Damp explosives might have kept World War One from ending in 1915
One night a fortress gate failed to blow because the charges were damp. Austria-Hungary narrowly avoided immediate collapse—and the program argues that this and similar contingencies explain why World War One continued past 1915 until 1918.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
A fortress's job is buying time, not winning battles
Przemyśl's real value was not whether it could stop the Russians, but that it cut off rail lines and supply routes, giving the routed, demoralized Austro-Hungarian field army a chance to breathe. After the front collapsed, the fortress positioned the troops close enough—within tens of miles and weeks of respite—to rebuild discipline and morale, preventing total collapse within the first month and a half of war. From the start, the fortress existed to give an entire army a chance to recover.
— Alexander WatsonBrusilov's actual objective was Berlin, not Przemyśl
Russian commander Brusilov insisted on assaulting the fortress not for the city itself but for the Galician rail network it controlled. Capturing it would let him command all transport lines across Galicia, push north, and drive into Germany's industrial heartland of Silesia, reaching Berlin. For him, Przemyśl was only a gate to a larger prize. He believed this supposedly obsolete fortress would fall in days.
— Alexander WatsonDamp explosives saved an entire defensive line
On the night of October 6, during a major assault, Russian soldiers reached the top of redoubt number 11 through darkness, set up ladders, and prepared guncotton to blast open the gate while containing the Austro-Hungarian garrison inside. But it had rained that night. The explosives were wet. They ignited with a hiss and smoke but did not detonate. One technical failure—that single gate did not open. Both analysts believe that if the explosives had fired that night, the entire line would likely have collapsed, and the war's course might have been completely different.
— Alexander WatsonAn unnecessary withdrawal turned the fortress into a trap
By November, when the Austro-Hungarian forces made their second ordered withdrawal, the fortress was no longer strategically necessary. It lacked food for a long siege—the garrison should have evacuated with the army, leaving an empty city. But Przemyśl had become a household name through its September stand, and Austria-Hungary could not bear to abandon the prestige it had already invested. They kept the garrison inside to hold on, turning it into the spark that ignited a series of brutal, futile relief offensives.
— Alexander WatsonA winter bloodbath in the Carpathians has been forgotten
To rescue the trapped garrison, Austro-Hungarian forces spent the entire winter fighting the Russians in the Carpathian Mountains. Temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius, and neither side had prepared for winter warfare. Combined casualties reached between one and a half and two million—on the scale of the Somme or Verdun. Yet because the Eastern Front is marginalized in historical memory, and because this region endured an even worse war after, this bloodbath has been nearly erased.
— Alexander WatsonWhen supplies ran out, horses became rations
As the siege dragged on, food itself became a weapon. The city held about thirty thousand civilians, one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, and twenty-one thousand horses. One-fifth of the garrison lay in hospital from malnutrition. At first, horses hauled ammunition and supplies. As the siege lengthened, their fodder was diverted to humans, and the horses themselves were slaughtered for meat. By March 1915, when the siege ended, nearly 100 percent of the garrison's horses were dead—a reminder that industrial war consumed not just men.
— Alexander WatsonThe commander chose a suicidal charge to preserve honor
With ammunition spent and food gone, the garrison could not actually break out. But commander Kusmanek ordered a final assault—not westward toward home but eastward, toward Kiev and Moscow. Terrain-wise the ground was flatter, but more fundamentally, this direction preserved a legend, a sense of honor, over any real chance of escape. The charge collapsed in a single night. The garrison then ordered all redoubts and bridges destroyed and the remaining horses shot.
— Alexander WatsonAfter the siege, three nations faced separate forms of ethnic cleansing
When Russian forces occupied the city, they applied different methods of cleansing to local Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. Polish nobility were arrested and stripped of power. Russia denied Ukrainians were an independent nation, calling them "little Russians," closed Ukrainian-language schools and papers, and arrested intellectuals. About one hundred thousand Jews were forcibly expelled; seventeen thousand received notices to leave in late April 1915. Scholars emphasize that this large-scale forced migration of Jews predates Hitler's genocide.
— Alexander WatsonIn their own words · checked verbatim
If we go for this, we control the rail routes right across Galicia. If we control the rail routes right through Galicia, that will then help an advance to the north, and we can punch through uh Silesia, which is kind of an eastern industrial part of Germany at this time.
Alexander Watson19:18
That's one of those, you know, for want of a nail and the night couldn't go to the battle once the night was lost.
Alexander Watson25:20
This is the Stalingrad of Austria-Hungary's First World War.
If you're a horse, the lethality rate is pretty much 100% by the end of the siege in March 1915.
Alexander Watson36:29
they say it's like it was like having a series of volcanoes going off all around the city.
Alexander Watson42:29
Russia can't be a great power, a major power without control of Ukraine.
Alexander Watson46:33
massive deportation of Jewish people to the east did not start with Hitler's Holocaust.
Dan Snow52:37
opens a weather vane, shows us a weather vane for which way the winds of the 20th century going to blow.
Alexander Watson56:43
Figures
| Redoubts encircling the fortress | 35 | 13:16 |
| Perimeter of fortress defenses | approximately 30 miles | 14:17 |
| Age of garrison soldiers | 35–42 | 15:17 |
| Ethnic composition of the occupied region in 1914 | Poles approximately 50%, Jews approximately 30%, Ukrainians approximately 20% | 45:31 |
| Date the fortress fell | March 22, 1915 | 53:38 |
Glossary
- Galicia
- A pre-war Austro-Hungarian border province, today divided between Poland and Ukraine, which Russia regarded as part of its rightful territory.
- little Russians
- The Russian Empire's label for Ukrainians, used to deny that Ukrainians constituted an independent nation.
- ring of steel
- A concept introduced by this episode's guest referring to the Entente Powers' total economic blockade of the Central Powers.
- guncotton
- An early high-explosive compound used to breach fortifications and bunker gates.
- Battle of Gorlice-Tarnów
- A major 1915 offensive led by German forces that routed the Russian army and recaptured Przemyśl.
How to listen
Readers interested in WWI's Eastern Front, the origins of Eastern European ethnic conflict, or the historical roots of Ukrainian geopolitics.
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