During the first months of the war, a certain pattern of actions was formed in the Russian army. The Germans began to be treated with caution, the Austrians were considered a weaker enemy. Austria-Hungary has turned for Germany from a full-fledged ally into a weak partner requiring continuous support. The fronts stabilized by the new 1915, and the war began to move into a positional phase. But the failures on the North-Western Front undermined confidence in the Russian High Command, and in the minds of the Allies, who were building plans for war on idealistic calculations in relation to Russia, now they reduced it to the degree of "inadequate military force." The Germans also felt the relative weakness of the Russian army. Therefore, in 1915, the idea arose in the German General Staff: to transfer the main blow to the Eastern Front against the Russians. After heated discussions, this plan of General Hindenburg was adopted, and the main efforts of the war were transferred by the Germans to the Eastern Front. According to this plan, if not the final withdrawal of Russia from the war, then the infliction of such a defeat on it, from which it would not soon be able to recover, was outlined. In the face of this danger, a crisis in material supplies was brewing in the Russian army, mainly shells, cartridges and all types of weapons. Russia started the war with only 950 rounds per light gun, and even less for heavy guns. These meager pre-war reserves and norms of artillery shells and rifle cartridges were used up in the very first months of the war. Russia found itself in a very difficult situation, firstly, due to the relative weakness of its own defense industry, and secondly, after Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in November 1914, it was actually cut off from supply from the external the world. Russia has lost the most convenient routes of communication with its allies - through the Black Sea straits and through the Baltic. Russia left two ports suitable for the transportation of a large amount of cargo - Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok, but the carrying capacity of the railways that approached these ports was low. In addition, up to 90% of Russia's foreign trade was carried out through the Baltic and Black Sea ports. Cut off from the allies, deprived of the opportunity to export grain and import weapons, the Russian Empire gradually began to experience serious economic difficulties. It was the economic crisis provoked by the closure of the Black Sea and Danish straits by the enemy as a very significant factor that influenced the creation of a “revolutionary situation” in Russia, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and the October Revolution.
But the main reason for the shortage of firearms was associated with the pre-war activities of the Ministry of War. From 1909 to 1915, the Minister of War was the city of Sukhomlinov. He pursued the course of arming the army largely at the expense of foreign orders, which led to an acute shortage of them while reducing imports. For disrupting the supply of weapons and shells to the army and on suspicion of having links with German intelligence, he was removed from his post as Minister of War and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but then he was actually acquitted and was under house arrest. But under pressure from the masses in 1917, he was put on trial by the Provisional Government and sentenced to eternal hard labor. Sukhomlinov was amnestied by the Soviet government on May 1, 1918 and immediately emigrated to Germany. By the beginning of the war, in addition to the lack of firearms, Sukhomlinov's reforms had other major blunders, such as the destruction of serfs and reserve troops. The fortress regiments were excellent, strong units that knew their fortified areas very well. In their existence, our fortresses would not surrender and would not throw themselves with the ease with which the random garrisons of these fortresses covered themselves with shame. The hidden regiments, formed to replace the reserve ones, also could not replace them due to the lack of strong personnel and cohesion in peacetime. The destruction of fortified areas in the western regions, which cost a lot of money, also greatly contributed to the setbacks of 1915.
At the end of 1914, seven army corps and six cavalry divisions were transferred from the Western Front to the Eastern Front by the Germans. The situation on the Russian front was extremely difficult, and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief N. N. Romanov sent telegrams to General Joffre, commander of the French army, with a request to go over to the offensive on the Western Front in order to alleviate the situation of the Russian troops. The answer was that the Franco-British troops were not ready for the offensive. Failures began to haunt the Russian army in 1915. The Carpathian operation of the Southwestern Front, undertaken by General Ivanov in January-February 1915, ended in failure, and the Russian troops failed to break through to the Hungarian Plain. But in the Carpathians, the Russian troops sat firmly and the Austrians, reinforced by the Germans, could not throw them off the Carpathians. At the same time, at the beginning of the year, a successful counteroffensive was carried out on this front with the participation of the Cossacks of the 3rd Cavalry Corps of Count Keller. In the Transnistrian battle, in which the Cossack cavalry played an outstanding role, the 7th Austro-Hungarian army was thrown back across the Prut River. On March 19, after a long siege, Russian troops took Przemysl, the most powerful fortress of the Austrians. 120 thousand prisoners and 900 guns were captured. In his diary on this occasion, the Emperor wrote: “officers and my magnificent Life Cossacks gathered in the church for a prayer service. What shining faces! The Entente has not yet known such victories. The commander-in-chief of the French army, Joffre, hastened to celebrate it, ordering to issue all ranks from soldier to general a glass of red wine. However, by this time, the Germans were finally convinced of the strength of the position of their troops on the Western Front, the reluctance of the allies to attack, and came to the conclusion that they could risk transferring another part of their forces from there to the Russian front. As a result, the Germans removed 4 more corps of the best troops from the French front, including the Prussian Guard, and formed from them on the Russian front, with the addition of another Austrian corps, the 11th Army of General Mackensen, supplying it with unprecedentedly powerful artillery. Against 22 Russian batteries (105 guns), the Germans had 143 batteries (624 guns, including 49 heavy batteries of 168 large-caliber guns, including 38 heavy howitzers with a caliber of more than 200 mm). The Russians, on the other hand, had only 4 heavy howitzers in this area. In total, the superiority in artillery was 6 times, and in heavy artillery 40 times!
Rice. 1 "Big Bertha" in positions in Galicia
Selected German troops were concentrated in the Gorlice-Tarnov sector. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front, General Ivanov, did not believe the numerous reports of the commander of the 3rd Army, General Radko-Dmitriev, about German preparations and stubbornly believed that the enemy would begin an offensive in the sector of the 11th Army and strengthen it. The sector of the 10th corps, which received the main blow of the Germans, was weak. On May 2, the Germans fired hundreds of guns on an 8 km area, firing 700,000 shells. Ten German divisions went to break through. For the first time, 70 powerful mortars were used by the Germans in this breakthrough, throwing mines, which, with the roar of their explosions and the height of earthen fountains, made an amazing impression on the Russian troops. The ram of Mackensen's phalanx was irresistible, and the front was broken through. To eliminate the breakthrough, the command urgently pulled large cavalry forces here. A cavalry operational barrier was created under the command of General Volodchenko. It consisted of the 3rd Don Cossack, 2nd Consolidated Cossack, 16th Cavalry and 3rd Caucasian Cossack divisions.
After stubborn bloody battles, the screen with the remnants of the 10th corps left its positions, but the enemy's victory came at a high price. Our troops also suffered great losses. Out of 40 thousand fighters, 6 thousand survived. But even this handful of brave fighters, when leaving the encirclement in a night battle, captured 7 thousand Germans. By order of the Headquarters, 7 Russian divisions were urgently transferred from the North-Western Front to strengthen the position of our troops in the threatened sector, but they held back enemy attacks for only a short time. Russian trenches and barbed wire were swept away by German artillery and mines and leveled to the ground, while the incoming reinforcements were washed away by a wave of general retreat. By the summer, almost the entire conquered territory was lost, and on June 23 the Russians left Przemysl and Lvov. For a month and a half there were stubborn bloody battles in Galicia, the German offensive was stopped with great difficulty and losses. 344 guns were lost and 500 thousand prisoners alone.
After the abandonment of Galicia, the position of the Russian armies in Poland worsened. The German command planned to encircle the Russian troops in a "Polish sack" and thereby finally decide the fate of the war on the Eastern Front. To achieve this goal, the Germans planned to conduct three offensive operations to strategically encompass the Russian armies from the north and south. The German command launched two groups of troops on the offensive in converging directions: the northern (General von Galwitz) west of Osovets, and the southern (General August Mackensen) through Kholm-Lublin to Brest-Litovsk. Their connection threatened to completely encircle the 1st Russian army of the North-Western Front. Von Galwitz sent a large force to the junction between the 1st Siberian and 1st Turkestan corps. A breakthrough was formed on the front of the 2nd Siberian Rifle Division, which threatened the troops with tragic consequences. Army Commander General A. I. Litvinov hastily transferred the 14th cavalry division from the reserve to the Tsekhanov area, and it stood as an unshakable wall in the enemy's path. The 2nd brigade of this division, which consisted of the hussar and the Cossack regiments, gracefully turned into undaunted lava in the face of the enemy triumphantly. The brigade commander, Colonel Westphalen, said goodbye to everyone and led the lava under heavy fire to attack in silence, without shouting "hurray", every single one, including the headquarters, the convoy and the baggage train, and it was simply impossible to stop them. And the enemy offensive was stopped. The hussars and Cossacks paid dearly for this important victory, having lost up to half of their strength, but the 1st Army was saved from outflanking and encirclement.
Rice. 2 Cossack horse counterattack, 1915
At the same time, Mackensen's army, carrying out the plan of the command, turned from Galicia to the north, but a fierce defensive battle unfolded near Tomashov. The excellent actions of the 3rd Don Cossack Division played an important role in it. Heavy stubborn battles lasted a month and, in order to avoid encirclement, on August 2, 1915, Russian troops left Warsaw, Brest-Litovsk was evacuated. The Russian army was drowning in its own blood, demoralization and panic seized it. Because of this, in just three days, from 15 to 17 August, two of the strongest Russian fortresses fell - Kovno and Novogeorgievsk. The commandant of Kovno, General Grigoriev, simply fled from his fortress (in his words, "for reinforcements"), and the commandant of Novogeorgievsk, General Bobyr, after the first skirmishes, ran to the enemy, surrendered to him and, already sitting in captivity, ordered the entire garrison to surrender. In Kovno the Germans took 20,000 prisoners and 450 fortress guns, and in Novogeorgievsk - 83,000 prisoners, including 23 generals and 2,100 officers, 1,200 (!!!) guns and over 1,000,000 shells. Only four officers (Fedorenko, Stefanov, Ber and Berg), remaining faithful to the oath, left the fortress and, overcoming the loose encirclement, 18 days later made their way along the enemy's rear to their own.
Rice. 3 Russian prisoners of war in Poland, August 1915
On August 17, changes were made in the Office of the Russian armies. For the collapse of the army, a catastrophic retreat and huge losses, the former Supreme Commander-in-Chief Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov was removed and appointed governor in the Caucasus. The emperor became the head of the army. In a crisis in the army, the assumption of a general command by the Emperor was a completely reasonable step. At the same time, it was generally known that Nicholas II absolutely did not understand anything in military affairs and that the title he assumed would be nominal. The chief of staff was to decide everything for him. But even a brilliant chief of staff cannot replace his chief everywhere, and the absence of a real Supreme Commander-in-Chief had a profound effect during the hostilities of 1916, when, through the fault of the Stavka, the results that could have been achieved were not achieved. Assuming the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was a powerful blow that Nicholas II inflicted on himself and which, along with other negative circumstances, led to the sad end of his monarchy. On August 23, he arrived at Headquarters. The tsar chose General M. V. Alekseeva. This general was an excellent military specialist and a very intelligent person. But he did not have the will and charisma of a real commander and objectively could not make up for the shortcomings of an equally weak-willed emperor. In accordance with the directive of the Headquarters No. 3274 of August 4 (17), 1915, the North-Western Front, which united 8 armies, was divided into 2 fronts, the Northern and the Western. North (commander General Ruzsky) was ordered to cover the Petrograd direction, West (commander General Evert) - Moscow, South-West (commander General Ivanov remained) to cover the Kiev direction. It should be said that in addition to military failures, there were other reasons for the removal of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. A certain part of the courtiers and Duma members, almost openly supported the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich not only as the Commander-in-Chief, but also as a possible contender for the throne. A significant role in the Headquarters was played by correspondents who, for their kind words, popularized and extolled the Grand Duke as an irreplaceable military and civilian figure. Unlike most of the other Romanovs, he was a career soldier, although he fought only in 1877-1878 - in the Balkans. As the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Grand Duke gained enviable popularity. Nikolai Nikolaevich amazed everyone who saw him for the first time, first of all by his outstanding regal appearance, which made an unprecedented impression.
Extremely tall, slender and flexible as a stem, with long limbs and a proudly set head, he stood out sharply from the crowd surrounding him, no matter how significant it was. The delicate, precisely engraved features of his open and noble face, framed by a small graying beard with a wedge, complemented his characteristic figure.
Rice. 4 Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov
At the same time, the Prince was an arrogant, unbalanced, rude, disorganized person and, succumbing to his mood, could confuse a lot. Unfortunately for the country and the army, General Yanushkevich was appointed chief of staff under him, on the personal instructions of the tsar, at the beginning of the war. A good theoretician and teacher, he never commanded troops and turned out to be completely unfit for such a high and responsible job. And thus, both of them made their considerable contribution to the mess of strategic and operational leadership that so often ruled in the Russian army. This was greatly reflected in the course of hostilities, including the Cossack formations.
At the end of August, the Germans launched an offensive in the Neman region, brought up heavy long-range and howitzer artillery and concentrated a large number of cavalry. On the Franco-German front, by that time, the cavalry had completely proved its worthlessness. There she was first transferred to the reserve, then almost completely sent to the Russian front. On September 14, German troops occupied Vileika and approached Molodechno. The German cavalry group (4 cavalry divisions) rushed along the Russian rear. German cavalrymen reached Minsk and even cut the Smolensk-Minsk highway. To counter this group of German cavalry on the part of the Russian command, a cavalry army was first created under the command of General Oranovsky, consisting of several cavalry corps (though heavily drained of blood), numbering more than 20 thousand sabers, 67 guns and 56 machine guns. By this time, the onslaught of the German cavalry, deprived of the support of infantry and artillery, had already weakened. On September 15-16, the Russian cavalry launched a counterattack on the German cavalry and threw it back to Lake Naroch. Then the task of the cavalry was to break through the enemy's front and go to the rear of the Dvina group of Germans. Ataman G. Semyonov later recalled: “General Oranovsky was put at the head of this grandiose cavalry army. The infantry was supposed to break through the front of the Germans and thus enable cavalry with a mass of more than ten divisions to enter the deep rear of the enemy. The plan was truly grandiose and its implementation could have a significant impact on the outcome of the entire war. But, unfortunately for us, General Oranovsky turned out to be completely inappropriate to the task assigned to him, and nothing came of the brilliant plan. By the beginning of October, the Germans were exhausted, their advance was stopped everywhere. The Germans failed to encircle the Western Front. On October 8, the cavalry of General Oranovsky was disbanded, and the front was occupied by the infantry. On November 12, the everyday life cavalry received an order to withdraw to winter quarters. By the end of active operations in 1915, the front of the sides was located along the line: Riga-Dvinsk-Baranovichi-Minsk-Lutsk-Ternopil-Sereg river and the Romanian border, i.e. the front line essentially coincided with the future borders of the USSR until 1940. On this line, the front stabilized and both sides switched to defensive actions of trench warfare.
It should be said that the failures of 1915 produced a powerful psychological restructuring in the consciousness of the army and finally convinced everyone, from soldier to general, of the vital necessity of a real and thorough preparation of the front line for trench warfare. This restructuring took place hard and for a long time and cost very large sacrifices. The Russo-Japanese War, as a prototype of the future, also showed an example of trench warfare. But military authorities around the world lashed out at the way it was conducted. In particular, the Germans rebelled terribly and angrily laughed at the Russians and the Japanese, saying that trench warfare proves their inability to fight and that they would not imitate such an example. They believed that with the strength of modern fire, a frontal attack could not be successful and the solution to the fate of the battle should be sought on the flanks, concentrating the troops there in the greatest number. These views were intensely preached by the German military experts and were ultimately shared by all the others. The common slogan of all European military leaders was to avoid trench warfare to the utmost extreme. In peacetime, no one ever practiced it. Both the commanders and the troops could not stand and were lazy to strengthen and dig in, at best, confining themselves to ditches for riflemen. At the beginning of the war, the fortified positions were just one moat, even without communication passages to the rear. With increased artillery fire, this somehow made ditch quickly collapsed, and the people sitting in it were destroyed or surrendered in order to avoid imminent death. Also, the practice of war soon showed that with a solid front line, the concept of flanks is very conditional, and it is very difficult to concentrate large forces covertly in one place. With solid front lines, strongly fortified positions had to be attacked head-on, and only artillery could play the role of a hammer capable of crushing the defenses in a selected area of attack. On the Russian front, they began to switch to trench warfare, interspersed with field war, at the end of 1914. Finally, they switched to trench warfare in the summer of 1915, after a grandiose offensive by the armies of the central powers. For each army corps there was one sapper battalion, consisting of a telegraph company and three sapper companies. Such a number of sappers with modern weapons and the need to skillfully bury themselves was completely insufficient. And our infantry in peacetime learned self-entrenching disgustingly, carelessly, lazy, and in general the sapper business was poorly organized. But the lesson went for the future. By the fall of 1915, no one was lazy and did not dispute the need for the most thorough digging and camouflage. As General Brusilov recalled, no one had to be forced or persuaded. Everyone buried themselves in the ground like moles. A series of photographs shows the evolution of defensive positions during the course of the war.
Rice. 5 Roviki 1914
Rice. 6 Trench 1915
Rice. 7 Trench 1916
Rice. 8 Position 1916
Rice. 9 bunker in 1916
Rice. 10 bunker of 1916 from the inside
The failures of the Russian army also had international consequences. In the course of the war, Bulgaria's alleged neutrality quickly evaporated, as the Austro-German agent Tsar Ferdinand I Coburg sat on the Bulgarian throne. And earlier, in conditions of neutrality, Bulgaria supplied the Turkish army with ammunition, weapons, officers. Starting with the retreat of the Russian army from Galicia, a frenzied anti-Serb and anti-Russian hysteria began in Bulgaria, as a result of which Tsar Coburg declared war on Serbia on October 14, 1915 and provided 400 thousandth Bulgarian army for the Austro-German Union, which entered hostilities against Serbia. For Serbia, an ally of Russia, this had disastrous consequences. Having received a stab in the back, by the end of December the Serbian troops were defeated and left the territory of Serbia, leaving for Albania. From there, in January 1916, their remains were evacuated to the island of Corfu and to Bizerte. This is how the "brothers" and their rulers paid for hundreds of thousands of Russian lives and billions of rubles spent on their liberation from the Turkish yoke.
As winter approaches, hostilities are dying out. The summer operations of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops did not justify the hopes placed on them, the encirclement of the Russian armies in Poland did not work. The Russian command with battles managed to drive the central armies and align the front line, although it left the western Baltic, Poland and Galicia. The return of Galicia greatly encouraged Austria-Hungary. But Russia was not withdrawn from the war, as planned by the German strategists, and, starting in August 1915, they began to shift their focus to the west. For the coming year 1916, the Germans decided to again transfer the main actions to the Western Front and began to transfer troops there. Until the end of the war on the Russian front, the Germans no longer undertook decisive offensive operations. On the whole, for Russia, this was the year of the “great retreat”. The Cossacks, as always, fought bravely in all these bloody battles, covered the withdrawal of Russian units, performing feats under these conditions, but also suffered huge losses. The indestructible power of morale and the excellent combat training of the Cossacks more than once became the guarantee of their victories. In September, the Cossack of the 6th Don Cossack Regiment Alexei Kiryanov repeated the feat of Kozma Kryuchkov, destroying 11 enemy soldiers in one battle. The morale of the Cossack troops was immeasurably high. Unlike other troops, which experienced an acute shortage of reinforcements, they "fled with volunteers" from the Don. There are a lot of such examples. So the commander of the 26th Don Cossack regiment, Colonel A. A. Polyakov, in his report of May 25, 1915, reports that 12 Cossacks arrived in his regiment from the villages without permission. In view of the fact that they have proven themselves well, he asks to leave them in the regiment. To detain and stop the Germans, the Cossacks were thrown into furious counterattacks, breakthroughs, desperate raids and raids. Here's just one example. On the extreme right flank of the 5th Army, the 7th Siberian Corps fought the Ussuri Cossack Brigade under the command of General Krymov. On June 5, the brigade, together with the attached regiments of the 4th Don Cossack Division, broke through in the sector of the German front, slipped up to 35 miles into the rear of the enemy, attacked the convoys and destroyed them. Moving further to the southwest, the brigade met a column of the 6th German Cavalry Division, defeated it and threw it back twenty versts. There were transport units and their cover, which resisted, and the German command began to organize shock units everywhere in order to surround the brigade and cut off its escape routes from the rear. The Ussuri continued their movement and swept over 200 miles along the nearest rear, crushing everything in their path. According to the assessment of the German command, the raid of the Usurian Cossack brigade into the deep rear of the German front was quite successful and was dashingly and skillfully executed. Logistics communications were destroyed for a long time, the supporting columns along the entire route were destroyed, and all the attention of the German command of the northern sector was for several days directed not to the continuation of the offensive, but to the side of their rear. Cossacks and in defense firmly defended their positions, firmly carrying out the order of the command. However, this firmness prompted many Russian commanders a simple solution, to use the Cossack units as "riding infantry", which is convenient to close gaps in the defense. The harmfulness of this decision soon became apparent. The life of the trenches quickly reduced the combat effectiveness of the Cossack units, and the dismounted formation did not at all correspond to the operational and tactical purpose of the Cossack cavalry. A partial way out of this situation was found in the formation of partisan detachments and special forces. During this period, behind enemy lines, they tried to use the experience of the guerrilla war of 1812. In 1915, 11 partisan detachments with a total of 1,700 people were formed on the fronts from the Cossacks. Their task was to destroy headquarters, warehouses and railways, seize carts, stir up panic and uncertainty among the enemy in his rear, divert the main forces from the front to fight partisans, sabotage and sabotage. There were certain successes in this activity. On the night of November 15, 1915, 25 versts from Pinsk, partisan detachments from the 7th, 11th and 12th cavalry divisions made their way on foot through the swamps and at dawn boldly attacked the serenely sleeping Germans of the 82nd Infantry Division's headquarters. The military cunning was a success. One general was hacked to death, 2 were taken prisoner (the commander and chief of staff of the division, General Fobarius), the headquarters with valuable documentation was captured, 4 guns and up to 600 enemy soldiers were destroyed. The losses of the partisans were 2 Cossacks killed and 4 wounded. The garrison in the village of Kukhtotskaya Volya was also defeated, the enemy lost about 400 people. Partisan losses - one killed, 30 wounded, 2 missing, etc. The future active participants in the civil war proved to be very active partisans: the white Cossack atamans B. Annenkov, A. Shkuro and the dashing red brigade commander, the Kuban Cossack I. Kochubei. But the heroic deeds of the partisans could not have a significant impact on the course of the war. Due to the sluggish support of the local population (Poland, Galicia and Belarus, especially Western - this is not Russia), partisan actions could not have the same scale and effectiveness as in 1812. Nevertheless, in the next 1916, on the Russian-German-Austrian front, 53 partisan detachments, mainly from the Cossacks, were already carrying out operational-tactical assignments of the command. They operated until the end of April 1917, when they were finally disbanded due to the clearly positional nature of the war.
Rice. 11 A raid of partisan Cossacks on a German convoy
Rice. 12 Cossack partisans drove up B. V. Annenkova
In 1915, the tactics of using the Cossack cavalry were constantly changing. Some units were disbanded. Regiments and brigades were distributed among army corps and performed the functions of corps cavalry. They conducted reconnaissance, provided communications, guard headquarters and communications, and participated in battles. As an infantry, cavalry regiments were not equivalent to rifle regiments due to their smaller numbers and the need to allocate up to a third of their composition as horse breeders when dismounting. But these regiments and brigades (usually 2 regimental personnel) were effective as a mobile and operational reserve for the corps commander. Separate hundreds and divisions were used as divisional and regimental cavalry. The quality of these troops is evidenced by the fact that up to half of the personnel of the Cossack troops called up to the war were awarded various awards, and half of the Terek Cossacks were cavaliers of St. George, and all the officers. Most of the awards were received for exploration and raiding activities.
At the same time, trench warfare constantly required the use of operational mobile reserves and a larger scale. Even during the offensive in Galicia in 1914, the cavalry corps of Generals Dragomirov and Novikov were formed and actively operated on the Southwestern Front. In February 1915, as part of the 9th Army, the 2nd Cavalry Corps of General Khan of Nakhichevan was created as part of the 1st Don Cossack, 12th Cavalry and Caucasian native ("wild") divisions, and soon the 3rd Cavalry was formed. F. A. Keller. The Gorlitsky battle on the Southwestern Front prompted the command to use an operational Cossack screen. It consisted of the 3rd Don Cossack, 2nd Consolidated Cossack, 16th Cavalry and 3rd Caucasian Cossack divisions. This was the first attempt to create larger Cossack formations than the corps. The idea of creating a Special Cossack Cavalry Army, as an operational reserve of the front, was constantly defended by Cossack generals Krasnov, Krymov and others. At the end of the year, the cavalry was created under the leadership of General Oranovsky, but the choice of the commander was clearly unsuccessful and the idea was ruined. The accumulated combat experience suggested the need to create large cavalry formations in the Russian army to solve various military-tactical tasks. But at the initial stage of the war, there were typical cases of irrational use of cavalry units, which led to the denial of their influence on the operational situation. This idea came to life again during the Civil War and was brilliantly developed, creatively reworked and talentedly executed by the Red Cossacks Dumenko, Mironov and Budyonny.
Activities on the French front in 1915 were limited to the offensive launched in September in Champagne near Arras, which did not even have local significance and, of course, did not have any significance for alleviating the position of the Russian armies. But 1915 turned out to be famous for the Western Front for a completely different reason. On April 22, the German army in the area of the small Belgian town of Ypres used a chlorine gas attack against the Anglo-French Entente troops. A huge, 180 tonne (out of 6,000 cylinders) poisonous yellow-green cloud of highly toxic chlorine, reaching the enemy's forward positions, within a matter of minutes struck 15 thousand soldiers and officers, of whom five thousand died immediately after the attack. The survivors either died later in hospitals, or became disabled for life, having received emphysema of the lungs, severe damage to the organs of vision and other internal organs. The "overwhelming" success of chemical weapons stimulated their further use. On May 18, 1915, the 45th Don Cossack Regiment was almost completely killed during the first gas attack on the Eastern Front near Borzhimov. On May 31, the Germans used an even more highly toxic poisonous substance called "phosgene" against the Russian troops. 9 thousand people died. Later, the German troops used against their opponents a new chemical weapon, a chemical warfare agent of skin blistering and general toxic action, which was called "mustard gas". The small town of Ypres became (as later Hiroshima) a symbol of one of the greatest crimes against humanity. During the First World War, other toxic substances were "tested": diphosgene (1915), chloropicrin (1916), hydrocyanic acid (1915). Chemical weapons overturned any notion of the humanity of armed struggle based on compliance with international law related to war. It was the First World War that highlighted all that cruelty of supposedly "civilized" nations, who boasted of their "superiority" over other peoples, which Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Attila or any other Asian ruler never dreamed of. The European art of mass atrocities in the twentieth century has surpassed any genocide that any human thought could have invented before.
Rice. 13 Blinded Victims of Chemical Attack
However, in general, the general military-political situation for the Allies by 1916 was developing favorably. But that's a completely different story.
