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The Eastern Front
On the eastern front, in accordance with the
plans of the Allies, the Russians assumed the offensive at the very beginning of
the war. In August 1914 two Russian armies advanced into East Prussia,
and four Russian armies invaded the Austrian province of Galicia. In East Prussia a series of Russian victories
against numerically inferior German forces had made the evacuation of that
region by the Germans imminent, when a reinforced German army commanded by
General Paul
von Hindenburg decisively defeated the Russians in the Battle of
Tannenberg,
fought on August 26-30, 1914. The four Russian armies invading Austria advanced
steadily through Galicia; they took Przemysl and
Bukovina, and by the end of March 1915 were in a position
to move into Hungary. In April, however, a combined German and Austrian army
drove the Russians back from the Carpathians.
In May the Austro-German armies began a great offensive in central Poland, and by September 1915 had driven the Russians
out of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, and had also taken possession of all the frontier
fortresses of Russia. To meet this offensive the Russians withdrew their forces
from Galicia. The Russian lines, when the German drive had ceased, lay behind
the Dvina
River between Riga
and Dvinsk
(Daugavpils),
and then ran south to the Dnestr
River. Although the Central Powers did not force a decision on the eastern front
in 1914-1915, the Russians lost so many men and such large quantities of
supplies that they were subsequently unable to play any decisive role in the
war. In addition to the Battle of Tannenberg, notable battles on this front
during 1914-1915, centred on Masuria
were the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 7-14, 1914), and the
Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (February 7-21, 1915), both German
victories.
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