Great Retreat

Overview

The Great Retreat was a strategic withdrawal and evacuation on the Eastern Front of World War I in 1915. The Imperial Russian Army gave up the salient in Galicia and Congress Poland. The Russian Empire's critically under-equipped military suffered great losses in the Central Powers' July–September summer offensive operations, which led to the Stavka ordering a withdrawal to shorten the front lines and avoid the potential encirclement of large Russian forces in the salient. While the withdrawal itself was relatively well-conducted, it was a severe blow to Russian morale.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Great Retreat covered more than 200 km, withdrawing the French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force from Belgium to the River Marne in France following defeats at the Battle of Charleroi and the Battle of Mons. A counter-offensive at the First Battle of Guise failed to arrest the German advance, and the two Allied forces continued south until they crossed to the south side of the Marne. The retreat ended when the First Battle of the Marne, fought from 5 to 12 September, reversed the German momentum and forced German armies back toward the Aisne River. That reversal led directly to the First Battle of the Aisne and then to the Race to the Sea, the sequence of reciprocal flanking attempts that ran from 17 September to 17 October and ultimately fixed the Western Front into the trench lines that defined the war's subsequent years.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (16)