In this blog, formerly published as a ‘Snapshot’ in Environment and History (May 2024), Iaroslav Golubinov explores the impact of World War One on the environment of the Eastern Front in Europe.
The impact of war on the environment is undeniable. In the twentieth century, large and small conflicts have caused severe damage to nature, polluting vast areas. The impact of the First World War on the environment has been the subject of study by historians, but the Eastern Front in Europe has received rather less attention than the Western Front.[1] The Eastern European theatre of military operations, which spread over a vast area on the border of three empires (Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary) and absorbed no less in the way of troops and equipment than the Western European theatre of military operations, should also be studied.[2]
This article examines several important manifestations of the environmental impact of conflict: firstly, the human-caused disasters that occurred when the fighting took place in an area filled with industrial facilities (oil fields and refineries) which, due to their novelty, did not attract the attention of military strategists before the war; secondly, the work of the armies of the Entente and the Central Powers to reorganise the front landscape, to adapt it both to the conduct of combat operations and to survival in territories clearly not intended for the accumulation of millions of people and hundreds of thousands of domestic animals.
INDUSTRIAL DISASTERS DURING COMBAT OPERATIONS
The military’s interest in the refining industry was understandable. Oil, gasoline and other fuels and lubricants (F&L) were burned in furnaces and engines that provided heat and light, and propelled various mechanisms designed to attack, defend or supply troops. In the Russian Empire as of 14 July 1914, according to the General Staff, the army’s vehicle fleet numbered 711 vehicles of all types in all military districts, not counting 101 motorbikes. During the mobilisation in the second half of the same year it was possible to collect another 5,837 vehicles of 180 makes.[3] In the 1920s, the Soviet Central Statistical Office counted 22,160 cars and 15,540 motorbikes among the ‘expended property for the war of 1914–1918’.[4]
Naturally, the increase in the number of vehicles could not but lead to an increase in requests for F&L, ‘which were brought from the deep rear and kept in army fuel depots’.[5] Thus, in 1917 the Russian South-Western Front (Austrian Galicia and western Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire) consumed 35 tank-cars[6] of petrol, 12 tank-cars of paraffin and 3 tank-cars of oil per month.[7] These F&L were not only used for their intended purpose, but accidentally spilled on the ground, burnt, poured into water bodies.
War thus only intensified their harmful effects, turning oil and its derivatives into elements of total war, while moving oil production and refineries into the space of frontline struggle. The most significant acts of environmental impact, comparable to the burning of Iraqi oil fields in 1991, were the destruction of oil fields in Galicia in 1915 and in Romania in 1916. Since the Galicia story is less well known, it is worth dwelling on it in more detail.
In Galicia, the operation to destroy the oil fields in May 1915 was part of a major retreat of the Russian army due to the Gorlice breakthrough. As the Russian troops withdrew to the east, the Russian command decided to destroy the most important industrial facilities that could prove important to the enemy.[8] The destruction of the Drohobych refinery, as well as oil storage facilities and wells in Boryslav and Tustanovichi, was assigned to military engineer colonel Zashchuk, who had at his disposal a group of soldiers drawn from ‘two Cossack hundreds, one militia squadron, a platoon of militia infantry and only 20 men of the foreman’s team of the 3rd railway battalion’.[9] After the destruction Lieutenant-General Selivachev described the phenomenon that struck everyone, how ‘in the wind it began to rain, and its drops mixed with oil; falling, they spoilt clothes’, and at night fires that lasted for several days illuminated the area.[10] Two months later, the Polish press reported, citing an eyewitness account, a fire so severe that ‘the countryside turned black over a vast area’ and ‘even in L’viv the trees and shrubs were covered with black soot’.[11] The ‘oil’ clouds eventually reached Zolochiv, sixty kilometres east of L’viv, causing panic among local residents.[12]
Neither during the war nor in the interwar period was there any agreement on the counting of burnt property. Most likely, this discrepancy arose due to different methods of counting. Thus, one of the Russian officials who restored the oil industry in Galicia occupied by Russian troops disagreed with the Zashchuk’s report and pointed out in his report that in one of the destroyed places there was only a third of the reserves indicated by the colonel (i.e. about 131,000 tonnes of oil and 33,000 tonnes of fuel oil), and out of 1,400 oil rigs only 178 were burnt, i.e. about thirteen per cent.[13] The Austro-Hungarian authorities collected information about 229 burnt derricks and destruction of all fire-fighting equipment.[14]According to Polish data from the 1920s, 182 oil wells were affected, ‘which were partly still being drilled, partly already producing’.[15] The question of the long-term effects of fire, oil spillage and ‘oil rain’ on the environment and the population remains difficult to determine, as this kind of damage was not assessed in the immediate aftermath of the military operation. Apparently, ‘the oil that spilled out of the storage tanks and was not set on fire caused major environmental problems, putting once fertile soils out of agricultural use’, but the actual extent of the damage can hardly be estimated now.[16]
CUTTING WOOD AND FRONT-LINE CONSTRUCTION
Apart from the destruction, of course, there was continuous construction in the front line. On both sides of the Eastern Front, the opposing armies built fortifications and residential and supply department buildings, laid roads (including narrow gauge railway lines), and made sanitary and hygienic facilities.
For example, during the period of full-fledged Russian occupation of part of Galicia, when military operations moved to the Carpathians and the region of Przemyśl, agricultural land and forests belonging to the local population began to be systematically requisitioned for the construction of reserve fortifications. Unlike the temporary trenches hastily dug during operations, these lines were built under the direction of qualified engineers according to specially developed designs, by special construction units of the active army with the involvement of the hired or mobilised local population. The lands were not only taken out of economic use, but their relief and ecosystem character were completely changed. For example, the construction of one kilometre of single-lane fortifications (the number of strips of braided stakes in front of the trenches could reach five or six) required about 2,000 stakes, which were subsequently braided with barbed wire.[17] On average, it took about 160 solid trees to build one dugout in the trench system.[18] From January to May 1917 in Kolomyia district of Eastern Galicia more than 100,000 trees of different species were cut down by an engineering squad consisting of prisoners of war alone: spruce, oak, hornbeam, beech, fir, pine (in total 2.5 square kilometres of forest were destroyed in this district in less than half a year). In addition, great attention was paid to clearing the terrain for a better view of artillery and infantry chains – the clear area had to be at least 500 paces in the direction of the fortifications being built.[19] In the aforementioned county, 71 square kilometres of brushwood were destroyed for this purpose.[20] The commander of the Grenadier Corps standing in Eastern Galicia deserved praise from his superiors: ‘… Here in the wooded area … the most careful attention was paid to the clearing of firing at least 500 paces: forests were cut down in large areas, wood was piled in the direction of firing, needles were cut and burnt.’[21] The data of the reports, which record practices of forest destruction for military purposes, coincide with the sketches of travellers who visited occupied Galicia. Russian journalist and writer Aleksei Tolstoi testified: ‘A small forest turned out to be a clearing, i.e. it was cut down on all sides to a depth of several fathoms and woven with wire along the felled trees.’[22]
The Polish forestry engineer Jan Kosina, summarising his observations of the Beskid Mountains in 1916, identified the main causes of forest loss due to military activities:
1. The construction of ditches, trenches, trenches and shelters.
2. The cutting of trees necessary for the construction of these ditches, for the construction of shelters, often elaborate and solidly built, for wire fences, for the construction and repair of roads and bridges, for demasking the approaching enemy, and finally for firewood.
3. Deliberate or accidental fire, especially in young groves.
4. Damage, often complete destruction of trees by shells and finally.
5. Trampling [of grass and undergrowth] and grazing [in meadows by horses].[23]
In the Carpathian forests, traces of the 1914–1918 clashes were clearly visible as early as the late 1930s, when one of the enthusiasts of the Polish tourist movement, Władysław Krugowski, while inhaling ‘the smell of mountains and war’ during a hike, observed ‘sun-drenched hillsides with shooting trenches’, ‘half overgrown with grass, half levelled by winds and human hand.’[24]
Thus, we see that inflicting damage on the enemy necessarily meant the destruction of the natural environment: for example, the smoke from oil fires affected people’s health, as did the long-term contamination of soil and water with oil products. In this case, the war really became total. Totalisation in this case consisted not so much in the involvement in the war of all representatives of society in the warring states, but rather in the pervasive interference of war in the course of natural life and catastrophic changes in the state of the environment because of this, with natural resources being unconditionally mobilised and used as weapons.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research for this article was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) under the research project 21–59–14003 ‘Great War and the Anthropocene: “Imperial Debris” and Environmental Change in Central-Eastern Europe’.
[1] T. Keller, ‘Destruction of the ecosystem’, International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1): https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/destruction_of_the_ecosystem (accessed 8 Jan. 2024); Richard P. Tucker, Tait Keller, J.R. McNeill and Martin Schmid (eds), Environmental Histories of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
[2] I.A. Golubinov and O.S. Nagornaia, ‘Embattled nature: Men and landscapes on the Eastern Front of the First World War’, in A. Heywood, S.W. Palmer and J.A. Lajus (eds), Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine in Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22(Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2022), pp. 333–51.
[3] S.V. Kirilets, G.G. Kaninsky, Avtomobili Russkoi Imperatorskoi armii: ‘Avtomobilʹnaia akademiia’ generala Sekreteva [Automobiles of the Russian Imperial Army: ‘The Automobile Academy’ of General Sekretev] (Moscow: Fond ‘Russkie vitiazi’, 2010), p. 114.
[4] Rossiia v mirovoi voine 1914–1918: (v tsifrakh) [Russia in the World War of 1914–1918: (in figures)]. (Moscow: b.i., 1925), pp. 59, 61.
[5] M.P. Milovskii (ed.) Istoriia tyla i snabzheniia russkoi armii [History of the rear and supply of the Russian army] (Kalinin: Military Academy of Logistics and Supply, 1955), p. 307.
[6] The load capacity of a normal railway tank car in Russia was usually around 12.5–16.5 tonnes.
[7] [Scheme for supplying the South-Western Front with combustible materials], Russian State Military Archives (RGVIA), Fond 2071, Opis 1, Delo 28, List 40.
[8] Gorlitskaia operatsiia (Sb. Dokumentov) [The Gorlice operation: (Collection of documents)] (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1941), pp. 365–66.
[9] [Telegram to military engineer Colonel Zashchuk], RGVIA, F.2134, Op.2, D.539, L.439; [Report to the Commander of the 8th Army – military engineer Colonel Zashchuk from 3 (16) May 1915], RGVIA, F.13216, Op.1, D.95, L.19.
[10] O.N. Khlestov (ed.), General V.I. Selivachev. Dnevniki. Ianvarʹ – avgust 1915 g. [General V.I. Selivachev. Diaries. January–August 1915. (Moscow, 2020), pp. 344, 348–50.
[11] ‘Szkody z inwazyi rosyjskiej w Drohobyczu’ [Damage from the Russian invasion in Drohobych], Nowa Reforma (wydanie popołudniowe), 7.7.1915, p. 2.
[12] Pawłowski W. ‘Borysław — Stolica Polskiego Zagłębia Naftowego (do 1939 r.) Cz. II [Boryslav — Capital of the Polish Oil Basin (until 1939) Part II.], Biuletyn Stowarzyszenia Przyjaciół Ziemi Drohobyckiej 21 (2017): 48.
[13] A.S. Ostrogradskii, Otchet predstavitelia Ministerstva torgovli i promyshlennosti o neftiannoi promyshlennosti Galitsii i kazennom zavode v Drogobyche. Prilozhenie № 9 (K otchetu voennogo gubernatora Galtsii) [Report of the representative of the Ministry of Trade and Industry on the oil industry in Galicia and the state-owned plant in Drohobych. Annex No. 9 (To the Report of the Military Governor of Galicia)] (Kyiv, 1915), p. 10.
[14] A.F. Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 188.
[15] B.L. Lavskii, ‘Polʹskaia neftianaia promyshlennostʹ (istoricheskii ocherk) (prodolzhenie)’ [Polish oil industry (historical sketch) (continued)], Neftianoe khoziaistvo 12 (2) (1927): 269.
[16] Il’nyts’kyi, Ihor Vasyl’ovych. ‘Naftopererobna promyslovist’ Halychyny v umovakh pershoi Rosiikoi okupatsii kraiu (veresen’ 1914 r. – cherven’ 1915 r.)’ [The oil refining industry of Galicia under the first Russian occupation of the region (September 1914–June 1915)], in Problemy istorii Ukrainy XIX – pochatku XX st.: zb. Nauk pr, 23: 297–304. Kyiv: Institute of Ukrainian History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2014
[17] [Summary statement of forest felling. Romania, Iasi province, Tarnavka property. Romanian state forest. 25.08-14.09.1917], RGVIA, F.2136, Op.1, D.117, L.184.
[18] [Information about clearing under fire in the village of Rungury from 1.02. to 31.03.1917], RGVIA, F.2163, Op.1, D.61, L.72-81.
[19] [Grenadier Corps. January 1915.], RGVIA, F.2067, Op.1, D.534, L.133ob.
[20] [Information about clearing under fire in the village of Rungury from 1.02. to 31.03.1917], RGVIA, F.2163, Op.1, D.61, L.72-81.
[21] [Grenadier Corps. January 1915], RGVIA, F.2067, Op.1, D.534, L.133ob.
[22] A.N. Tolstoi, V Anglii. — Na Kavkaze. — Po Volyni i Galitsii [In England. — In the Caucasus. — In Volhynia and Galicia] (Moscow: Kniga pisatelia, 1916), p. 214.
[23] J. Kosina, ‘Szkody wojenne w lasach Beskidu’ [War damage in the forests of the Beskid mountains], Sylwan (1–6) (1916): 24.
[24] W. Krygowski, ‘W zapachu gór i wojny’ [Amid the scent of mountains and war], Wierchy: rocznik poświęcony górom i góralszczyźnie 15 (53) (1937): 87–103.
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