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Public Opinion, the French Military and the Baltic Front: from Ignorance to the Discovery of a Geopolitical and National Issue (1914-1918)

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Public Opinion, the French Military and the Baltic Front: from Ignorance to the Discovery of a Geopolitical and National Issue (1914-1918) Public Opinion, the French Military and the Baltic Front: From Ignorance to the Discovery of a Geopolitical and National Issue (1914-1918). Communication à la Conférence ”Society, war and history: The military, political and social developments of the First World War in the Baltic region (1914–1918)” (Riga, 26 juin 2014) Julien Gueslin To cite this version: Julien Gueslin. Public Opinion, the French Military and the Baltic Front: From Ignorance to the Discovery of a Geopolitical and National Issue (1914-1918). Communication à la Conférence ”Society, war and history: The military, political and social developments of the First World War in the Baltic region (1914–1918)” (Riga, 26 juin 2014). Latvijas Kara Muzeja gadagramata (Yearbook of Latvian War Museum), Riga, 15, 2015. hal-03001356 HAL Id: hal-03001356 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03001356 Submitted on 12 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Public Opinion, the French Military and the Baltic Front: From Ignorance to the Discovery of a Geopolitical and National Issue (1914-1918) Julien Gueslin, Ph.D, “partner searcher” UMR IRICE (CNRS-University Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne), works actually ath the National and University Library of Strasbourg [email protected] Abstract: If the Latvian Riflemen were celebrated after the First World War in Latvia and in France where this contribution was seen as a proof of friendship between the two nations, it is interessing to see that this “built memory” is very different of the first perceptions of the Baltic Front the French could have. The impact on the struggle for the recognition for Latvia was weak. The chronology of events in Latvia up to 1919 was finally never in phase with the moments when French attention was on the Eastern Baltic. The assessment of the situation in Latvia was strongly dependent on the international conjuncture and especially the way France perceived the balance of power according to its own interests at a particular moment. First World War in Latvia—Latvian-French Relations- History and Memory 1 The First World War profoundly changed French society, which understandably was focused on the Western Front and the confrontations taking place there. From 1915 onwards, the epic of the Latvian soldiers was to play an important role in the assertion of Latvian identity and national conscience. Because of this, from 1917, Latvians in the West believed they could invoke the Latvian people’s contribution to the Allied victory, and most of all, that they could therefore obtain the swift recognition of the declaration of independence made in November 1918. However, it is interesting to see that this argument had only limited impact. On the eve of the Peace Conference, the image of Latvia remained very vague and ambiguous: who represented what, in a country pulled between a seemingly very weak civil government dependent on Germany, and some famous soldiers who had gone over to the Red Army ? If, at that time, Lithuania had a more negative image (one could assert it was fast an invention by the Germans to weaken Poland ?), Estonia, on the contrary, had a better reputation, as it had already obtained a certain amount of autonomy from the provisional government, it had proclaimed its independance, and it had created attention at the time of the German invasion of the country and the Treaty of Brest-Litovski. This paper thus tries to explain the reasons for this difference in perception, by showing that the chronology of events in Latvia up to 1919 was never in phase with the moments when French attention was on the Eastern Baltic. The military events, and in particular the assessment of the situation in Latvia, were strongly dependent on the international conjuncture and especially the way France perceived the balance of power according to its own interests at a particular moment. We will not recall here to what extent before 1914, public opinion in France, Germany and Britain was unaware of what was happening in the Eastern Balticii. The French Consul in Riga dealt principally with economic questions, and his reports on political affairs were not very detailed: they seem in any case to have attracted little attention, even if this seems to have evolved progressively in 1913. At the time of the German invasion in 1915, the French Consul thus evoked the determining role of French influence in 2 the acceleration of the work on the new rail bridge in Riga in 1913 following his reports on the strategic importance of the region, and the decisive results for the mass transport of Russian troopsiii. It seems that French officers visited had attended the Vilna military school and had developed contacts with Russian, Estonian and Latvian officers studying there. During their time there, it seemed that studies were carried out on the strategic importance of the region and of the Russian defence lines. This question deserves deeper archival research, but in any case, no knowedge of it was mentioned. After the beginning of the war, the Tsarist regime, just like the French censors, clearly controlled the distribution of information. French military circles had very little first hand information about operations and about what was happening exactly on the different fronts: most of the time, the French military representatives were stationed in Saint Petersburg, or at the large general staff headquarters, the Stavka. According to circumstances, and particularly personal affinities, they could nevertheless benefit from special access to the Grand Duke Nicolas or the Russian command. But it was often a case of fragmented information of a strategic nature and exaggeratedly optimistic opinions on the desire to fight to the end, the popularity of the war, or the satisfying state of the army despite the retreat in Lithuania and Courland, a retreat explained by the simple lack of artillery munitionsiv. In January 1916, Joffre therefore had to again ask General Pelé, who had been sent to Russia, to repeat the request of the French command to be informed not only of operations, but also of the projects and intentions of the Russian High Command. In July 1916, he complained of having had no news at all from the Russian front and asked by exemple if the Russian command had given up its great offensive from Dvinskv. The French Consul in Riga sent extremely useful reports, notably on the state of public opinion in Riga and Livonia, but he had very little means at his disposal, and no link with the military authorities. And in August 1915, the German threat led to the evacuation of the consular authorities to Dorpat, and thus the suppression of all French sources of direct informationvi. All in all, it was no accident if nothing was known at this time of the heroic action of the 20th Latvian Corps in Eastern Prussia, and especially, very little about the events of summer 1915, notably the role played by the Latvian soldiers in the stabilisation of the military front in front of Riga and the setting-up of Latvian batallions. 3 Later, after 1918, the Russian communiqués would be referred to, as would the fear of the German invasion, the fact that Kovno/Kaunas and Lithuania were heard of for the first time, the heroic defence of Riga, and the Latvians. But these Russian references to heroic Latvian fighters would soon be drowned or forgotten by the multitude of other events which were just as agonisingvii. Also, the communiqués were certainly positive, but typically they mainly referred to bold moves by Latvian troops (for example, surging out of trenches and killing the enemy with bayonets) but which had little strategic effect. Through a certain irony of fate, several communiqués translated into French and taken up by the main French newspapers spoke of « Lithuanian » soldiers. At the end of the war, the ignorance of journalists would be recalled, but in the military archives, texts can be found containing exactly the same mistake. Beyond the confusion, it is especially important to note that no-one then seemed to notice the mistake, a sign undoubtledly of the confusion and undoubtledly of the difficulty at that time of bringing concrete reality to these names. In addition, both the military and diplomats relayed quite quickly the vision of a Russian general staff which did not see the German offensive in the Baltic provinces as a major threat to its security, as the Germans were unwilling to concentrate substantial numbers there. Thus in the summer of 1915, General Laguiche, following his meeting with General Alexieff and the command of the North West army, recalled the « perfect calm and trust » which existed, or the natural protection (by the sea and the marshes) of Riga: the « German project » in the Riga area seemed « vague », and the destruction of railway lines seemed the first objectiveviii. Knowing, as we do now after the event, the tensions which existed at this time between the Germany military authorities, this judgment was not necessarily wrong, but of course it also had the advantage of hiding the tactical mistakes and the totally deficient organisation of the Russian armyix. It was therefore logical that the dramatisation of the situation in Riga in the summer of 1915 was less well perceived by the French military who were in Russia or Paris.
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