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The Battle of Jutland, 31st May 1916. (Sea battle)



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The Battle of Jutland, 31st May 1916. (Sea battle)

This was the greatest naval battle of all time up to then, with 250 ships and 5 sea-planes involved. (The Second World War battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 was even greater.)

As the Germans were outnumbered by the British, Scheer planned a strategy which he hoped would end British naval superiority. Admiral Hipper, with part of the German fleet, would sail ahead of Scheer and draw the impetuous British Admiral David Beatty, in charge of the Battle Cruiser Squadron now stationed at Rosyth. Once Beatty had sighted the Germans, Hipper was to turn and lead Beatty onto the main German fleet, which would destroy Beatty's force, Beatty being unable to receive help from Jellicoe who would be too far way.

Unluckily for the Germans, Room 40 learned, from radio intercepts which were deciphered, of the departure from its base at Bremerhaven of the entire German High Seas Fleet, although there was no hint of what the German intention was. However, incompetence at the British Admiralty meant that Jellicoe was informed, wrongly, that Scheer had not left Bremerhaven, that is, that the entire German fleet was not at sea; this misinformation unfortunately, but not surprisingly, made him distrust intelligence information that came later from Room 40. Thus when Jellicoe took the Grand Fleet out of Scapa Flow he did not hurry, for there seemed to be no great danger and high speed meant increased fuel consumption and a reduced range of action.

When Beatty and Hipper sighted each other's fleet, it was largely by chance as the two fleets would probably have passed each other had they not gone to investigate a neutral merchant vessel sailing between them! Beatty, as anticipated, chased after Hipper, who turned and led Beatty towards Scheer. When Beatty saw Scheer's ships and realised that he had fallen into a trap, he quickly turned, chased by the German fleet; in the ensuing battle, the superior German ships did considerable damage to the British. Meanwhile, Jellicoe, informed of the battle, was racing to Beatty's assistance, all of which was of course unknown to the Germans, who were in fact themselves now being drawn into a trap. However, Beatty failed to inform Jellicoe exactly where he was, but Jellicoe calculated the right place and managed to cross Scheer's T, so that all the British guns could fire while the Germans were masked by their own fleet. Scheer decided against battle and under the cover of dusk turned about and raced for home, first firing torpedoes which caused Jellicoe to be cautious in pursuit.

Jellicoe followed Scheer south, hoping for another "1st of June" the next day (the "Glorious 1st of June" of 1794 was when Admiral Lord Howe beat the French Brest Fleet off Ushant.) During the night, there were clashes between parts of the fleet when they sighted each other in the dark but the situation was very confused. But in the night, Jellicoe lost the German fleet, which arrived safely back in port. Room 40 had in fact informed Jellicoe of Scheer's route but Jellicoe, having before been given wrong information by Room 40, took no notice and so lost a chance to destroy the German fleet.

Opinions vary as to who won the battle. Technically, the Germans won because they inflicted heavier casualties on the British than they themselves suffered. 6,097 British sailors out of 60,000 died and 14 British ships, with a total tonnage of 112,000, were sunk. As for the Germans, 2,551 sailors out of 36,000 died and 11 ships, a total of 62,000 tons, were sunk. However, the Germans had run away and the German navy never again ventured out in full force, despite the fact that the relative German success had shattered the myth of the invincibility of the Royal Navy.

Jellicoe was much criticized afterwards, especially for letting the Germans escape. The main British failing had been poor communications, for which Jellicoe was ultimately responsible and his disregarding information from Room 40 meant that he lost the Germans during the night. However, he had found the German fleet despite Beatty's failure to signal, crossed the T, and generally showed himself "very able if cautious" (Liddell Hart).

A German victory at Jutland would have been disastrous for Britain for, without control of the sea, it would have been deprived of essential supplies from the Empire and the United States. As Churchill put it, Jellicoe was the only man who "could lose the war in an afternoon".
*The eastern front

  1. Battle of Tannenberg: 26-30 August 1914(BBC web-site)



Allied with France and Britain, Grand Duke Nicholas, the Russian commander, agreed to help relieve the French, under attack from Germany, with an offensive in East Prussia. This required mobility and nimbleness(clever and quick thinking); unfortunately the Russians had neither.

Two Russian armies invaded German East Prussia in August 1914. Rennenkampf's First Army was to converge with the Samsonov's Second Army to give a two-to-one numerical superiority over the German 8th Army, which they would attack from the east and south respectively, some 80km (50 miles) apart.

The plan began well at Gumbinnen on 20 August, when Rennenkampf's First Army defeated eight divisions of the German 8th Army on its eastern front. By this time Samsonov's forces had crossed the southern frontier of East Prussia to threaten the German rear, defended by only three divisions.

Faced with imminent attack, Prittwitz, commander of the 8th Army, approved Lieutenant Colonel Hoffman's idea to attack Samsonov's left flank, aided by another three divisions moved by rail from the Gumbinnen front. However, on 23 August Prittwitz was replaced by General von Hindenburg whose chief of staff, Ludendorff, immediately confirmed Hoffmann's plan to strike at Samsonov's left flank.

The Germans then got lucky when they intercepted an uncoded Russian message indicating that Rennenkampf was in no hurry to advance. Developing Hoffman's original plan, Ludendorff concentrated six divisions against Samsonov's left flank and took a calculated risk to withdraw the rest of the German troops from Gumbinnen and move them to face Samsonov's right flank, leaving only a cavalry screen against Rennenkampf. This move was helped by the lack of communication between the two Russian commanders, who disliked each other.

Samsonov's forces were spread out along a 60 mile front and advancing gradually against the Germans when, on 26 August, Ludendorff ordered an attack on Samsonov's left wing near Usdau. There, German artillery forced a Russian retreat, whereupon they were pursued toward Neidenburg, in the rear of the Russian centre.

A Russian counter-attack from Soldau enabled two Russian army corps to escape south east before the German pursuit continued. By nightfall on 29 August the Russian centre, amounting to three army corps, was surrounded by Germans and stuck in a forest with no means of escape. The Russians disintegrated and were taken prisoner by the thousands. Faced with total defeat, Samsonov shot himself. By the end of the month, the Germans had taken 92,000 prisoners and annihilated half of the Russian 2nd Army. Rennenkampf's army had not moved at all during this battle, vindicating Ludendorff's calculated risk.

After being reinforced, the Germans turned on Rennenkampf's slowly advancing Army, attacking it in the first half of September and driving it from East Prussia. It was a crushing defeat for the Russians. In total, they lost around 250,000 men - an entire army - as well as vast amounts of military equipment. The wafer-thin silver lining was that the Russian action had diverted the Germans from their attack on France and allowed the French to counter-attack at the Marne.


          1. Campaigns and crises on the eastern front : 1914-1916

Russian prisoners after defeat in East Prussia, 1915

In 1914, Russia was hardly prepared for war. Just nine years earlier she had been defeated in a war with tiny Japan. The Revolution of 1905, when revolts and uprisings had forced the Tsar to concede civil rights and a parliament to the Russian people, had also shaken the empire.

The subsequent reforms and rebuilding were far from complete, but as workers and land-hungry peasants rallied to the Russian flag and marched off to fight against the Central Powers, the initial auguries for both war and national unity were not bad.

'This failed Russian advance...signalled the beginning of an unrelenting Russian retreat'

National unity, however, could only be built on victory and, in that regard, Russia's hopes were dashed early in the Great War. At Tannenberg and the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, in 1914, Russia lost two entire armies (over 250,000 men).

This failed Russian advance into East Prussia did disrupt Germany's Schlieffen Plan and thus probably prevented the fall of Paris, but it also signalled the beginning of an unrelenting Russian retreat on the northern sector of the Eastern Front. By the middle of 1915 all of Russian Poland and Lithuania, and most of Latvia, were overrun by the German army.

'Many factors - including the militarisation of industry and crises in food supply - threatened disaster on the home front'

Fortunately for the Russians, they did better in 1916. The supply of rifles and artillery shells to the Eastern Front was vastly improved, and in the Brusilov Offensive of June 1916, Russia achieved significant victories over the Austrians - capturing Galicia and the Bukovina - and she was also more than holding her own in Transcaucasia, against Turkey.

However, the country's political and economic problems were greatly exacerbated by the war. Many factors - including the militarisation of industry and crises in food supply - threatened disaster on the home front.

Added to this cocktail were rumours that the tsarina, Alexandra, and her favourite, the infamous Rasputin, were German spies. The rumours were unfounded, but by November 1916 influential critics of the regime were asking whether Russia's misfortunes - including 1,700,000 military dead and 5,000,000 wounded - were a consequence of 'stupidity or treason'.

This was a rabble-rousing exaggeration, but certainly the outdated strategies of Russia's General Staff had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, while the regime seemed careless of such appalling losses.




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