Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands

Two The Strategic Importance of the Baltic Islands

c h a p t e r t w o The Strategic Importance of the Baltic Islands When the war broke out in 1914, neither Germany nor Russia felt the Baltic Islands had any significance. France remained the center of interest for the German army. The Imperial Fleet looked to the North Sea and the Royal Navy. The ground forces of Russia did focus on Germany. They planned a two-pronged invasion of East Prussia from Kovno and Warsaw. The small and totally outclassed Russian Baltic Fleet could only huddle in the east end of the Gulf of Finland, circling under the protection of longrange coastal artillery and extensive minefields. By the fall of 1917 matters had changed, and both sides considered the Baltic Islands to be of such strategic importance they were willing to commit themselves to a major battle for their possession. The Germans hoped their seizure would be the final blow to a Russia seething with revolutionary discontent, and even if the loss of the islands did not lead to immediate capitulation, capturing them would breach the Russian defenses and doom St. Petersburg. Between 1914 and 1917, the Russians had taken advantage of the German fixation on the North Sea and had extended their defenses from the easternmost section of the Gulf of Finland to its western approaches, of which the Baltic Islands formed the southern anchor. Firmly ensconced in this region, the Russians now had no choice but to fight because loss of the islands would turn the flank of their western defenses, laying open their capital. The Strategic Importance of the Baltic Islands 9 Map 1. The Baltic Theater of Operations 10Operation Albion German Strategy in 1914 Before the First World War, German army leaders believed that in the event of a European-wide war, the decision must come in France. The Great General Staff had studied the problem extensively since the War of 1870–1871, and when France and Russia signed a mutual defense alliance in 1894, the subject assumed an even greater importance. Of the two potential foes, France represented the greater danger. Its political, industrial, and military infrastructure facilitated a more rapid mobilization than Russia could achieve. Russia’s backwardness, poor industrial infrastructure, and uninspired performance against Japan in the 1904–1905 war seemed to indicate it would take much longer to activate its forces and bring them to bear. Moreover, Russia’s situation was complicated by the fact that it faced two opponents in its western areas, the Germans in East Prussia and the Austro-Hungarians in Galicia and the Bukovina. The German strategy for a general war, embodied in the Schlieffen Plan, reflected these realities by allocating only one of Germany’s eight field armies to the eastern front. Confronted by a foe in the west whose mobilization capabilities came close to its own, Germany adopted an “all or nothing” strategy and planned to march seven armies into France in an effort to win a decisive victory before Russia could enter the field of battle.1 Germany started the war without an eastern strategy; the mission of the Eighth Army (her sole force in the east) was to defend East Prussia for as long as possible. The Germans wanted to hold the Russians at bay until the armies in the west had crushed France and could thus move east to take on Russia. Recognizing the difficulty if not impossibility of such a task, the General Staff’s orders called for the Eighth Army to fight a delaying action against the oncoming Russians. The German commander could even withdraw behind the Vistula River if compelled. As long as Berlin remained intact, any territory lost in the east, however discomforting, would be a temporary loss, to be recovered as soon as France fell.2 A similar laissez-faire attitude concerning Russia held sway in the Bendler Block, the new home to the Admiralty Staff. All eyes here looked west, west toward England.3 German naval policy, which viewed the Royal Navy as the sole rival and threat to the Reich, had led to a catastrophic arms race with England that drove the latter into the arms of France in 1904.4 Contemporaries and historians agreed that the Royal Navy outclassed the German High Sea Fleet; the only question was the margin of England ’s advantage. Russia appeared on no one’s radar screen. True, Russia The Strategic Importance of...