Thus, the spectacular mobile battle that the Western mass media had expected, in which the Russian army launched a lightning attack to strike a powerful blow at the German army, which had been left weakly defended due to the majority of its forces being committed to the Western Front, did not take place.
What happened there was positional warfare reminiscent of the Western Front, where "artillery plows and infantry reaps," with constant concern for supplies.
However, by not advancing hastily, the "Battle of Tannenberg" as described in historical fact by Nikolai "Stalin" did not occur.
In this world, the Battle of Tannenberg was a very ordinary battle.
The German 9th Army in Königsberg aimed for an interior line operation of "using the railroad to move south to strike the Russian 2nd Army first, then move north again to confront the 1st Army", but the Russian 2nd Army was able to withstand this due to sufficient supplies and artillery support. Meanwhile, the Russian 1st Army began to move west, and the German army, pressed on the flank and in danger of being surrounded and annihilated, lost the will to fight and retreated in good order - a rather unexciting story.
Although there were several more frontal combats afterwards, the Imperial Russian Army took advantage of its numerical superiority by conducting external operations with its 1st and 2nd Armies, which ultimately forced the German Army to withdraw voluntarily before the battle became a war of attrition.
＊＊＊
Two months into the Russian offensive, the Germans abandoned Königsberg and retreated, with most of their remaining forces remaining, to Danzig.
"I'm at my wit's end. There's nothing I can do."
At the temporary headquarters in Danzig, Ludendorff looked at the map and gave up.
(Does the Russian army have no fighting spirit?!)
Although they set traps several times to try and lure the overconfident enemy, they showed no signs of being provoked. Even when they showed weaknesses by faking a complete collapse and retreating, or purposely leaving their flanks wide open, they continued to advance leisurely while waiting for supplies, as if to say, "As long as we don't lose, we can win."
"Those guys really have no motivation..."
In fact, Ludendorff's complaint hit the nail on the head. Even with Nikolai's reforms, the morale of most Russian soldiers was still low. So no matter how many weaknesses the German army showed, they were not motivated to fight and would only fight battles that they were sure to win.
"Why should I fight for a foreign country like Serbia or France that I have never seen or been to?"
No matter how much they tried to stir up patriotism, the poor conditions on the front lines easily broke down the soldiers' discipline and attitude, and the reality of the Imperial Russian Army was that pursuit battles, which required a high level of self-reliance, were a dream.
A more practical problem is a lack of firepower.
There was still a large disparity in industrial power between Germany, an industrial nation, and Russia, an agricultural nation. Rather than saying that industrial power was necessary for total war, total war was a way of fighting that made the most of industrial power.
The reason why Britain, France and Germany were able to withstand total war was not because they had huge state-run arsenals, but because they were able to quickly convert civilian factories that supported their affluent mass production and mass consumption societies into munitions factories. In contrast, Italy, Austria and Russia in real life did not even have enough civilian factories to begin with, and did not have any factories that could supply weapons and ammunition to withstand a prolonged total war.
The main weapon in World War I was the cannon rather than the rifle, and there was not much difference between the Russian Empire and the German Empire in field guns, both around 6,000 pieces, but when it came to heavy artillery, the Russians had 700 pieces while the Germans had 2,000 pieces, a difference of nearly three times.
Although Nicholas's reforms managed to increase the number of heavy artillery pieces by nearly 1.5 times, there was still not enough time to fully industrialize. If the same number of troops were to fight head-on, they would not lose if they focused on defense, but it would be difficult to win if they went on the offensive.
However, since the Russian military had twice as many troops as the Germans, the Russian command decided to carry out an external operation to take advantage of their numerical superiority.
When one army was attacked, it would stay on the defensive while the other army advanced - a repetitive strategy that was tactically defensive but strategically offensive, but for that very reason it was a solid way of fighting that even less-trained soldiers could carry out.
Furthermore, thanks to Nikolai's strict emphasis on supplies, the troops were provided with the minimum amount of nutrition and equipment, which allowed them to advance slowly but surely without running out of supplies.
The effectiveness of positional warfare, the polar opposite of mobile warfare, had already been proven on the Western Front, where assaults on positions protected by artillery, machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches produced extraordinary carnage and gave the defenders an overwhelming advantage over the attackers.
Therefore, a slow Russian advance could give the Germans time to set up defensive positions.
In fact, Ludendorff gave up on defeating each enemy individually through mobile warfare and switched to defending positions, but unlike the Western Front, where large armies were concentrated on a narrow front, there were not enough troops to defend the vast eastern part of Germany with just one corps.
Ludendorff therefore proposed abandoning eastern Prussia and retreating to the Oder-Neisse River, and using the time gained by abandoning land to build strong defensive positions along the Oder-Neisse river.
However, both the public and the General Staff were opposed to the plan, which involved abandoning nearly one-seventh of the country's territory without fighting, so they were forced to gradually retreat and bid time.
(I feel like I'm being strangled with cotton...)
Although Ludendorff managed to successfully retreat to Danzig, it was unclear how long the defense line he was building along the Vistula River would hold. Some troops were being transferred from the Western Front, but newly mobilized Russian corps would soon arrive.
(In addition, Austria-Hungary is in a precarious position. They can no longer hold Galicia, and are glaring at each other across the Carpathian Mountains... Even the Russian army will have a hard time crossing the Carpathians, but if they do manage to do so, Austria-Hungary will be left hanging...)
**
Ludendorff's distress only intensified, but the situation was similar on the Western Front.
"Paris is incredibly hard..."
"It's not just Paris. The Allied forces are digging trenches along the Seine from Le Havre to Verdun, but most of the main bridges have been destroyed, so they're facing a double whammy of river crossings and trench warfare."
Two commanders were left scratching their heads: Chief of the Army General Staff Moltke and Erich von Falkenhayn, commander on the Western Front.
"...I guess that's the only option after all."
Finally, Moltke muttered in a tired voice.
"Bleeding and attrition strategy"
The crazy plan, so named, was a chicken race to pile up the corpses of the dead on the premise of a war of attrition. The plan was conceived by none other than Falkenhayn, who was standing before him, and since the front lines had reached a stalemate with no hope of a breakthrough, they planned to compete and win in a war of attrition until the enemy gave up.
"Since the start of the war, the French have suffered more casualties than our own army, and morale is declining as their land and even their capital have been overrun. Germany will surely win if they suffer another 10 million deaths."
At the time of the outbreak of the war, Germany had a population of about 65 million and Austria about 50 million, while Russia had about 170 million, the UK about 45 million, and France about 40 million, making France the smallest. Of these, the conscription-eligible population aged 20-50 was about 13 million for Germany and about 9 million for Austria, compared with about 40 million for Russia, 9 million for the UK, and 8 million for France.
Although it is an extreme example, as Falkenhayn says, if 10 million dead were added together, Germany would still have 3 million soldiers left, but France would fall below zero, with half of its men gone.
In reality, even if it didn't go that far, if the number of casualties increased and replacements could not keep up, holes would naturally appear on the vast Western Front. In any case, if the Western Front became a war of attrition, the German army, with its large numbers, would have the advantage.
"...I understand."
After a moment of silence, Moltke answered in an exhausted voice: The naturally timid Moltke was suffering from a nervous breakdown due to the stress of the war, and he realized that the war was no longer within his control.
He pours wine into the glass in front of him and gulps it down in one gulp in a fit of desperation.
"Erich, the announcement will be made soon, but you will be the next Chief of Staff."
"Haa."
Although Falkenhayn had unexpectedly become the top soldier, there was no joy on his face. Promotion under these circumstances was like a punishment game.