Last Person to Post Wins

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Present it......

[mbennet35]

I win

Sorry to disappoint anyone.

[southbiochem]

Yeah, apparently I have to "catch up" to 2 laggers...however that makes sense

I will try to tell the story of Russias "I was winning and then I was loosing" in WWI

cause I deem it to be more interesting than yammering about glycolisis enzymatic reactions which I could totally do..



Eastern Europe at the outbreak of WWI

[southbiochem]

So, it's August 1914, some hot headed countries are at war..

deeming Russia as a slow mobilizer, Germany went west to take care of France while Austria-Hungary took care of Serbia (in which it failed miserably) but also tried to snatch the Poland salient from Russia



This is Germany storming through Belgium and Northern France until French and Brits stopped them in the First Battle of the Marne

[southbiochem]

Oddly enough Russia was quicker to mobilize than expected and soon mustered massive armies at the borders.

The Russian First Army crossed the border into German East Prussia heading for Königsberg, while the Russian Second Army threatened from Poland to cut off Germans from the South

Germany pulled off a miraculous movement of troops through rail roads and met the Second Army at the Battle of Tannenberg....Russians were outright crushed

[southbiochem]

In the South it was a different story, as Austrian drive into Poland was not only checked, but soon fall into retreat as the Russians stormed thorugh Austrian Galicia, capturing Lemberg, the Galician capital and 4th most populated city in Austria-Hungary and also laying siege on Przemysl...



while the Russian invaded Austria-Hungary oh so sucessfully, Germans now turned their attention to the First Russian Army in the Battles of the Masurian Lakes....Russians effectively withdrew from East Prussia

[southbiochem]

Russia sought then, to Attack directly into Silesia and head for Berlin, which caused a German response that quickly turned into the Battle of ŁÃ³dź in November-December 1914



The result was German capture of some of Russian Poland

Fighting stopped for the winter

[southbiochem]

The fighting resumed in May 1915 when Austro-German forces attacked Poland in the Górlice-Tárnow Offensive..

what started as an attempt to relieve Russian pressure on Austria, turned out to be a massive defeat as Russian front lines disintegrated..

they got the hell out of Galicia and lost 2/3 of Poland, but they held onto Warsaw for the next few months

[southbiochem]

To straigthen out the front lines and gain some stability, Russian Armies conducted the "Great Retreat" eastwards abandoning Poland for the Austro-German Forces to occupy



German Troops enter Warsaw August 5th 1915



Of course Russians blew up a bridge or 2 over the Vistula as they retreated so as to not give it all too easy


Now, German successes in the East meant to give up the hope on beating France quickly as they had to move armies from the Western Front.

After the Marne and the subsequent "Race to the Sea" to capture the vital Channel ports, trench warfare kicked in...

[southbiochem]

After the great retreat, The new front line ran from the Baltic Sea to the Romanian border by the Riga-Jakobstadt-Dünaburg-Baranovichi-Pinsk-Dubno-Ternopil line.