Riga, September 1917: The German Strike and the Crisis of the 12th Army
Heavy positional artillery The Russian Imperial Army during World War I. The photo was taken in September 1915 near Kurtenhof (now Ķekava, Latvia) on the 12th Army front.
In three days, the German 8th Army captured Riga. But it wasn't just a matter of the new German tactics: there was almost no one left to hold the city except a motivated minority, primarily the Latvian Riflemen.
By September 1917, the Russian 12th Army numbered approximately 161,000 men, over 1,100 artillery pieces, and over 1,900 machine guns: nine divisions in three corps behind a fortified line along the Dvina. Three days after the German attack began, it abandoned Riga, having lost up to 25,000 men, including approximately 15,000 captured and missing. These figures ill-fit with the familiar formula of "the triumph of a new method."
Quiet front, sick army
The Northern Front was considered a quiet area. The line ran from the Baltic Sea along the Dvina River, encompassing positions near Riga. Major operations had not been conducted here for a long time, allowing for trenches to be reinforced and engineering work to be carried out. But this same silence also increased fatigue: the soldiers perceived life in the trenches as a protracted, aimless wait.
The 12th Army was commanded by Lieutenant General D. P. Parsky. It included the 21st and 43rd Army Corps and the 6th Siberian Corps, as well as two Latvian rifle brigades. Externally, the structure was maintained, but internally, discipline was undergoing the same process as throughout the Eastern Front: soldiers' committees, rallies, and distrust of officers.
The soldiers knew of the failure of the June offensive and the Tarnopol disaster, and this reinforced their belief that the command was incapable of waging war. After the Kornilov crisis, any attempt to tighten discipline was met with suspicion. There were refusals to carry out orders that involved risks, such as digging fortifications under fire or conducting reconnaissance in force. In the area near Ikšķile, where the Dvina flows between low, marshy banks, convenient for the covert amassing of assault units, the defense required particularly intensive engineering work, but the soldiers were increasingly reluctant to carry it out.
The Northern Front command had neither the resources nor the political backing to take harsh measures. There remained hope that the soldiers would defend their positions, especially since the German offensive could be perceived as a threat to their homeland. This hope was only partially realized.
Calculation of the German command
Berlin closely monitored events in Russia and understood that the enemy's combat effectiveness was declining. The country was experiencing a political crisis, and its army was increasingly unprepared for active operations. The Germans sought to exploit this weakness to straighten the front and free up divisions for future operations in the West, especially in view of the United States' entry into the war.
Riga occupied a crucial position in the Russian defense in the north. Its capture would cut off the salient along the Dvina and shorten the front line. Success also carried moral and political weight: it underscored the weakness of the Russian front. The operation was entrusted to General Oskar von Hutier, who was willing to try new tactics.
Hutier combined a short but extremely intense artillery barrage with the use of gas shells, concentrated the attack on a narrow sector, and relied on assault groups. Their task was to quickly capture key points, outflanking pockets of resistance. A caveat is necessary here: "Hutier's method" is largely a designation that has become entrenched in later historiography. The authorship of the assault tactic itself is disputed, and the decisive role in the firepower was played by artilleryman Georg Bruchmüller with his method of a short but devastating barrage. At Riga, Hutier rather consolidated existing techniques than invented them.
It wasn't just a matter of innovation. The German staff also proceeded from a sober assessment: the enemy was weak. Their calculations were based on a shallow, poorly organized defense and demoralized troops. The Riga operation was conceived as a strike at an opportune moment, created by Russia's internal crisis.
Soldiers of the 1st Daugavgriva Latvian Riflemen Battalion (later regiment) of the Russian Imperial Army. The photograph was taken in 1916. The riflemen received the St. George Cross for their actions in World War I.
Three days of September
The operation began on September 1 (new style; August 19 old style) with a powerful artillery strike southeast of Riga, in the Ikšķile region. The Germans concentrated heavy artillery on a narrow front and used gas to suppress Russian batteries and wreak havoc on the forward trenches. The fire was brief by the standards of previous campaigns, but extremely dense and accurate.
Under its cover, German units began crossing the Dvina. Pontoon bridges and boats were used, and engineers quickly established crossings. The plan was to establish bridgeheads on the eastern bank before the Russians could launch a counterattack. Assault groups advanced, bypassing pockets of resistance and capturing heights, roads, and villages. In some areas, it happened that after the first gas attack, the infantry abandoned their positions without waiting for the Germans to arrive, leaving empty trenches for the assault groups to cross.
The Russian defense proved weaker than even the German command had anticipated. The Germans quickly broke the line where they even attempted to hold it. Attempts by individual officers to organize resistance were met with a reluctance to engage in heavy fighting.
On September 3, German troops entered Riga. The Russians abandoned the city, partially destroying the crossings and infrastructure. The capture was cheap compared to the potential cost of an assault on a motivated defense. The scale of the abandoned weapons speaks for itself: 273 artillery pieces, 256 machine guns, 185 mortars, and 45 mortars fell into the hands of the attackers. Heavy equipment, which is usually removed or blown up during an organized retreat.
Those who held on
But what about the Latvian Riflemen stationed closer to Riga? They behaved differently from the bulk of the troops. By the fall of 1917, command had expanded the Latvian battalions into regiments and consolidated them into two brigades. The 1st included the 1st Ust-Dvina, 2nd Riga, 3rd Kurzeme, and 4th Vidzeme Regiments; the 2nd included the 5th Zemgale, 6th Tukums, 7th Bauska, and 8th Valmiera.
The names read like a map of the region being defended: Riga, Kurzeme, Vidzeme, Zemgale. For the Latvian Riflemen, it was about defending their own land from German occupation, and this motivation set them apart from the crowd.
However, the portrait was more complex than that of a "heroic minority." The Latvian units were deeply politicized, and Bolshevik influence within them was rapidly growing: later, it would be the Latvian Riflemen who would become one of the pillars of the new government. Near Riga, these two motives still coincided: the defense of their native land and revolutionary consciousness worked in tandem. The regiments of the 2nd Brigade, covering the retreat on the approaches to the city, suffered heavy losses and temporarily halted the Germans in some areas. They were powerless to change the strategic outcome. In the general retreat of the 12th Army, the resilience of the minority was drowned out by the collapse of command, and the command, assessing the situation as critical, abandoned Riga to avoid encirclement.
Trophies captured by German troops during the Riga operation in September 1917
Riga in a row of numbers
The Russians suffered up to 25,000 men against 4,000–5,000 for the advancing German 8th Army. The army, which had recently been capable of the Brusilov Offensive, was unable to hold the fortified line for even three days. In 1915, during the "Great Retreat," the troops retreated in an orderly fashion. In 1917, a limited attack caused a collapse.
The crisis is also evident in desertion statistics. By March 1, 1917, Headquarters listed 195,130 detained deserters; by August 1, the number had risen to 365,137. After the Kornilov crisis and October, self-demobilization began, and historians estimate the total number of those who left the army without permission by the end of the year at 1,5–2 million. These estimates are based on Headquarters records, calculations by the Central Statistical Office of 1925, and later militaryhistorical Literature; the discrepancies are large, but the order of magnitude is impressive. Riga coincided precisely with this turning point, between hundreds of thousands of detainees and millions of those who left without leave.
The Austro-German breakthrough at Caporetto in October 1917 produced a similar picture. The Italian army, broken by its failures on the Isonzo, collapsed even more rapidly under similar methods. A cautious conclusion suggests itself: German tactics struck particularly hard against armies already weakened from within.
Crisis as a symptom
The Riga operation didn't create a crisis. It was already underway; Riga simply brought it to the surface. The German command skillfully chose the area, concentrated artillery, and used gas and assault forces. Yet, the outcome wasn't determined by the attack technique alone. Where motivation and command remained (as with the Latvian Riflemen), the attackers paid in time and blood. Where neither remained, the front crumbled within hours.
Near Riga, the army still tried to defend itself, albeit poorly. Within a month and a half, they would stop trying: October and the Peace Decree would turn the soldiers' reluctance to fight into official policy.
How the front finally crumbled from October to Brest is in the next article in the series.
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