The Russian Army

The Russian Army

Introduction • This PowerPoint will give you information on the Russian Army and the reasons why it failed during the First World War. • Use the information to complete your flow diagram on the failure of the Russian Army. • You will need to summarise the information.

• On the outbreak of war in 1914 the Tsar appointed his uncle, the Grand Duke Nicholas, as Commander in Chief. • This came as a surprise to many, not least to the Grand Duke himself, who ‘appeared to be a man entirely unequipped for the task.’ • However, he was very popular with the rank and file of the army, possibly because of the severity of his treatment of the officers beneath him. • His two main subordinates were the Chiefof-Staff, General Yanushkevich and the Quartermaster General, General Danilov. • Neither were ideally suited for the tasks which confronted them.

“It is… neither in gallantry, nor genius, nor knowledge, nor in experience in military arts as proved in action that determine promotions, but external considerations. Under these conditions… gifted military leaders capable of leading us to victory seldom have reached the higher commands.”

• The Russian army had many excellent lower ranking officers but the training and appointment of those in senior positions worried many Russians. • The Russian army was poorly organised, badly armed and equipped, and directed by commanders who mingled ignorance with incompetence. • The rank and file peasant soldier was little better than those above him. • The uneducated Russian peasant population never understood why it fought. • The peasant fought well under competent leadership and in favourable circumstances, but, in the opinion of Knox, a British General at the time, ‘A higher type of human animal was required to persevere to victory through the monotony of disaster.’

• The Minister of War in 1914 was Vladimir Sukhomlinov. • His attitude to the military technical improvements of the previous quarter of a century was one of contempt based on a profound ignorance. • Sukhomlinov believed that an army only required the essential qualities of spirit and aggressiveness. • The Russian ‘steam roller’ – the masses of peasant soldiers – only required a bayonet and the support of Cossack cavalry. • As a consequence the Russian Army entered the war deficient in rifles, machine-guns and heavy artillery.

• At the outbreak of war Russia possessed sixty batteries of artillery against Germany’s three hundred and eighty-one, and for these few guns there was an acute shortage of shells. • On numerous occasions during 1914 and 1915 the infantry was sent into battle without artillery support. • The main problem, however, was that Russia lacked the industrial base to manufacture arms and munitions to keep such a huge army equipped for battle.

• By 1914, 6,553,000 men had been mobilised, but only 4,652,000 rifles were available and this shortage grew more acute during 1915. • The Tsar, as Commander in Chief, despaired, ‘If we should have three days of serious fighting we might run out of ammunition altogether.’

•Shortages were not confined to guns. •The lack of boots, warm underwear, and sheepskin coats caused many soldiers to suffer from frost-bite. • If wounded in battle the soldier was faced with a shortage of first aid supplies and a lack of horses and wagons to transport him to hospital. •If he reached hospital he might not get in. •Observers spoke of trains of wounded without straw, without clothing, badly bandaged and lacking food, being abandoned in railway stations to be attended only by civilian volunteer nurses and doctors.

• In 1914 Russia possessed only 68,200 km of railway and that was largely concentrated in Poland and western Russia. • This gave rise to enormous difficulties in transporting troops and supplies to the front, especially after some 4,800 km of track were lost after the German advance into Poland. • Motor transport was almost non-existent in Russia and goods had to be transported to the front by horse and wagon along unpaved roads. • The unreliability of this form of transport, particularly in winter, explains, in part, the reason for the shortages of equipment at the front.

Further Information • There were early defeats for the Russian Army at the Battle of Tanneberg and at Lodz. • By 1916, the Russian Army had lost three million men. • This extremely high death rate meant that conscription was very difficult. • When the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, they immediately started negotiating with Germany to end the war. • The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on the 9th February 1918.

Adapted from Robertson, pp.5460.

All pictures reproduced from http://www.gwpda.org/photos/russia 1.htm