The Winter Battle in Masuria
would live from hand to month, and thus endanger the conduct of the campaign and the safety of the troops. Grim reality takes care that plans do not go beyond what troops can accomplish in the way of overcoming the enemy's resistance.
The measures which I took as a result of this course of reasoning completely upset the enemy's calculations, which had become known. The Entente hoped to win the war in 1915 through Russia. While the Grand Duke intended an offensive in full force in the Carpathians, strong Russian forces were, according to the so-called " gigantic plan/' to be sent forward between the Niemen and the Gumbinnen-Insterburg road against the weak north wing of the 8th Army, crush it in, envelop the army, and throw it back to the Vistula. Other troops, especially masses of cavalry, were to break through our weak forces between Mlawa and the Vistula, and invade West Prussia. The stretch of Prussian territory east of the Vistula was to be overrun, and the German troops which occupied it were to be annihilated.
In January a reinforcement of the enemy's front opposite the left \\ing of the 8th Army was perceptible. It is very probable that the advance of the Russians towards the \\loclawek-Mla\va line east of the Vistula in December, 1914, had been made with this intention. The completion of the one operation was here, as in the Carpathians, the introduction to another.
The execution of the " gigantic plan " was still only in its first stages ; but the Russians had already fixed their eyes firmly on the country east of the Vistula. As early as the beginning of January they had taken away troops from their front west of the Vistula in order to use them in the north. If we forestalled their plans by our own, we should certainly have to reckon with strong counter-attacks across both the Niemen and the Narew. These counter-attacks were actually made, and Indeed with such force and continuity that we had a very hard time of it. The Grand Duke was a really great soldier and strategist.
Flank protection on the Kovno-Olita side, on the one hand, and the Osowiec-Lomza side on the other, was to be secured mainly by those units of the 8th Army which would become
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