A gleeful Russian Cossack skewers Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph in Galicia, the Empire's northeastern region isolated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian Mountains. The caption is a play on words echoing the name of the mountain range in telling Franz Joseph, 'it seems your soldiers took to their heels.' After twin defeats in the Battles of Gnila Lipa and Rava Russka, the Austro-Hungarian Army lost the great fortress at Lemberg, and was being driven out of Galicia and back through the Carpathians. Russia's attempts to break through the Carpathians continued through April 1915, with heavy losses on both sides. The Austro-Hungarians, with German support, held.

Parait que tes soldats se Carapathent



Seems that your soldiers took to their heels



Dix 701



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Thursday, June 17, 1915

"Mackensen's reorganised Army Group resumed the offensive on 12th June [1915], launched its main assault on the following day, and by the 17th had forced the Russians back to the line Rava Russkaya — Zolkiew, while Austrian Second Army had reached the vicinity of Lemberg.

That day STAVKA met at Cholm to consider the situation. The front along the Vistula was threatened with outflanking on both sides — from East Prussia to the north, since the Mazurian winter campaign, and now from Galicia and the Bukovina. There was no possibility of a counter-offensive to restore the situation, since the deficiency of small arms existing in July 1914 had never been made up, and shortage of artillery and shells precluded adequate support for any infantry attacks that might be essayed. There was no alternative to the abandonment of Galicia, . . ."

Quotation Context

When German General August von Mackensen began his combined German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive on May 2, 1915, he did so with an overwhelming artillery barrage for which the Russians had no response. More than any other major combatant nation, Russia failed to address its shell shortage, which included artillery, shells, rifles, and ammunition of all kinds. Although Russia had conquered, lost, and reconquered Bukovina and most of Galicia in 1914 and 1915, Stavka, the Russian High Command, began a retreat of hundreds of miles that would not stop for months.

Source

Carpathian Disaster: Death of an Army by Geoffrey Jukes, page 54, copyright © Geoffrey Jukes 1971, publisher: Ballantine, publication date: 1971

Tags

1915-06-17, 1915, June, Stavka, STAVKA, Galicia