So many countries and armies have plunged into war with Russia. And so many of them have suffered similar, grave fates.
During the Great Northern War (1700-1721), the young and martial Charles XII of Sweden had expertly picked off one by one chains in the enemy coalition — Denmark, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Saxony. But with Russia still in the war, Charles XII decided on an invasion of Russia in 1708, which was characterized by deep penetration, Russian refusal of battle on Charles XII’s terms, the miseries of the spring and autumn rasputitsa (when ground turned into knee-high or waist-high mud) and the miseries of the Russian winter. The Swedish campaign in Russia culminated in the decisive defeat of Charles XII’s army at Poltava. Charles XII had to flee to the Ottoman Empire for a bit before resuming the war that had now turned decisively against him. He was killed at the Siege of Fredriksten in 1718 and Sweden emerged from the Great Northern War humbled and eclipsed by the new Russian Empire.
Far more famous, so much so that even the average American might know of it, was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. Counting on his military, and specifically tactical, brilliance to carry the day, Napoleon plunged into Russia with his massive Grande Armée of between 450,000 and 685,000 men. Instead of his usual decisive, set-piece battles, Napoleon faced bloody, inconclusive encounters and an enemy not conforming to his anticipations; namely, Russia’s continual giving of ground — space for time. Napoleon’s army even took Moscow (and may or may not have set it ablaze deliberately), but that meant nothing on the eastern front of the Napoleonic Wars. With Russia’s extreme seasonal factors gnawing at what remained of his Grande Armée, Napoleon made for retreat, and in the process, dealt with further engagements that did not fit his usual script. As Napoleon’s army dwindled, Russian numbers swelled, and the peasantry were largely hostile to the French invaders (even engaging in the kind of warfare seen in the guerrilla of the Peninsular War).
As we all know, Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia led directly to his eventual downfall. Russian armies rolled over Europe, alongside the other coalition powers, and took Paris in 1814. Once again, the consequences of invading Russia seemed to be dire, and Napoleon’s experience confirmed Charles XII’s experience and others.
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Why German Strategy Succeeded on the Eastern Front in WWI
One of the greatest exceptions to the historic, even mythic, narrative of invading Russia and enduring disaster is Germany in the First World War. On the Eastern Front, from August 1914 until the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917, Germany had waged a largely offensive war against the Russian Empire, alongside its burden of an ally, Austria-Hungary.
After parrying various Russian blows in 1914, Germany took command and spearheaded the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive of May 1915. This offensive caused a collapse in the Russian lines and a huge breakthrough, unlike anything seen in the war before or after. By mid-July 1915, Germany and Austria-Hungary occupied all over modern Poland, most of Belarus, Lithuania, and a third of Ukraine. Here again, however, in the First World War, despite these strategic defeats, the Russians refused to come to the bargaining table just as they failed to do so in past invasions.
But the method(s) of Germany’s invasion of the Russian Empire during the First World War was rather different than those of Charles XII or Napoleon. Added to this was the very different socio-political context Russia found herself in compared to those past invasions. Whereas Charles XII and Napoleon’s invasions had hinged solely upon a military strategy — in other words, their form of “blitzkrieg” — Germany’s invasion in WWI possessed a multifaceted strategy.
Germany on the Eastern Front in WWI
The main component of Germany’s strategy against Russia on the Eastern Front that differed from past ones was its political strategy. Leaders and common Germans alike knew that, socially, Russia was always on the edge of upheaval. They only had to look at the 1905 Russian Revolution, which was closely linked to the military defeats against Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905; the strain of war could potentially break Russia, and her more likely than the French or British. Germany also benefited from numerous back-channels and connections, such as the Baltic Germans that lived in the Russian Empire, not to mention dynastic and aristocratic networks.
The farther the German Army pushed into the Russian Empire in WWI, the more they realized it wasn’t what they had always assumed. The Russian Empire was not some monolithic state of endless droves of Russian peasants. It was instead a mosaic. The Germans encountered Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Litvaks, Belarusians (“White Russians”), Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Jews residing in the tsarist Pale of Settlement (Jews whose practices were far different than the more secularized, westernized Judaism German soldiers knew). The longer German armed forces occupied these lands on the Eastern Front, the more German leaders — mainly military technocrats like Ludendorff — wanted to forge them into rationalized, Germanicized territories.
Administrations were set up to do just that, most notably in the case of Ober Ost. The German occupiers endlessly classified and catalogued all the different peoples they encountered; all the languages; all the religions; all the places they identified with (such as the town or perhaps something larger, like the nation). At the same time, the German forces exploited these ethnic and nationalist divisions to their advantage. Already, in 1915, the Central Powers had declared their intention to bring an independent Polish state (back) into existence by defeating the Russian Empire. To a nationally homogenous country like Germany, this strategy of playing on nationalism wasn’t too dangerous; but for a multi-ethnic, multi-national empire like Austria-Hungary, it was playing with fire. The Eastern Front of WWI witnessed a vast experiment in nation-building.
After the great breakthroughs of 1915 on the Eastern Front, the Central Powers were put on the defensive. To their surprise, in summer 1916 the assumed-humbled Russian Army launched its Brusilov Offensive. This massive and well-coordinated offensive shattered the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective force. Germany rushed in reserves to save its ally. The Eastern Front was stabilized by the end of September 1916. On the Western Front, Germany had begun the year by taking the initiative, attacking Verdun in February 1916. But in July, the Germans were struck by the long-planned British attack on the Somme. Although both Verdun and Somme ground down into costly battles of attrition with little immediate strategic outcome, the strains they placed on Germany struck a nerve. It’s no coincidence that, in the later stages of both battles in August 1916, a new overall military command, the Third OHL, came into existence, led by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. It’s also no coincidence that, around this time too, unrestricted submarine warfare was put back on the table; it was becoming the last means by which Germany could hit at Britain via destroying her merchant fleet and ability to import.
German strategy on the Western Front would follow a very military-alone style approach, with no accompanying political facet: Germany needed to employ unrestricted submarine warfare because it was necessary to bring Britain to her knees and Britian was the key chain in the link of the Allies; if these policy possibly led to war with the United States, then unfortunately that would have to be dealt with because knocking out Britain as quickly as possible was militarily more imperative than the political implications of drawing in another belligerent. Ultimately, unrestricted submarine warfare didn’t deliver on what it promised. It brought the U.S. into the war in April 1917. And in March 1918, Ludendorff would launch the massive Spring Offensive against the Western Front, with no strategic objective higher than to “punch through, then we shall see.”
German Political Strategy Bears Fruit on the Eastern Front
Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the strain of the war effort finally proved too much for Russia and the February Revolution of 1917 toppled the tsar and his regime. A provisional government was declared, operating along parliamentary lines, though the legislative body had to deal with the latent threat of another center of power — the soviets. Although many among the western Allies had idealistic hopes that a liberalizing revolution in Russia would tap the country’s hidden potential and unleash the force of her mobilized population — much like the levee en masse had for France during the early French Revolutionary Wars in 1793-1794 — they were to be mistaken. The Germans understood Russia better than the western European powers and knew that this revolution would only undermine the Russian war effort; undermine it, yes, but she still wasn’t out of the war.
This is where harnessing socialist revolution as a tool to destroy the enemy come into its own. Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks and exiled in Switzerland, was granted secure passage through Germany to Sweden. The intention was to send this communist revolutionary back to his home to roost and cause Russia to completely implode and withdraw from the war. And this more or less is what happened. Lenin and the Bolsheviks made their rallying cry, “Bread, Land, and Peace,” which appealed to various segments of society, from the urban proletariat to the peasant farmer. By making peace a cornerstone of their policy, the Bolsheviks diverged with the current social-democratic provisional government of Kerensky, which supported continuing the war on the Allied side. When the Kerensky Offensive of July 1917 utterly failed, the already precarious support the provisional government had crumbled.
While revolutionary turmoil unfolded in Russia in the aftermath of the February Revolution, Germany mainly stood and watched. On the Western Front, the Germans had hardened their defensive position through the construction of the Siegfried Stellung, popularly called the Hindenburg Line. They withstood strong offensive pushes by the French at the Chemin des Dames and by the British at the Third Battle of Ypres, as well as at Cambrai late in 1917. Meanwhile, in Italy, in October 1917, German forces alongside Austro-Hungarian ones smashed the Italians at Caporetto, opening up a massive hole in their lines and leading to a wholesale rout.
This twilight period, from late 1917 until the commencement of Operation Michael by the Germans on March 21, 1918, was characterized by flux. On the Eastern Front, Russian armies melted away before advancing Germans while peoples on the ground initiated nationality conflicts that would only grow worse; on the Western Front, the superior German position of the Hindenburg Line and exhaustion of Britain and France meant both sides waited tensely for the coming spring campaign season; on the Italian Front, the Central Powers were ascendant like never before; and in the Balkans, the battlelines hadn’t moved much since they were first drawn. Yet, all the while, America had already declared war on Germany (back in April 1917) and this looming, gradually-building threat hung over everything. For Germany to win in the west, everything had to be timed perfectly.
On the Eastern Front, Germany’s military-political strategy finally paid off with the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. A month later, on December 15, 1917, an armistice was brokered between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers. It wasn’t a full peace agreement yet, but an armistice meant an end to hostilities; and that meant more men could be transferred westward for the 1918 Spring Offensive.
For the next couple of months, the Bolsheviks dragged out treaty negotiations once they found out how onerous the terms were. Trotsky declared things like, “No peace, no war,” unilaterally deciding to not fight, yet this didn’t produce the desired result. Instead, the Germans advanced farther into Russia as the Bolsheviks delayed. Realities on the ground were making Soviet Russia’s bargaining position worse than it already was. Hence why Lenin finally declared that peace had to be achieved at any cost. What followed was the punitive and hugely annexationist Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 3, 1918.
German Victory on the Eastern Front, Defeat on the Western
For all intents and purposes, Germany won the First World War on the Eastern Front. It was her ultimate defeat on the Western Front in summer and fall 1918 that led to Germany’s surrender. Not only had Germany knocked Russia out of the war. She had dismantled her reigning government and implanted anarchy in the form of communist revolution and civil war. And she had acquired, either outright or via a protectorate, control over vast swathes of eastern Europe, ranging from Estonia to the Caucasus.
On top of this, Germany’s political strategy against the Russian Empire had helped unleash the latent ethnic and nationalist tensions, which resulted in countless struggles for autonomy, independence, new nations, and new governments, for the whole period 1917 to 1923. Germany had also, in the form of Ukraine, established a buffer state that was half a puppet state and half a legitimate sovereign state. By playing on Ukrainian nationalism, Germany’s political strategy on the Eastern Front aimed to divide the Russian Empire as well as create favorable international conditions after the tsarist regime’s collapse. This entailed the establishment of various German-supported “independent” nation-states in eastern Europe, which were all short-lived once Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918.
Even after WWI formally ended, armed conflicts continued unabated until the early 1920s on the Eastern Front. Although Germany had been defeated and was undergoing her own revolution in 1918-1919, thousands of Germans fought in eastern Europe as members of paramilitary forces, such as the freikorps. In a way, well into 1919, Germany was waging the war that they had already won. Hitler, too, was drawn to refighting the war that Germany had actually won during the First World War: The war in the east. Hitler’s war, on a personal, political, and existential level, was always focused on eastern Europe.
German strategy on the Western Front, on the other hand, displayed little of the political character that their strategy in the East encompassed. Part of this was due to circumstances and preexisting conditions. The Russian Empire, for instance, was the most susceptible out of the Entente or Allied powers to the kinds of political stratagems Germany deployed: Playing on conflicting nationalisms; encouraging fraternization with Russian peasant soldiers far from their homeland; sending in a socialist revolutionary Trojan Horse to a country that had just experienced a revolution in 1905. Neither France nor Britain were so susceptible to these kinds of subversive political warfare as Russia was.
At the same time, Germany also seemed to deliberately approach the Western Front with a purely military grand strategy, devoid of any political facet. Indeed, from the get-go, Germany completely negated the political side of grand strategy when it violated the neutrality of Belgium, believing the treaty ensuring it — a mere “scrap of paper” — would never actually bring in the British to a continental war; it didn’t help that military necessity — i.e., the perfect execution of the lofty Schlieffen Plan — demanded a German invasion through Belgium to trap the French in a Cannae-like double envelopment. In totally expunging the political component of grand strategy, German ensured through its invasion of Belgium the intervention of the British Empire.
What political strategies could Germany have deployed on the Western Front? First off, Germany technically did deploy political strategies against the British Empire via stoking revolutionary independence movements in colonies like Ireland, India, and Egypt, among others. This is perhaps, arguably, the most Germany could’ve conjured up in terms of a political weapon to wield against the British. As stratified as British society was, as large as her industrial proletariat was, and as overstretched the British Empire was, there was no practical political angle for the Germans to play besides the indirect colonial approach.
Against France, Germany too was pretty limited when it came to her political arsenal. The invasion and occupation of northern France, the atrocities carried out against unarmed civilians that were justified because the civilians were supposedly franc-tireur (irregular and illegal combatants), deportations to labor camps, all this immensely hardened French resolve. Whereas French sovereign territory had been violated and occupied from 1914 to 1918, in the East, the German Army never actually fought Great Russian soil during the war, something that no doubt helped make the localized peasant soldier more readily disposed to desertion than their French counterparts.
The only possible political warfare Germany could’ve waged on France would’ve been to enhance political leaders like Joseph Caillaux and his supporters, who were increasingly coming to oppose the war. This combined with the French Army mutinies of 1917, whose extent was not even known until very recent years, may have been the best options in terms of political strategy for Germany to pursue. Unfortunately, in a massive intelligence failure, the German armed forces never heard a word of the mutinies and therefore lost their best chance for a political stratagem.
Hitler’s War and the Failure of German Strategy on the Eastern Front in WWII
It was precisely because the dearest war to Hitler was the war in the East; it was precisely because Hitler viewed the war in the East as a titanic, epic, literal existential struggle because Teutonic Nazi Germany and Slavic Bolshevik Russia, that any kind of effective grand strategy on the Eastern Front in WWII was impossible. Pursuing a purely military strategy against Soviet Russia — like Charles XII of Sweden and Napoleon had done — was very unlikely to yield lasting results. Because the Nazi leadership saw the goals of the war in the East as essentially, if not annihilation, the complete subjugation of the Slavic people to German settlers as a serf-like caste and annexation of European Russia, this meant there was absolutely no political strategy to play. You can’t send in a revolutionary Trojan Horse to undermine an enemy’s domestic government to bring them to the peace table if one of your central war aims is to annihilate the enemy’s entire society. You can’t play on rival nationalisms — an opportunity the Nazis seriously missed when it came to Ukrainians, among many others, during Operation Barbarossa — when your war aims include the subjection of all Slavic “subhumans” to a feudal existence under German rule.
A political strategy could’ve done a lot for the German war effort on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Stalin’s totalitarian regime may have officially, and bloodily, suppressed nationalism among the Soviet Unions many different people, but the fault lines were still there. When the Wehrmacht marched through Ukraine during their invasion of Russia, Ukrainians of all kinds were dressed in their traditional national colors, welcoming the Germans as liberators. Germany could have better utilized the peoples of the Baltic states — Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians — to fuel nationalist tensions. Even the so-called “White Russians,” Belarusians, could have been persuaded to embrace their own nationalistic ideology, so Germany could sow subversion through it. But little to none of this was done.
A purely military strategy, a blitzkrieg on a grand scale, was the only one Hitler and most German military leaders could envisage. And in following such a purely military strategy, the Third Reich was doomed to disaster like Charles XII and Bonaparte before. The experience, lessons, and victory of the German Army on the Eastern Front in WWII were forgotten or deliberately ignored. Like Napoleon, Hitler was drawn into the logic that the only way to hit at Britain was to strike Russia on the European continent. Despite the insanely heavy losses sustained by all arms of the Soviet military in 1941 and 1942, if there was no strategically decisive blow, then it would only be a matter of time before Russia’s superior resources, population, and materiel would overwhelm Germany.
Military and Political Strategies in War
All armed conflicts should be approached with a multi-faceted grand strategy. This has notably been difficult for the U.S., with purely military strategies tending to dominate in cases such as the 2003 Iraq and yielding zero tangible results. As much as generals would like it, wars are not waged in a vacuum. Military operations cannot simply exist in a special world segregated from other factors.
This was something Helmuth von Moltke the Elder slowly realized during the latter stages of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871): His intricately coordinated and technologically sophisticated war plans had, for the most part, unfolded spectacularly well; the problem was that, even after capturing Emperor Napoleon III and the overthrow of his government, the war continued; Moltke’s carefully laid, “modern” military strategy had served well, but it was not designed to deal with the kind of warfare that was engulfing France in 1871 — irregular, unconventional, and revolutionary warfare against the invader.
Previous historical conflicts had shown the significance of interweaving military and political strategies, but observers at the time usually didn’t perceive them. For example, compare the brutal, prolonged, guerrilla struggle that was the Peninsular War between the French and Spanish from 1808 to 1814, to the mere eight-month invasion by Bourbon Restoration France of Spain in 1823 to oust the liberal regime established in 1820 by a coup and restore Ferdinand VII. In the latter conflict, the French armed forces — even if they were unaware — were working within the groove of a political strategy: Most of Spanish rural society and the peasantry didn’t care for the liberal intellectuals of the cities, like Riego, or their Enlightenment. They stood by the priest, the king, and usually some local geographical identification. All of this made the French military intervention in 1823 go much more swimmingly than the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, which was complete with an entire regime change (Napoleon made his brother King of Spain) and French anti-clericalism.
What’s unfortunate about contemporary governments, especially the American, is that it is often the civilian leaders, not the military ones, who push for the purely military strategy. This is due to several factors. One, on paper, the purely military strategy almost always looks like the most cost-effective and in the short-run this is true. Two, it enables civilian leaders to hand off weighty responsibility to the military, because the civilian leadership can see their task as being complete and it now being the military technicians’ turn to execute. Three, purely military strategies appeal to civilian leaders when society and/or the political climate makes pursuing a thoroughgoing military-political grand strategy nearly impossible. For example, the Second World War was so calamitous, and the U.S. played such a massive role in it that the time, money, and other resources required to rebuild war-torn Europe and other parts of the globe both economically and politically was worth it: American society had gotten fully mobilized for the war and they were willing to see out longer-term political goals. In the Vietnam War, on the other hand, society and politics were not favorable to a grander, more comprehensive military-political strategy because of how divisive the conflict was. Therefore, every president from Truman to Ford usually opted for the purely military strategy. This, of course, didn’t work out.