In the winter of 1917, Russian and German troops on the Eastern Front of World War I were not only fighting each other, they were also trying to stay alive amid the blistering cold, starvation and, surprisingly, large packs of wolves.
It’s a well-known historical fact that citizens of the Russian Empire were starving by the winter of 1917. It was one of the many reasons for the downfall of Tsar Nicholas II and the rise of the Soviet Union. But German civilians and military personnel were starving too. An Allied stranglehold on German shipping combined with a poor harvest in 1916 led to a period of food scarcity now known as the “Turnip Winter.”
It turns out that food shortages were just bad all-around, because even the wolves had trouble finding their next meal.
A communique from Berlin in February 1917 reported that large packs of wolves had begun migrating from the forests of modern-day Lithuania, Poland and Belarus as their food supplies and habitats were increasingly threatened by the war. The animals soon began to find their way to the front lines. At first, they stuck to easier prey: cows, chickens, sheep, goats and other livestock being raised by the locals. Then they turned to other prey: the wounded troops of World War I.
Many areas of the front lines began reporting large concentrations of wolves appearing in the combat zones. A war dispatch from the Russian Imperial capital of Petrograd (what is today St. Petersburg) reported that, on more than one occasion, the Russian and German troops had to cease their combat operations to focus on killing a common enemy. It seems the wolves stopped waiting for a lull in the fighting; they were so hungry they began taking down men in the middle of battles for a quick meal. The two sides decided to put their war on hold to go and hunt down the wolves.
“Parties of Russian and German scouts met recently and were hotly engaged in a skirmish when a large pack of wolves dashed on the scene and attacked the wounded,” one post from the a 1915 edition of The Oklahoma City Times printed. “Hostilities were at once suspended and Germans and Russians instinctively attacked the pack, killing about fifty of the wolves.”
After the brief “Wolf Truce,” the dispatch continued, the two sides went back to their respective trenches while sniper fire, machine guns and other offensive operations were put on hold. The incident reported from Petrograd wasn’t the only instance of this kind of timeout. Reportedly, the wolves threatened outposts and fortified locations held by both armies.
The coming of summer brought no end to the wolf threat, either. In July 1917, The New York Times again reported that the wolves were a “veritable plague” in Lithuania and an offensive had to be halted so that the two enemies could hunt down the wolves, this time killing several hundred of the hungry beasts:
“Poison, rifle fire, hand grenades, and even machine guns were successively tried in attempts to eradicate the nuisance. But all to no avail. The wolves – nowhere to be found quite so large and powerful as in Russia – were desperate in their hunger and regardless of danger. Fresh packs would appear in place of those that were killed by the Russian and German troops. As a last resort, the two adversaries, with the consent of their commanders, entered into negotiations for an armistice and joined forces to overcome the wolf plague. For a short time there was peace. And in no haphazard fashion was the task of vanquishing the mutual foe undertaken.”
Fighting between Russia and Germany would only continue until December of 1917, as the Bolsheviks came to power in the October Revolution of that year and signed a separate peace with the Germans.
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This article originally appeared on We Are the Mighty.
