Joseon Needs a Coup - Chapter 396



Only Noblemtl

#2 Part 6. Proposal from the Far East (1)

Polivanov bit his lip as he spoke. Compared to the military power of the Great Russian Empire, nicknamed the Steamroller of the East, the present troubles were a shameful self-portrait. Sukhomlinov was overly optimistic about the war, overconfident in the ability of the state-owned military enterprises in Petrograd, and had been trying to ignore the present troubles, telling only what the Tsar and the courtiers wanted to hear.

And thanks to this, St. Petersburg remained almost blind to what was happening on the entire front, including in Galicia, until May 1915. The defeat at Tannenberg was minimized, and the Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Przemysl was greatly exaggerated.

Eventually, he was dismissed by the unwillingness of the field troops, the discontented Moscow industrialists, and the cabinet members who were concerned about Sukhomlinov’s overly optimistic outlook. When Polivanov, who was widely regarded as a liberal, was appointed Minister of War, serious problems were rampant in the Russian Imperial Army, government, and the entire civilian population.

“Already as of November last year, 800,000 volunteers have been conscripted, but we are still unable to deploy them to the front lines due to a severe shortage of weapons and ammunition. Of the 510,000 friendly troops deployed in Galicia, 150,000 are still stuck in the rear without rifles.”

“What?!”

No one could keep their mouths shut at his revelations. No matter what, the fact that the unit was not functioning properly due to a lack of cannons or rifles was too shocking. The Tsar’s pupils were shaking, and Sazanov swallowed hard, bracing himself for his next words as if they were a huge shock wave.

“Our army now needs 14.7 million additional rifles. We cannot continue the war with the 5.2 million rifles we have now. Oh, we only have about 4.5 million left. We lost 700,000 of them in the last East Prussian and Galician campaigns… … .”

“… Where are we going to get an additional 15 million rifles?”

They say 15 million, but this was definitely not a quantity that fell from the sky. The Russian Empire’s own supply of rifles produced during 1914 was just under 300,000, so it could be said that it would have taken 50 years of production to barely meet the demand.

Of course, there were optimistic predictions that if they switched to a display industry and got it right, they could produce up to 3 million a year, but there was a catch: they had to wait until 1916 to do so. So there was only one way.

“We must order the missing weapons from France, Britain, and the United States immediately! If we delay any longer, our army will be irreversibly defeated!”

“They are also in trouble. France and Britain are too busy arming their own troops to fight on the Western Front to have the production facilities to hand over to us, and the United States is also urgently expanding its rifle factories in response to our proposal. At the earliest, it will be 1916 before we can get the numbers we need.”

In fact, the problem was not supposed to get to this point. There had already been several opportunities. Before the war, competent officials in the War Ministry had thought about it, and many generals and commanders of the quartermaster corps who had experienced the previous Far Eastern War tried to make up for the shortage by purchasing rifles and ammunition from neutral or allied countries, but all of them were in vain due to Sukhomlinov’s opposition.

By the end of December 1914, when the situation was getting out of hand, he finally secretly contacted several European countries, the United States, and Japan to sound out the purchase of weapons, but even this was difficult. Overseas purchases were also becoming difficult to arm the domestic army due to the expansion of facilities or the intensification of the war.

“Last year, General Golovin, the Quartermaster General of the 8th Army, raised this issue with Minister Sukhomlinov several times, and the Artillery Committee also raised the issue, but all of them were ignored. He also rejected the offer of assistance from the French Republic.”

It was to the point that General Golovin, the Quartermaster General of the 8th Army, said that he had received a telegram from the Supreme Command informing him that some of the front-line companies would be converted into units armed with halberdiers or berdysheks in order to make up for the shortage of riflemen.

“… You mean that strange telegram that says they will give burdis to the empty-handed soldiers because they don’t have enough rifles? What difference does it make to arm the rear reserves like that? It will only send the poor soldiers to their deaths.”

“The supply situation of our army is so dire that the frontline command is seriously considering issuing such weapons. This is not a novel or a comedy, this is reality, gentlemen.”

Everyone was shocked by the Minister of War’s words. The story that had only been heard as a rumor had become true through the Minister of War’s words. However, he did not stop there and continued speaking.

“Our factory produces 1,300 shells of various types per day. If that is the case, we can calculate that we produce about 35,000 shells per month. However, our artillery consumes 45,000 shells per day in Galicia alone.”

“That story is… … .”

“We have a dire shortage of artillery ammunition, even more so than infantry ammunition. We cannot drive the enemy out of Galicia in this condition.”

When the Minister of War spoke, everyone fell silent. Nothing had been resolved satisfactorily since the war of 1914, and the situation was turning against them. And in the midst of this silence, one of the ministers made a remark that might be seen as cautiously optimistic.

“Well, even so, according to General Golovin’s report, essential war supplies are coming in from Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok, so don’t you think we can hope for a quick solution to the problem? In addition, I have also received reports that the situation has improved somewhat thanks to the Japanese Empire, which has improved relations with us, handing over a large amount of artillery equipment and ammunition that was in operation immediately after the Battle of Qingdao.”

“If we look at the written reports, that’s right. However, we face another enemy: logistics, which transports weapons and ammunition to the battlefield. Currently, the field units on the front line are receiving only 30% of the supplies they need from the rear, and in each port, supplies are piled up and waiting to be transported. It’s no exaggeration to say that the supplies are not draining properly and the ones at the bottom are sinking into the mud. It’s no exaggeration to say that our military’s logistics situation is hopeless.”

Even though they had stockpiled supplies, they were struggling to properly advance to the front lines. The arteriosclerosis of the giant known as Russia was already a problem that was expected. The way to solve this was to pour huge amounts of money into improving road infrastructure, but all of that money was replaced by the railroads that were laid throughout the Russian Empire.

And the piled up supplies were becoming something that the Russian Empire’s railroads could not handle, and the problem was that they were being left to fend for themselves, and that they were being left to fend for themselves, even as the quartermasters were begging and spiting blood for supplies.

“In this situation, what on earth are the Zemstvos (local self-government councils in Imperial Russia) doing, who should be actively helping the administration? Shouldn’t the Minister of Internal Affairs be the one to make sure they actively cooperate?”

“If you whine about guaranteeing the right to vote after the war, how will you govern then? The evil ideas of liberalism and the like have swept through St. Petersburg and Moscow and caused chaos more than a dozen times. Wars only scratch our skin, but they rot the heart and lungs of our empire. We must prevent them from setting foot in the first place… …!”

“No, what the hell are you talking about? If we can’t stop those Germanic bastards, our empire itself will collapse first!”

The Tsar covered his face with both hands. Whether it was out of shame or a temporary attempt to hide his feelings of inability to control his head-scratching problem, one thing was certain.

Without significant support, the Russian Empire would be doomed on the Eastern Front, and the Romanovs would suffer the same fate. If the supply of rifles, which were the basic necessities of war, was in such a state, the supply of machine guns, artillery, and ammunition would be no different.

“As of 1914, our army consumed 3.366 billion rounds of ammunition, but there are only 2.745 billion rounds available to replace them. The fact that there is a shortage of nearly 700 million rounds of ammunition is not a problem that can be overlooked.”

“… His words are true, Your Majesty. With chronic shortages of arms and ammunition reported all over the front, how can we stop them now?”

“What on earth have our arsenals in Moscow, Perm and St. Petersburg been doing all this time?!”

When the Minister of War and those directly involved in the war showed the reality hidden behind the curtain, the Tsar’s anger was heard because he could not accept it. However, what he received in return was an even more disheartening answer. It was also the most fundamental problem that could never be solved with anger and sharp criticism alone.

“Your Majesty, the production of ammunition in our Russian Empire is entirely… … .”

“Kyung, don’t hesitate and speak quickly!”

“The reality was that the imperial military industry was entirely dependent on the German Empire. We could produce rifles and field guns ourselves, but the gunpowder and raw materials used for them were not ours.”

As the war minister said, Russia’s backward industrial and chemical industry capabilities inevitably led to the deterioration of the military industry. In particular, the production of toluene, which is necessary for the production of ammunition, and pyrite, which is the raw material for sulfuric acid essential for the production of gunpowder, was mainly concentrated in Germany, Turkey, and Sweden, but naturally, all lines were cut off when the war broke out.

With Germany and Turkey at war, and Sweden under blockade by the German navy pushing into the Baltic Sea, Russia’s military industry was in a vicious cycle of low productivity. Ultimately, if it could not find a new supply line from abroad, Russia would have no choice but to take the first step toward defeat.

Britain and France were urgently trying to prevent the withdrawal from the Eastern Front by urgently supplying ammunition and materials, while also trying to win Italy over to the Entente’s side and open a new front, but it was unclear whether this would happen in time.

“The budget is also tight. In order to solve the current problem, we need to purchase weapons from overseas, but we are seriously short on money to pay for them. The salaries of the soldiers alone amount to 3 billion rubles.”

“3 billion rubles… If Stolypin were alive, would he have been able to deal with this problem… … .”

As the war intensified, the already precarious finances of the empire fell into a very steep deficit. The war budget of 24 billion rubles was one thing, but what was more fatal was that the Germans had touched Russia’s most sore spot. They blocked Russia’s main import and export supplies through a naval blockade in the Baltic and Black Seas, causing a 75% drop in total exports.

This was not all. The impact was accumulating in key agricultural production areas and industrial complexes in the western region. The blockade immediately reduced factory production by 20% of pre-war levels, and food production immediately plummeted to dangerous levels. Not only urban workers, but also rural farmers were drafted into the army in large numbers, resulting in a loss of more than 20% of the average year’s harvest.

[Author’s Note]

According to the book Russian Military Logistical Problems 1914-1920 by Collin McCarthy Macharyas, the Russian High Command actually sent the following telegram to General Golovin, the Quartermaster General of the 9th Army:

This was a telegram stating that there was a shortage of rifles to arm soldiers on the front lines, and that to overcome this, long-handled axes, called halberdiers (or berdisches), would be used as replacements for rifles.

This reminds me of Carnot’s argument that “since the French were originally good at close combat, let’s give them pikes instead of muskets” for the French Revolutionary Army, which was short on muskets, and General Thomas Jackson actually received approval from General Robert E. Lee to allow the Confederate Army, which was greatly lacking in weapons production compared to the Union Army during the American Civil War, to arm itself with pikes.

And the background to this absurd telegram was the situation of the Russian Imperial Army, which was facing a rather terrible defeat and a lack of internal industrial capacity. First of all, the Russian army suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Austro-Hungarian and German armies in the Galician campaign of 1914 and the spring offensive of the Allies in 1915, which was very fatal.

At that time, the Russian army suffered a large-scale defeat in East Prussia and Poland, losing a lot of equipment, and the fighting power of the Russian army, which was suffering from a lack of weapons, was continuously declining. By October 1915, the Russian army had lost about 2,000 pieces of artillery equipment and nearly 700,000 rifles.

Moreover, the damage had already accumulated with 230,000 casualties throughout Galicia, and 150,000 of the remaining 510,000 troops were deployed to the rear without even rifles, so the damage suffered in the spring offensive was said to be much more severe than ever. The only consolation was that the enemy, the German army, was concentrating on the Western Front, and Austria-Hungary was able to take a breather thanks to the expansion of the front with Italy and Romania.

This is why the Russian army was in such a desperate situation that they were considering providing Halberdiers to arm the remaining troops and quickly stabilize the front. In addition, the chronic weakness of industrial capacity continued to trouble Russia. During the war, Russia only supplied 65% of the total rifle consumption.

To solve these problems, the Russian Empire increased the production of rifles at the arsenals in Perm, Petersburg, and St. Petersburg, and contacted the United States, France, Britain, and Japan to try to supply 2.5 million rifles, but even this was not easy.

Because supply lines to transport equipment to the front lines were not properly secured, many of the produced or imported equipment ended up tied up in ports and arsenals. In the case of the Arkhangelsk port, there were even reports of materials being piled up so much from Britain, France, and the United States that the ones at the bottom were sinking into the mud, creating a dire situation.

Ultimately, from October 1915 to April 1917, the Russian army was only able to receive 25% of the supplies it needed on the front lines, and was forced to take measures such as urgently issuing 700,000 captured rifles and re-arming two army corps.

And surprisingly, these problems were not resolved as the war progressed, but rather developed into problems that became even more serious as the civil war progressed.