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Defensible borders in the 19th century
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pikeshot1600 View Drop Down
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Posts: 4221 		  Quote pikeshot1600 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Defensible borders in the 19th century
    Posted: 04-Mar-2009 at 14:39
Originally posted by edgewaters

Originally posted by pikeshot1600

How could the Russians launch any full scale assault on the Ottoman Empire given their engagement with Austria and Germany?

Tons of manpower. That's what they did, after all - it was the Russians who opened a land front with the Ottomans.

 
Ah, the pre-1914 myth of the Russian steamroller.  Even before the collapse of the Empire, Russia could not sustain offensive operations against Germany and Austria.  Other than the two big battles around Lemberg and Przemysl in Poland, and early in the war, the Russian numbers brought no success to them. 
 
By 1915, Russia was on the ropes in Poland, and the 1916 offensive operations in the Carpathians were ultimate failures costing well over 1,000,000 men.  By summer, 1916, Russia was effectively exhausted.  She had lost something like 4,000,000 men and had neither the manpower nor the materiel (nor the financial credit) to sustain anything other than to stand on the defensive.
 
The conscious strategy of the Turks was to remain on the defensive throughout the war in order to minimize the advantages in manpower and early resources Russia and Britain could call on.  Russia opening a front against Turkey just drained away manpower from the important theater in east Europe.
 
    


Edited by pikeshot1600 - 04-Mar-2009 at 14:44
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Posts: 19 		  Quote csw Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Mar-2009 at 17:05
That's all very interesting Pikeshot, and all checks out. Cool. Though this is soing WAY off topic can I ask why the Russians never tried to use their Black Sea Fleet in offensive operations early in the war, to support their offensives against the Turks, or land troops in Romania to try and steamroller the much smaller Blugarians and then onto Constantinople, the way they did (more or less) back in the 1870s?
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Posts: 4221 		  Quote pikeshot1600 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Mar-2009 at 18:18
Originally posted by csw

That's all very interesting Pikeshot, and all checks out. Cool. Though this is soing WAY off topic can I ask why the Russians never tried to use their Black Sea Fleet in offensive operations early in the war, to support their offensives against the Turks, or land troops in Romania to try and steamroller the much smaller Blugarians and then onto Constantinople, the way they did (more or less) back in the 1870s?
 
I do not know enough about the naval operations in the Black Sea to say.  The Russians did conduct some operation around Trebizond, but I am not sure what that was about.  I have to go back to previous opinion about Russia (in other topics) in that Russia has rarely done much at sea during her wars, except for losing much of the fleet in 1905. 
 
The difference between the Russo-Turkish War 1877-78 and WW I was, of course, in scale and in the number of big Russian adversaries involved.  Russia did not have to fight on an entire eastern front in the former, and wound up over stretched against more powerful forces in the latter.
 
I do not want to give the impression that I think the Russian army was a poor one.  Actually, 1900 to 1914, it was quite a good one.  The army certainly fought hard and pretty well in Manchuria, and it was the Japanese who were close to collapse.  Japan was running out of reinforcements and ammunition, and had their financial credit wrecked.  The Russians had social unrest in Europe to deal with, and it was advantageous for both to make peace.
 
The Russians in 1914 had a front line army that was well equipped and tactically well trained.  The unexpected level of casualties among company and regimental officers and NCOs was very difficult to overcome (same for the Austrians), and Russia was still in the beginning stages of industrialization and was the power least able to sustain such an enormous war effort. 
 
The officer corps actually had absorbed lessons from the Japanese war and from the Balkans Wars, but it was so depleted in the first two years of WW I, and Russia was so overwhelmed, that those lessons didn't matter.  But then they didn't matter for anyone else either.
 
  


Edited by pikeshot1600 - 04-Mar-2009 at 19:24
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Posts: 4221 		  Quote pikeshot1600 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Mar-2009 at 18:31

csw,

I neglected the Bulgarians.  Check out the Bulgarian army (Google? whatever) to see how large it was, how much modern artillery it had, and how it did from the Balkan Wars up into WW I.  You might be surprised.

At least up through the Balkan Wars, many of the general officers (and many of their chiefs of staff and other staff officers) were Russians.  Of course after Bulgaria became part of the Central Powers, that became politically impossible.  However, the Bulgarian army was an important factor in the Balkans, and could not be taken lightly. 

 
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2009 at 00:27

Originally posted by pikeshot1600

Ah, the pre-1914 myth of the Russian steamroller.  Even before the collapse of the Empire, Russia could not sustain offensive operations against Germany and Austria.  Other than the two big battles around Lemberg and Przemysl in Poland, and early in the war, the Russian numbers brought no success to them.

True, numbers were of little avail in their conflict with Germany (although Russia did fairly well against Austria, the few times they engaged them - the Germans were mostly forced to cover the Austrian front because AH forces did not have very much luck vs Russia). They could have flung even more at that front and it wouldn't have made much difference.

Against Turkey it was a different story. Russia clobbered them hard, and the only reason they didn't get further than they did was that the revolution interrupted the offensive. 

By summer, 1916, Russia was effectively exhausted.  She had lost something like 4,000,000 men and had neither the manpower nor the materiel (nor the financial credit) to sustain anything other than to stand on the defensive.
Russia wasn't really exhausted. It hadn't had alot of success, true. But keep in mind the Russians were at war all the way to 1921 (the Civil War - including repelling expeditions by the US and Britain) ... so certainly their capability to conduct war was not lost in 1916.
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Posts: 4221 		  Quote pikeshot1600 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2009 at 00:51
edgewaters,
 
Russia was no longer able to conduct effective operations against the major powers after 1916.  In the civil war both Reds and Whites were similarly depleted, but were able to fight it out among themselves.  Against others it is doubtful if they would have fared well.  An example is the disaster at Warsaw against the new Polish state.  
 
The war against Poland in 1920 did not go well at all for the Bolsheviks.  Many reasons, but the depletion of command structure down to company level was intensified when the Czarist-Kerensky army began to fall apart (spurred on by the Bolsheviks), and large numbers of officers were simply shot by their men.
 
Those pop-gun interventions never amounted to anything really.  Political posturing in both London and Washington.
 
 


Edited by pikeshot1600 - 05-Mar-2009 at 00:54
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2009 at 01:30

Well, of course, the revolution happened in 1917.

In 1916 they inflicted devastating defeats against the Ottomans - that's just a fact. The offensive, and some of its supplies, equipment, and forces, thereafter came under Armenian direction and continued to achieve a number of successes, capturing Kars and Baku.



Edited by edgewaters - 05-Mar-2009 at 01:35
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Posts: 7035 		  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2009 at 11:08
Originally posted by csw

Yes, but the the Ottomans gave more than they received on the partisan front. Most everyone hated the Ottoman government for one reason or another.
 
Pikeshot, did you see the map I posted:
 
I agree than in a WWI scenario here the POV is at WWI, then yes, the Italians going after the Levant makes no sense. But if it's an Italy that styles itself as the ROMAN Empire AND as protector of Christians AND  has control of Greece and an Albania never Islamized, then yes a Levantine expedition makes perfect sense. This is about more than geopolitics; it would be about the recovery of an ancient and glorious legacy.
How come the map has Cyprus Italian? Are you implying that pre-1914 there had been a British-Italian war which the Italians won? Do you think Britain would have allowed Italy to take control of the eastern Mediterranean - just about the most vital sea area to Britain outside the home waters?
 
Moreover (I just noticed) how come Tunisia is Italian and not French? The Italians had also won a war against France?


Edited by gcle2003 - 05-Mar-2009 at 11:11
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2009 at 13:59

Yes, if Italy is intent on some sort of "New Rome" its primary enemies will be Britain, France, and Spain, who hold the most vital territories of the old Rome (eg Iberia, Egypt, Gaul, etc)
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Posts: 4221 		  Quote pikeshot1600 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2009 at 20:06
Originally posted by edgewaters

Well, of course, the revolution happened in 1917.

In 1916 they inflicted devastating defeats against the Ottomans - that's just a fact. The offensive, and some of its supplies, equipment, and forces, thereafter came under Armenian direction and continued to achieve a number of successes, capturing Kars and Baku.

 
I had time today to check it out (the Depuys' Encyclopedia of Military History).  You are correct about the 1916 Caucasus campaigns.
 
Still, it was too late to recover the Russian situation, and by winter, 1917, as we know, it was all over for the empire.  Russia, in 1914, like the other major powers, was militarily equipped and organized to fight the "war of 1870."  All the others (even Turkey and Italy) were able to react to the changes and demands of the bigger war, but I still think, by the end of summer, 1916, it was unreasonable to expect Russia to mount any more major operations during that war.
 
 
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