1st Army (Austria-Hungary)

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The Austro-Hungarian 1st Army was a large unit of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War . The Army High Command was deployed in the first year of the war on the Eastern Front in Galicia and Russian Poland , from summer 1915 in Volhynia and from August 1916 in the Romanian theater of war.

history

General of the cavalry Viktor Dankl

The Austro-Hungarian 1st Army was determined in mobilizing for the Galician front and gathered in mid August 1914 between Vistula and San . General of the cavalry Viktor Dankl was in command , Major General Kochanowski acted as chief of staff . The army had 126 battalions, 69 squadrons and 450 artillery pieces. According to the attack plans of the Chief of Staff Conrad , the 1st Army was to attack between the San and the Vistula and to the right of it the 4th Army in the direction of Brest-Litovsk and thus cut off the strategic railway line between Kiev and Warsaw.

1914

During the deployment for the battle in Galicia, the one concentrated on the southern bank of the San began to advance northwards across the border from August 20. During the offensive, the left wing was covered by the east bank of the Vistula, where on the western bank near Sandomir the kuk army group of General of the Cavalry Kummer von Falkenfeld, which was advancing at the same time , had to support. The troops crossed the Russian border between Sandomierz and Rudnik and on August 23, after about 30 kilometers north-east march, they met the advance guard of the Russian 4th Army under General von Saltza . Mostly Slovaks from Bratislava and Poles from the Cracow area fought in the ranks of the previous kuk I., V. and X. Corps . The 1st Army consisted of 10 ½ infantry divisions and 2 cavalry divisions:

In contrast, the opposing Russian 4th Army had only 6 ½ infantry divisions on the first and second day of the Battle of Kraśnik , but it was reinforced by 3 ½ cavalry divisions. Most of the enemy (Russian XIV., XVI. Army and Grenadier Corps) was pushed back on the Wyznica on the battle front between Annapol-Zoklikow-Frampol. On August 24, the Austro-Hungarian 5th and 46th Divisions penetrated Krasnik , the 12th Division under FML Kestranek took over cover to the west to the Vistula . On both banks of the Vistula, the army group Kummer intervened with Landwehr troops:

  • 7th Cavalry Division (FML. Ignaz Edler von Korda )
  • 95th Landwehr Division (GMJ. Artur von Richard-Rostoczil)
  • 106th Landwehr Division (GMj. Carl Czapp)

On August 27, the fighting between Chodelbach and Rudniki flared up again, the kuk I. and V. Corps suffered heavy losses. By August 30th, Dankl was reinforced by the Silesian Landwehr Corps under Woyrsch , which had crossed the Vistula near Jozefow . The short-term Russian retreat towards Lublin was carried out together with the Russian 5th Army, which was also thrown back a little later at Komarów .

From September 5, 1914, the Russian 4th Army under the new Commander-in-Chief Ewert began to attack again against Dankl's front. The kuk V Corps collapsed completely on the Bystrzyca, the kuk X Corps was thrown back onto the Bzowiec-Zoliewka line. After the regrouping of the 4th Army under General von Auffenberg's cavalry, the Russian XIX. Army corps in the direction of Zamość , the connection to the army group Joseph Ferdinand threatened to break off. On September 7th, the 1st Army with its three corps was suddenly attacked by seven Russian corps (9th and 4th Armies). After the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army to the south had to retreat behind the San between Radymno and Medyka , the 1st Army followed this movement further north and retreated to the western bank of the San between Lezajsk and Jaroslau . On September 15, Dankl gave in to the pressure of the pursuing Russian 9th Army and went back to the Wola Krlewska- Tarnobrzeg line , at Sieniawa and Jaroslau the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army to the south held bridgeheads east of the San. The bulk of the Austro-Hungarian forces between Przemyśl and the Vistula near Sandomierz were compressed to a width of about 150 km. As a result of the attack by the German Landwehr Corps from Silesia at the end of September, the Russian Southwest Front had to break off its already planned advance in Galicia and General Ivanov had to move two armies (4th and 5th Army) to the northern bank of the Vistula.

The 37th Honved Division and the 106th Landsturm Division also marched towards the Vistula as reinforcements. The kuk army group Kummer, which secured the north bank of the Vistula at the beginning of the war, had already been disbanded, and its units had been sent to Dankl. The 1st Army had assembled with the 1st Corps (Kirchbach) south of Pińczów an der Nida at the end of September and had advanced on Klimontów by October 4th . The Silesian Landwehr Corps ( von Woyrsch ) again covered the deployment of the left wing. The Austrian cavalry corps Korda (3rd and 7th cavalry divisions) covered both sides of the flanks of the kuk I. Corps advancing eastwards at Sandomierz and first collided with the Russian rearguard, which was returning to the Vistula. The first fighting broke out between Opatów and Klimontow. The kuk V Corps followed across the Vistula to the north, the kuk X Corps initially remained in the front on the south bank of the Vistula, but from mid-October reinforced the later section off Ivangorod . As early as October 17th, the Russians had gathered a threatening superiority and the battle of the Vistula could no longer be won. The German Commander-in-Chief Colonel General von Hindenburg ordered the withdrawal, but he tried to continue his attack until the 1st Army decided. On October 22, the breakthrough of the Russian XVII. and III. Caucasian Corps can barely be prevented by the Austro-Hungarian I. Corps. The Russian 4th Army led the XVI on October 24th and 25th at Ivangorod. and XVII. Corps, the III. Caucasian Corps, the Grenadier Corps, below Ivangorod the Russian 9th Army, the XIV., XV., XVIII. Corps as well as the Guard Corps for a successful attack. On October 26th, General Dankl had to stop the battle immediately. Further attacks became futile and the withdrawal was necessary immediately. Dankl's retreat to Opatówka was covered by the Hauer Cavalry Corps (9th and 11th Cavalry Divisions). At the end of December 1914, the army was engaged in trench warfare on the Jedrzejow- Pintschow- Beicse line north of the Vistula:

  • left - II Corps (4th and 25th Divisions)
  • in the center - I. Corps (5th, 37th and 46th Divisions)
  • right - Group Martiny (14th Division, 106th Landsturm Division)

1915

Paul Puhallo from Brlog

In the spring of 1915, the 1st Army, which was still in southern Poland, essentially consisted of the 1st and 2nd Corps of the commanding generals Karl and Johann Kirchbach . The breakthrough of the German 11th Army in the Gorlice-Tarnów area at the beginning of May also resulted in the dismantling of the Russian forces still holding on the Nida and Vistula after a short time . The further plan of the German Commander-in-Chief Mackensen for the continuing Bug Offensive of June 19, 1915 envisaged an advance from the northern border of Galicia to the north. On the eastern bank of the Bug , the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army under General Puhallo, which had become vacant on the western bank of the Vistula, was deployed against Vladimir-Volynsk , where a newly formed Russian 13th Army deployed. Army group Mackensen had 8 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions of the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army on the right flank. East of the Bug, however, the newly formed Russian 13th Army was fully capable of fighting and was able to stop the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army on the intended advance to the north. It was not until the beginning of August, after the fall of the Brest-Litovsk fortress , that the Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff Conrad was able to allow his eastern armies to advance across the old border to Volhynia . The Szurmay Corps with the 7th and 40th Divisions assigned to the 1st Army was assigned to Sokal to advance on Swinjuchi. The II. (13th and 25th Divisions) and I Corps (9th and 46th Divisions) advanced southwards towards Dubno. The campaign to Rovno , initiated by the Austrian 1st and 4th Army on August 29, 1915, failed completely. Troops of the 1st Army were able to conquer Lutsk on August 31, but the city was lost to the Russians on September 22. In the Russian counter-attack against the left flank of the Austro-Hungarian 4th and 1st Armies, 70,000 Austrian soldiers were taken prisoner. The front of the 1st Army had by the group Smekal (4th and 45th) are amplified and went into the trench warfare over.

1916

General of the Infantry Arthur Arz von Straussenburg

After the successes of the Russian 8th Army at the beginning of the Brusilov offensive , the 11th Army , which was in the south, attacked . General Sakharov's troops faced the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army and the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army , which both together only had nine divisions. The attacks at Mlynow and Sapanow led to the conquest of the Dubno transport hub by June 10, 1916 . Since his northern flank was extremely endangered by the collapse of the 4th Army at Lutsk, General Puhallo ordered the retreat from the Ikwa to the Plaszewka and the lower Lipa, until June 15 he moved a new line of defense at Demidowka. The XVIII. Corps under Czibulka (25th and 46th Divisions) and the Kosak Group (7th Cav. Div. And 27th Division) were withdrawn to the Gorochow and Brody line. At the end of June and beginning of July Puhallo even had to retreat from the Plaszewka-Lipa river line near Swiniuchy across the old border. The Army High Command 1 was pulled out of the front until Brody extended the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army.

After these successes of the Russians, at the end of August 1916 the Romanian declaration of war and the enemy break into the Hungarian province of Transylvania , where there was only weak border protection. The Romanian 1st and 2nd Armies under General Culcer and Crăiniceanu from the south and the 4th Army under General Prezan from the east advanced up to 80 kilometers deep into the predominantly Romanian border province of Hungary. With about 420,000 men, they were able to put into practice a tenfold superiority in purely numerical terms over the newly formed AOK 1 for defense under the command of General der Infantry Arz von Straussenburg . When Arz arrived at the headquarters in Cluj , the 1st Army comprised only around 10,000 men, a testament to the overused resources of the Danube Monarchy. On September 19, the army finally comprised 45,260 men, 2,288 horsemen, 217 machine guns and 234 artillery pieces.

  • kuk VI. Corps (FML Fabini ) with 39th and 61st Honved Divisions on the northern ridge
  • Imperial and Royal 1st and 3rd Cavalry Division
  • German I. Reserve Corps with 89th Division , 71st Honved Division on the Upper Maros and defending the mountains near Fogaras .
Romanian theater of war November 1916

General of the Infantry von Falkenhayn took over the supreme command of the newly established German 9th Army which hurried to the aid of the Austrians. In the middle of September the hesitant Romanians stood with the 4th Army 50 kilometers west of the eastern Carpathian passes, with the 2nd Army on both sides of the mountains northeast of Fogaras and with the 1st Army just south of Sibiu and west of Petroseni . The 9th Army carried out its victorious counterattack in the Battle of Sibiu between the 26th and 29th , covered on the left by the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army and the Schmettow Cavalry Corps, on the right by the Krafft group . On October 5th, the already receding rearguards of the Romanians in the Geisterwald were attacked and from October 7th to 9th, in close cooperation with the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army in the battle of Kronstadt, they were forced to retreat in a tough house-to-house battle. On the extreme left wing of the 9th Army, the Austro-Hungarian 71st Infantry Division under Major General Goldbach had pushed the evading enemy back to the Oituz Pass, south of which the Morgen group was deployed against the Verecker Mountains . Between October 8th and 10th there was heavy fighting over the Törzburger Pass and Predeal . On October 13th, heir to the throne Archduke Karl nominally assumed the supreme command of the Army Group in Transylvania, the Austro-Hungarian 7th Army (Kövess), the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army and the German 9th Army between Dorna Watra and the Red Tower Pass from north to southwest . Army subordinated.

1917

At the beginning of March 1917, General Rohr von Denta took over the command of the 1st Army, which at that time had 7 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions:

By mid-July 1917, the Russian Kerensky offensive had essentially been repulsed by the Central Powers. In the Forest Carpathians , the Russian 9th Army and the Romanian III. Corps attacks against Gymes and Tölgya passes, fighting in the Ojtoz area. For better defense, the 1st Army was also assigned the VIII. Corps under General Benigni with the 70th and 71st Honved Divisions. The Romanian 2nd Army began an additional relief offensive on July 22nd against the extended south wing of the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army. The Corps Group Gerok ( XXIV. Reserve Corps ) got into severe distress. The kuk 1st Cavalry Division deployed there under FML de Ruiz and the 218th Division had to withdraw from the Soveja basin through the Putna and Susita valleys. The German 117th Division had to be added as reinforcements. The withdrawal of 1st Army Rohr did not end until the end of July at a new mountain position between Oituz Pass (Ojtoz) and Casinului.

1918

After the armistice in December 1917, the 1st Army initially remained in their positions until the peace agreement with Soviet Russia . In mid-March 1918, the 1st Army occupied the IX. and XXI. Corps the border of Transylvania . On April 5, 1918, the superior Army Group Kövess was dissolved; Army Commands 1 and 7 were also disbanded ten days later. Corps Command VIII (Gen. of Inf. Von Hadfy) acted as the newly established General Command 1 in Kronstadt , and Corps Command XI. (FZM. Hugo von Habermann) as General Command 7 in Czernowitz .

Commander in chief

literature

  • Austrian Federal Ministry of the Army from the war archive. "Austria-Hungary's last war 1914–1918", seven volumes of text and supplements, Verlag der Militärwissenschaftlichen Mitteilungen, Vienna 1930
  • Anton Wagner: The First World War . Troop service series, Carl Ueberreuter Verlag, 1981

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anton Wagner: The First World War , Carl Ueberreuter Verlag 1981, p. 47 f.
  2. ^ Austrian Federal Ministry for Army Affairs from the war archive: Austria-Hungary's last war 1914-1918. First volume, p. 69 f.
  3. ^ Austrian Federal Ministry for Army Affairs from the war archive: Austria-Hungary's last war 1914-1918. First volume, p. 430 f.
  4. ^ Austrian Federal Ministry for Army Affairs from the war archive: Austria-Hungary's last war 1914-1918. First volume, p. 450 f.
  5. ^ Anton Wagner: The First World War, Carl Ueberreuter Verlag 1981, p. 211 f.

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