#max hoffmann

Austrian troops enter Kamianets-Podilskyi in the first days of the offensive.

February 18 1918, Lutsk--At first, Trotsky’s unilateral proclamation at Brest-Litovsk that the war was over was welcomed in Germany.  However, a few days later, at a meeting of the German Crown Council, the Kaiser demanded that the Bolsheviks be “beaten to death,” that large annexations should be secured, and Russia should be effectively dismembered.  This “plan” soon attracted the support of Hindenburg & Ludendorff, who favored large annexations to feed the German war machine, perhaps reaching as far as the Caucasus.  The civilians present were horrified--establishing a new empire in the East would take resources and manpower that would be needed in the West, and would make any negotiated settlement with the other Allies impossible.  Gaining an empire to prepare for a war in the future was pointless; any gains in the east would be more than offset by the fact that Austria-Hungary, who had learned their lesson, would not join them again.

Nevertheless, the Kaiser and military had their way, and on February 16 the Germans gave the Russians 48 hours notice that they would be calling off the armistice; this was less than the week required by the original armistice terms, but the Germans justified this by saying that the Russians had already violated the armistice by demobilizing and moving troops away from the front.  The Germans had, of course, redeployed troops themselves, but still had 53 (second-rate) divisions available.  The Russians, on the other hand, had effectively disbanded their own army; while some troops remained near the front, they were not prepared or willing to put up a fight.  The new Red Army, only four days old, mainly existed on paper; what few forces it did have were busy fighting the Ukrainians or Cossacks.

On February 18, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians began their advance, meeting little more than token resistance all along the front.   In the north, German forces tasked with taking the rest of the Baltic coast secured the key rail junction of Dvinsk [Daugavpils] on the first day.  In the center, they moved towards Minsk and Smolensk, hoping to threaten Moscow.  In the south, the Germans had officially signed a peace treaty with Ukraine, but given the threat they faced from the Reds, the Rada actually welcomed the German advance; Lutsk fell on the first day.

Soon, the Germans were advancing using the Russians’ own railways, often at the rate of over thirty miles per day.  General Hoffmann, commanding the operation, wrote:

It is the most comical war I have ever known.  We put a handful of infantrymen with machine guns and one gun onto a train and rush them off to the next station; they take it, make prisoners of the Bolsheviks, pick up a few more troops, and so on.  The proceeding has, at any rate, the charm of novelty.

The Germans captured large stores of materiel left behind by the Russian army, taking over 1500 guns in the first three days.  As the Russian forces had melted away, only around 9000 PoWs were captured in the same timeframe.

Many of the Bolsheviks, meanwhile, were sent into a panic; for nearly a week, they had thought that Trotsky’s gambit had worked.  Trotsky, realizing he had gambled and lost, through his support behind Lenin, and an emergency meeting of the Central Committee narrowly approved an immediate acceptance of the last German peace offer; despite all the evidence, Bukharin and his supporters still urged a revolutionary war.  

That evening, Trotsky broadcast a radio message to the Germans:

Sovnarkom lodges a protest over the German government’s movement of troops against the Russian Soviet Republic, which had declared the state of war ended and had started to demobilize its army on all fronts...Sovnarkom finds itself forced, in the situation that has arisen, to declare its readiness formally to conclude peace on the terms the German government demanded at Brest-Litovsk.

The Germans’ demands had grown in the meantime, however; even this capitulation would not be enough.

September 1 1917, Ikšķile--After the Central Powers’ counterstroke against the Kerensky Offensive ran out of steam due to supply issues, the Germans began preparations for an offensive of their own against Russia.  Hoffmann chose as his target the Dvina River above the major port city of Riga, hoping to outflank the heavily-defended city.  Ludendorff was enthusiastic about the prospects of an attack in the north, hoping that its proximity to revolutionary Petrograd meant that the troops would be less reliable and that any successes would further destabilize the Russian government there.  Ludendorff had initially hoped that after a success around Riga, forces could be shifted south to knock out the Romanians; however, the failures of the German efforts there in August and Austrian difficulties on the Isonzo meant that Ludendorff had abandoned such plans by the end of August; any offensive in the East in the remainder of 1917 would be in the north.

The German attack opened at around 6AM on September 1; this was delayed from the initial plans due to the continuing British attacks around Ypres.  A three-hour artillery bombardment crippled a Russian division on the far side of the river.  Many troops fled, while others were trapped in their trenches.  Three German divisions crossed the Dvina, first in boats, and later over pontoon bridges, and quickly overwhelmed the remaining defenders.  Hoffmann wrote: “On the whole, the crossing was almost ridiculously easy.”  

After securing the bridgehead, however, the German attack slowed.  The Russians had had some advanced warning of the attack and had already begun to shift forces east (despite a feint bombardment to the west of Riga the previous day).  A Latvian division, defending their own capital from the advancing Germans, was able to stop the Germans from cutting Riga’s sole rail connection with the rest of Russia.

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The insane pace of the advance soon caused supply nightmares for the German troops.  Here are stalled German transport convoys near Tarnopol, pictured about a week after the start of the German counteroffensive.

July 19 1917, Zolochiv--Within two weeks, the Kerensky Offensive had run out of steam.  Kornilov’s Eighth Army had made an impressive advance of more than fifteen miles, but the Eleventh and Seventh Armies to the north refused to follow up on their flank; they considered their task complete after the first two days of attacks.  This left the Eighth Army increasingly exposed, as the Germans began to move reserves from the Western Front to shore up the area and prepare for a counterattack.

On July 19, after a brief bombardment, six German and Austrian divisions under Max Hoffmann attacked the northern portion of the Eleventh Army on a twelve-mile front, hoping to break through and leave the Eighth Army in a completely untenable position.  The Russians collapsed, and the Germans advanced over nine miles on the first day.  The next day, with the Russian forces ahead of them having effectively evaporated, the leading units advanced an additional eighteen miles.  The Germans captured over 6000 PoWs; most of the Russian troops simply retreated east as fast as they could, despite ever-more-desperate exhortations from Brusilov to stand fast.  

Further to the south, the Austrians attacked the Eighth Army’s salient head-on, retaking Kalusz and forcing them back to the Limnycja River.  This was a solid defensive line for the Russians, but with the Germans now nearly fifty miles in their rear, the position was ultimately untenable.  Most Russian troops began to fall back instantly once attacked; those few who held out were quickly outflanked and forced to retreat or surrender.  Within two weeks, the Russians had lost most of their gains of the last two years, thousands of PoWs, and tens of thousands of deserters.

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