Winter battle in Masuria

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Winter battle in Masuria
Eastern Front 7-22 February 1915
Eastern Front 7-22 February 1915
date 7. bis 22. February 1915
place Masuria
output German victory
Parties to the conflict

German EmpireThe German Imperium German Empire

Russian Empire 1914Russian Empire Russia

Commander

Paul von Hindenburg
Erich Ludendorff
Max Hoffmann
Otto von Lauenstein

Nikolai Russki
Thadeus von Sievers
Alexander vd Brinken
Pawel Bulgakow
Alexander Gerngross

Troop strength
8th Army
10th Army
about 15 Inf. Divisions,
2 cavalry divisions,
about 250,000 men 		10th Army
Parts of the 12th Army
around 16 Inf.-Divisions
5 Cavalry divisions
losses

16,200

56,000 dead, wounded and missing
approx. 100,000 prisoners

Major military operations on the
Eastern Front (1914-1918)

The winter battle in Masuria took place between February 7th and February 22nd, 1915 in Masuria ( East Prussia , now Poland ) between German and Russian troops. It is also called the Winter Battle of Lyck and Augustów or the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes and in the latter case should not be confused with the Battle of the Masurian Lakes .

background

After the defeats at Tannenberg and at the Masurian Lakes against the German 8th Army , the Russian military leadership was forced to bring in reserves in order to be prepared for further operations. To make matters worse, German troops tried to advance to Warsaw in autumn 1914 ( Battle of the Vistula , Battle of Łódź ). The German attack was successfully repulsed, but at the end of 1914 this operation tied up almost all forces on the Russian Northwest Front. Since there had been a stalemate between the two sides on the central front on the Vistula , the front commander General Russky took up the plan of an offensive over East Prussia . The Russian Stawka under Yuri Danilov saw this as a promising alternative. The Russians were able to draw on full manpower as well as industrially and planned to set up a new army - the 12th - on the southern border of the German territory. The activation area and the planned deployment axis looked very similar to the operation of the 2nd Army, which was destroyed near Tannenberg.

There was no such agreement in the German staffs on how to proceed. The chief of the OHL , von Falkenhayn , wanted to save up all available forces for the western front and let the winter on the eastern front pass without further German operations. Hindenburg's chief of staff and actual commander of the Eastern Front, General Ludendorff , demanded new troops for another attack. After his offensive in Russian Poland had proven to be a setback, he turned back to East Prussia. The German Eastern Province had been under constant threat from Russian troops since 1914 . The reorganization of the Russian 12th Army once again made clear the urgency of this problem. The lower-ranking officer was able to prevail against the Chief of the General Staff of the Army and began planning the operation.

German deployment

Hermann von Eichhorn, Commander in Chief of the 10th Army

In January 1915, the German 10th Army under Hermann von Eichhorn was re-established on the north-eastern front in East Prussia ; southern East Prussia remained as the area of ​​command of the 8th Army under General Otto von Below . Two corps were detached from the Polish front and three reserve corps were re-established to set up this armed force, numbering around 250,000 men . The German army command now had two armies in its easternmost province, which it could use for an intended free-fighting of the areas still occupied by the enemy.

The plan of operations provided for a new encircling battle against the Russian 10th Army under Thadeus von Sievers . This army covered the border with the German Empire from the east and was to be encircled by two German attack spiers. In the north, the Tilsit troop command under General Esebeck covered the operation to the east. The 1st Cavalry Division under Lieutenant General Hermann Brecht and the 5th Guard Infantry Brigade as a reserve were provided to cover Eichhorn's open eastern flank .

Eichhorn's 10th Army (Headquarters in Insterburg, Chief of Staff Colonel Hell ) was to extend the main enclosure to the south on the far left; three corps were assigned to it:

The 16th Landwehr Division under General Brodrück maintained contact with the 8th Army at Gumbinnen . The railway line from Insterburg to Gumbinnen formed roughly the army border here.

Otto von Below, Commander in Chief of the 8th Army

The 8th Army deploying to the south (headquarters in Sensburg, Chief of Staff General Alfred von Böckmann ) had to attract the mass of Russian troops in the center and advance with its right wing on Johannisburg; you were subject to:

Russian assessment of the situation

The Russian General Staff ignored the danger that threatened the Russian 10th Army, despite several warnings from General Sievers. The Quartermaster General of the STAWKA, General Danilow, rejected his concerns by saying that all available German troops were tied to the central section of the front in Poland. The Sievers superior front commander Nikolai Russki even assumed that any German advance through the reorganization of the 12th Army could not even be considered due to a lack of flank security. The Russian 10th Army had about 12 infantry and 4 cavalry divisions:

  • North Wing: 1st Cavalry Corps - 1st and 3rd Cavalry Divisions
  • III. Army Corps under Gen. of Inf. Segelow - 29th and 27th Divisions, 56th Reserve Division
  • Center: XX. Army Corps under Gen. of Inf. Bulgakov - 28th Division and 53rd Reserve Division
  • XXII. Army Corps under Major General Sarin - 73rd and 76th Reserve Divisions
  • XXVI. Army Corps under Gen. the Inf. Gerngross - 64th and 84th Reserve Divisions
  • South wing: III. Siberian Army Corps under Gen. the Inf. Radkewitsch - Sibir. 7th and 8th Infantry Division, 57th Reserve Division, 4th and 15th Cavalry Division

Course of the battle

Winter battle in Masuria, 1915

The fighting began on February 7, 1915 with the simultaneous attack by the two German shock wedges. The German 10th Army advanced at the northern end of the Russian line, while the 8th Army, led by Otto von Below , carried out the same maneuver in the south. Since both major units operated on the very edge of the Russian flanks, they met with little resistance. The XXXX. Reserve Corps, 2nd Division and 3rd Cavalry Brigade attacked the Gehsen - Wrobeln - Snopken line through the Johannisburger Heide . On February 7th, the Litzmann group reached the Drygallen – Rollken line. Just two days later, Eichhorn's 10th Army was able to break through on the right flank of the Russian positions and reached the Kussen – Pillkallen – Willuhnen – Doristal – Slowiki line north of Gumbinnen. The German soldiers were able to assert themselves against two cavalry divisions and two reserve divisions from Sievers' army and put them to flight. This cleared the way to the Russian supply lines for Eichhorn's troops and exposed the Russian center in the Goldap area to an immense threat.

The Russian leadership could certainly have met this tactical defeat if they had not misjudged what was going on on their front. A comprehensive offensive was not expected. The movement of the 8th Army was seen as a corps-strength attack on the Osowiec fortress and no energetic countermeasures were taken. The strength of the 10th Army in the north was also underestimated. Their actions were seen as an attack on the garrison town of Kovno . Even the complete collapse of the right flank on February 11th was not a sufficient warning sign for the army commander or the higher staff.

General Thadeus von Sievers

It was only after about a week, far too late, that the front commander Russky recognized the major offensive and the threatened encirclement of the 10th Army. He planned a counter-offensive in the area of ​​Below's 8th Army. Here he was subject to two misjudgments that made his intervention a catastrophe. On the one hand, he considered the attack of the 8th Army to be the main German thrust, while in the north the German 10th Army had already thrown back the right wing and was preparing to encircle the Russian center. He wanted to prepare the 12th Army, which was not yet operational, for a counter-offensive in the south of East Prussia. In order to give this operation flank security, he forbade any withdrawal of the troops of the Russian 10th Army. The central mass ( III. , XX. And XXVI. Corps ) of Siever's army was pinned between the two German armies, which were advancing on their flanks into their hinterland. Of course, the promised counter-offensive no longer took place. When the seriousness of the situation was recognized on February 14, the army commander gave the order to retreat, but it was now almost too late for that. The Germans were already controlling the streets that were to serve as retreat routes for the central units and had established themselves in the hinterland. So the withdrawal degenerated into panic. Two corps of the Russian center were still able to withdraw, the XX. Corps under General Bulgakow was completely enclosed in a wooded area near Augustów and capitulated with 12,000 men. The rest of these troops were able to save themselves there at the last minute and, strongly decimated, gather in a new containment position.

consequences

The winter battle was a German victory, and it was accordingly honored in the German Reich with propaganda . But measured against Ludendorff's expectations, it was only a partial success. The Chief of Staff of the Eastern Front had planned to completely destroy the Russian 10th Army in a second Tannenberg and then advance through a space empty of enemies to Białystok . The Russian 10th Army was defeated, but it managed to avoid a complete encirclement. The Germans had advanced up to 150 km, driving the last Russian troops from German territory. East Prussia was now more or less secured against a renewed advance of the Russian armed forces by a buffer of occupied Russian territory. However, a complete collapse of the opposing front could not be brought about. General Russki had to give up the already planned advance of the 12th Army to conquer East Prussia, but the offensive capability of the Russian armed forces remained.

Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolajewitsch , the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, reinforced the remnants of the 10th Army, which went back to the Grodno-Olita line, with the newly replenished II , XIII. and XV. Corps . At the same time he ordered the Russian 12th under General Plehwe , which was brought to seven army corps and four cavalry divisions, to advance on Przasnysz. Before the 12th Army could advance across the Narew Front, however, the Germans took the initiative in the adjacent area to the west between the Vistula and the Narew. An army division was set up under General von Gallwitz , which brought together all German units between Thorn and Willenberg . The 41st division of the XX. Army Corps (Scholtz) was assigned to Lomscha and the 37th Division to Myszyniec. Between February 11 and 17, 1915, the right wing of the Gallwitz Army Division pushed the opposite Russian 1st Army under General Smirnow back to Płońsk via the Plock – Drobin line .

The German I. Reserve Corps ( 1st and 36th Reserve Divisions ) was detached from the Rawka Front in mid-February and regrouped to Willenberg in order to proceed against the Narew in the First Battle of Przasnysz on the right, leaning against the Zastrow Corps . North of Lomsha , the 3rd Reserve Division was also involved in heavy fighting from February 21st. Przasnysz was briefly taken by the general von Morgen's troops, but had to be surrendered on February 28 in three days of fighting against three Russian corps. On March 9, the reinforced Germans attacked again in vain in the same section. By March 16, the 36th Reserve Division had to retreat to the line south of Mława - Chorzele , losing 12 artillery pieces from the overwhelming Russian forces . At the end of March 1915, the 2nd Division and the 75th Reserve Division had to be brought in to stabilize the German front .

The Russian 12th Army held its own until the German offensive in the summer of 1915 in the area north of Przasnysz on the Narew Front, but Nikolai Nikolajewitsch had to refrain from further offensives against East Prussia for the time being. General von Sievers subsequently lost his command on April 25th. With the supreme command of the Russian 10th Army, the previous commander of the III. Siberian Corps , entrusted to General Yevgeny Radkevich .

See also

literature

  • John Keegan: The First World War. A European tragedy. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-499-61194-5 .
  • Christian Zentner : The First World War. Data, facts, comments. Moewig, Rastatt 2000, ISBN 3-8118-1652-7 .
  • Stone, Norman: The Eastern Front 1914-1917. Penguin Books Ltd., London 1998, ISBN 0-14-026725-5 .
  • Tucker, Spencer C .: The Great War: 1914-1918. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1998, ISBN 0-253-33372-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reichsarchiv: The World War 1914–1918. Volume VII., Mittler und Sohn, situation map No. 11 and No. 12.
  2. ^ Friedrich von Bernhardi: Deutschlands Heldenkampf, Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1922, p. 193 f.