retain what it could get. Unlike their German colleagues, Russian officers also developed a broad spectrum of professional orientations based on alternate forms of experience. Service in the Caucasus or Siberia could generate perspectives on the empire’s military needs that were quite different from those cultivated in St. Petersburg, or on the western border. Unlike the situation in France, such officers were not encapsulated as “colonials.” A more legitimate comparison might be to the U.S. army of the post-Vietnam era, with its ongoing debate between those officers advocating a focus on the “real soldiering” of NATO’s central front and those insisting that the coming threats to vital U.S. interests would be posed in Latin America, Africa, or other regions demanding low-intensity and unconventional war-fighting capacities.
The growing institutional rivalry between the war ministry and the general staff after 1905 was the tip of a structural iceberg. Neither the army’s professionalism nor its corporate spirit were strong enough to create an integrated officer corps from variegated material. More and more officers, particularly in the field grades, considered their career to depend less on competence than on an interlocking network of favors and patronage whose distribution depended on both sponsorship by and identification with a major power group. Administrative decisions, command appointments, and operational policies alike reflected increasingly bitter, increasingly complicated power struggles by men who saw not only their own futures but the destiny of the state as depending on the “right” decision in each case.34
Russian military thought, particularly after 1905, correspondingly tended to be centrifugal rather than cohesive. The work of the uniformed intellectuals documented attitudes as opposed to inspiring analysis. While this kind of solipsism was no more prevalent in Russia than anywhere else in Europe, the bases of the various arguments were far enough apart to ensure an army divided against itself doctrinally as well as institutionally. The major fault line lay between Westernizers and nativists: those who favored deliberate, conscious adjustment to the demands of industrial technology, following models developed in France and Germany, and those who emphasized Russian experiences with an eye to strengthening the internal cohesion and moral force of the Russian army. This was by no means a simple division between reformers and traditionalists, materialists and vitalists. Both factions were concerned with Russia’s response to the demands of modern war. Would it be short or long? Should the state plan for total mobilization, or prepare to fight and win with the resources on hand? What was the proper balance between moral and material factors?
Whatever their specific perspectives, since the 1870s Russia’s generals, like their German counterparts, had focussed on the worst-case contingency: Russia alone in a war with Germany and Austria. The strategic policies developed against this background by no means reflected unrelieved belligerence. Much professional literature stressed the dual historical mission of the Tsarist empire: transmitting European culture to the peoples of Asia while defending the West from Oriental barbarians. In this context, even offensive war against one or more Western powers was considered “military,” as oppposed to “political,” in nature, a temporary manifestation of maladjusted diplomacy.
In the 1870s Russia’s first modern war minister, D. A. Miliutin, had consistently argued against risking any conflict with a coalition of the Western states. This initial support for a cautious strategy of building up strong forces behind the frontiers and awaiting the enemy’s attacks gave way during the 1880s to a policy of preparing active operations against Austria combined with a passive, defensive posture towards Germany. The new approach combined military and political considerations. The Habsburg Empire was both Russia’s obvious diplomatic adversary and an enemy Russia’s generals were confident of defeating. Germany was a dangerous military opponent, but also a potential mediator of armed conflict between her eastern neighbors as she so often mediated diplomatic disputes. Common sense suggested the wisdom of antagonizing her as little as possible, particularly given the risks of forcing battle with the finest army in Europe.
Feelings of admiration, envy, and inferiority generated an attitude of deference reinforced by the relative failure of Russian intelligence to provide much inside information on the German military. On the other hand, a series of extremely successful intelligence operations against Austria not only resulted in an imbalance of material on the Central Powers, but encouraged a tendency to exaggerate both Austrian weaknesses and German strengths.
Russia was by no means ill-informed of the general outlines of prospective German moves. As early as 1891, the Russian chief of staff explained to his French counterpart his plans for checking a German attack towards the Niemen while delaying the armies of the Dual Alliance in Poland until reinforcements arrived from the interior. His description of the Central Powers’ probable strategy and force structures fit the German and Austrian intentions at the time almost exactly.
Discussions of striking first, of mounting a spoiling offensive into East Prussia from the Niemen line, gave way to a more cautious approach during the 1890s. This reflected Russia’s increasing concentration on central Asia and the Far East. It also reflected the unacceptable financial and diplomatic costs of preparing in peacetime an infrastructure for an immediate, full-strength onslaught against Germany. Some general staff officers argued, particularly in the company of the French attachés, the moral advantages of beginning the next war with a decisive victory over Germany. Nevertheless the policy of concentrating against Austria continued to prevail. When pressed for specifics, its advocates said the Russian army would take the offensive on the twenty-fifth day of mobilization and crush the Austrians no more than ten days later. Within another ten days Russia would be ready to strike for Berlin.