Russian military planners, whatever their other differences, agreed that under no circumstances could Russia successfully fight Germany and Austria by herself. They were correspondingly dubious regarding the capacity of Russia’s foreign office to keep Germany out of any Russo-Austrian conflict. Under these circumstances, might not Russia’s most prudent course be to accept risks at the beginning of a conflict in order to ensure that France would not be crippled or overrun? Like its counterparts everywhere in Europe, the Russian army accepted the offensive as the strongest form of war at all levels, strategic, operational, and tactical. Particuarly against the Germans, with their powerful, flexible army, losing the initiative anywhere could be the first step to disaster. A war game held in April, 1914, even evaluated the possibility of a partially mobilized Russian army attacking a superior German force. But this was presented as the result of a German pre-emptive strike into Russia—a response, in other words, to the kind of contingency that Plans G and A were supposed to avoid.
The distribution of forces under Case A in the 1912 plan also enhanced pressure for an offensive in the north. While the latter plan officially provided for no more than a holding action against Germany, the most pessimistic general staffer was reluctant to act on the assumption that thirty divisions, almost five hundred battalions, with full complements of cavalry and artillery, could not be risked against what amounted to Germany’s military leftovers, particularly in the context of a mobilization plan and a railway system sufficiently improved by 1913 to provide eight or nine corps facing Prussia by the fifteenth day of mobilization, and the impressive total of twenty-four corps ready for deployment against the Central Powers by M + 20.
Russia’s promise, made in August, 1913, of an offensive against Germany beginning on M + 15, and the tsar’s accompanying assurance that France could have absolute confidence in the Russian army, were ultimately the product of internal decisions rather than external pressure whatever its reasons.40 French encouragement, moral and financial, to improve the strategic railway network was incorporated into Russia’s own changing war plans. The government cheerfully used French loans to build tracks and sidings on the Austrian frontier as well as the German. French military and political leaders, increasingly convinced of the likelihood of war in the years before 1914, were aware of this, but convinced of the need to maintain Russian good will at virtually any cost—as long as the tsar’s army crossed the German frontier at the outbreak of war.
In August, 1914, the Germans in East Prussia faced many fewer battalions than the five hundred originally projected. Three active corps were diverted on mobilization to Warsaw as the core of an improvised army, which was to make a direct attack into Silesia once the victories on the flanks, in Galicia and East Prussia, were secured. Russian commanders also left large garrisons in fortresses far behind the frontier. Most of these were reserve formations, but in their absence the Russian active corps were forced to shed an ever-increasing number of companies and battalions for local security duties as they moved towards the frontier.41
This attrition of first-line combat strength was not unjustified. The Russians were concentrating in an area whose dominant civil populations, Poles, Lithuanians, and Jews, might well prove hostile given the opportunity. Strong guards on bridges, railroad junctions, and power stations were an insurance policy rather than an indulgence.42 Russian reserve formations in 1914, unlike their German counterparts, were not particularly efficient. Limiting them to garrison roles was more a recognition of fact than an exercise in fecklessness. Several reserve divisions intended to take over security in the field armies’ rear were being formed in the interior of Russia. Their arrival in the theater of operations would, however, take time—and time was something the Russians did not have.
Russia’s performance in the Tannenberg campaign has been so universally excoriated that it is easy to forget that Russia’s front and army commanders were not deliberately trying to lose. The senior officers assigned to the northern theater of operations were familiar enough with their adversary’s probable behavior. Apart from the logic suggested by the terrain, twenty years of German maneuvers and war games had played variations on the same scenario of defeating the Russians in detail. This made the Russians’ task significantly easier. Reasonable perception of an enemy’s intentions is the first step in their frustration, and there appeared no reason why the newly formed Northwest Front should not have an excellent chance to win a set of victors’ laurels.
As early as August 3, when it was plain that Germany’s main effort was in fact being made in the west, the Russian high command, the Stavka, began debating whether more troops should be sent against East Prussia. But even with detachments and shortages, the theater seemed to have all the men and guns it needed. Only four active German corps, the three in East Prussia and V Corps from Posen, remained in the east, and V Corps was expected—accurately—to leave within days. Against them the Russian 1st Army, six active infantry divisions, a rifle brigade, and five and a half cavalry divisions, would advance westward from the Niemen. The 2nd Army, with an initial assigned strength of eight and a half active divisions, a rifle brigade, and four divisions of cavalry, would move northwest from the Warsaw salient and the Narew River.
The Russian plan depended more on finesse and less on brute force than is generally conceded. The two armies were expected to coordinate their movements, one moving north of the Masurian Lakes, the other south and west of them. The Northwest Front’s optimal strategic goal was a double envelopment, with one army pinning the Germans in place and extending around their flank while the other struck their rear. Should the Germans stand and fight anywhere, a single envelopment seemed certain given the Russian numbers. And should they retreat towards the Vistula, a vastly superior Russian cavalry would have its chance to turn the movement into a rout.43
The Russian army, like all of its European counterparts, had spent a century grappling with the challenge of institutionalizing competence. Through the Napoleonic Era the craft of war had been mastered, particularly at the higher levels, by apprenticeship. Every campaign involved a process of shaking loose the generals who had exceeded their level of ability and replacing them with men better able to learn from experience. A scientifically minded nineteenth century encouraged the alternate approach of forming leaders by a process of continuing training, schooling, and tests. Birth and connections were still vitally important, particularly in Russia. They were, however, no longer the ne plus ultra of major command and staff assignments.
In this context Yakov Zhilinski, commanding the Northwest Front, was in many ways the model of a modern Russian general. Commissioned into the cavalry, he later attended the staff academy, graduating in 1883. Most of his duty over the next twenty years was in staff and liaison assignments. During the Russo-Japanese War, his efficient service as chief of staff in Manchuria marked him as a comer. A series of escalating staff and command responsibilities brought him to the post of chief of staff of the whole army in 1911. He established a reputation as a firm Francophile—at least to his French opposite numbers. He also became identified as a supporter of Sukhomlinov by his acceptance of the latter’s drive to assert the war ministry’s control over the general staff.