The Ober Ost attack was to commence on 13 July, followed by Mackensen's advance on 15 July. The strategic Russian railway center of Włodzimierz Wołyński was an early priority of Mackensen.[7]:292
Offensive
German cavalry entering Warsaw on August 5, 1915.Poniatowski Bridge in Warsaw after being blown up by the retreating Russian Army in 1915.
During the first two days of battle, Gallwitz's Twelfth Army pushed Alexander Litvinov's First Army back 9 miles (14km) and captured 7,000 prisoners. By 17 July, Gallwitz's Twelfth Army and Friedrich von Scholtz's Eighth Army had pushed the Russian First and Twelfth Armies to the Narew. On 14 July, the Austro-Hungarian First Army, redeployed from the south of Woyrsch Corps to the east of Mackensen, advanced towards Sokal. The First Army was then to form a bridgehead across the Bug, defended by the Russian Eighth Army, which they achieved by 18 July, and commenced to move towards Włodzimierz Wołyński. On 15 July, the Bug Army overran Russian defenses, forcing their retreat. On 16 July, Mackensen's Eleventh Army overran the first line of Russian defenses, captured Krasnostaw, and about 6000 prisoners. By 18 July, they had advanced north 19 miles (31km), and captured 15,000 prisoners. On 17 July, the Woyrsch Corps commenced its attack, and captured Radom.[7]:267,293–296
On 22 July, as the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army advanced towards Lublin, Alexeyev ordered a retreat towards Ivangorod. On 23 July, Ober Ost was able to establish a bridgehead across the Narew at Pułtusk. At this stage of the battle, a swift breakthrough by the Central Powers became doubtful. In the words of Ludendorff, "The Russian Army was certainly forced to move [back], but it escaped. It launched constant determined counterattacks with powerful forces to reorganize and successfully mount prolonged resistance." Max Hoffmann noted, "It seems that the Russians are actually repeating [the events of] 1812 and retreating along the entire front. They are setting fire to hundreds of their own villages, whose inhabitants have been evacuated."[7]:298–301
As the Russian army retreated, the Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Yanushkevich, supported by Grand Duke Nicholas, ordered the army to devastate the border territories and expel the "enemy" nations within.[8][9] The Russian authorities deported 500,000 Jews and 250,000 Germans into the Russian interior.[9] On 11 June,[contradictory] a pogrom began against Germans in Petrograd, with over 500 factories, stores and offices looted, and mob violence unleashed against German residents.[9] The Russian military leadership regarded Muslims, Germans and Poles as traitors and spies, while Jews were considered political unreliables.[8]
On 29 July, Woyrsch established a bridgehead across the Vistula north of Ivangorod, forcing the Russians to abandon the fortress there. On 31 July, Mackensen captured Lublin, and on 1 August, the Bug Army captured Khelme. Alexeyev then ordered Warsaw to be abandoned, and on 5 August, Prince Leopold's Ninth Army marched into the city. On 17 August, the German Tenth Army captured Kovno and the Kaunas Fortress. The Novogeorgievsk Fortress was encircled by the Germans on 10 August, and Hans Hartwig von Beseler's siege guns forced its surrender on 20 August. The Osowiec Fortress was also eventually abandoned by the Russians, followed by a German chlorine gas attack. Kovel was abandoned by the Russians on 21 August, and Stavka abandoned Baranovichi for Mogilev.[7]:303–305,306–318,322–324
Mackensen's Eleventh Army, and Linsingen's Bug Army, continued their northerly advance towards Brest-Litovsk, occupying the citadel on 26 August. Otto von Below's Army of the Niemen during Riga–Schaulen offensive advanced into southern Latvia, while Scholtz's Tenth Army advanced towards Vilna, which was abandoned by the Russians on 17 September.[7]:320–323
Aftermath
Peasants from a destroyed village in front of a shack constructed from debris, environs of Warsaw, 1915
According to Prit Buttar, "...as far as Falkenhayn was concerned, he had achieved all that he could expect to achieve on the Eastern Front. Russia was clearly not going to accept a separate peace, and the complete destruction of the Russian Army had never been his intention. With so much territory gained and so much damage done to the Russians, it was highly likely that there would be no threat from the east for the foreseeable future."[7]:305,322
The tsar assumed command of the military, dismissing Grand Duke Nikolai, and Nikolai Yanushkevich.[7]:324–325
Casualties and losses
During the summer offensive, the troops of the Central Powers inflicted very heavy casualties on the Imperial Russian Army – in 45 days – up to 1,006,000 men. Of course, this was somewhat less than the Russian casualties in the previous Gorlice campaign (1,243,400 men in 75 days),[10] but on average, the casualties per day were higher – 22,300 men against 16,600. Such dynamics was affected, before of all, the fall of the Novogeorgievsk fortress and the capture by the Germans of its numerous garrison. The armies of the Central Powers suffered less casualties in July–August than in May–June (358,600 men against 535,300), but the daily average casualties also increased (from 7,000 to almost 8,000 men). At the same time, if in the Gorlice campaign the most severe casualties of the Central Powers were the casualties of the Austro-Hungarian troops (2.5 times more than the German ones), then in the general offensive the German troops already lost 2 times more men than their ally. Such dynamics allows us to conclude that the casualties of the armies of the Dual Monarchy in the Gorlice campaign affected their subsequent activity – namely, on the front south of the Bug. Also for the German Great General Staff, high casualties became one of the factors for refusing further offensive actions against the Russian Empire and switching to defense.[11]
For the Russian side, the scale of the casualties suffered greatly affected the further planning of military operations, forcing them to abandon not only the transition to the offensive, but also the protracted battle in their positions. Particularly painful was the increase in the number of prisoners, despite the fact that the enemy constantly announced the size of the trophies. In total, the Central Powers announced the capture from mid-July to September 1 of 511,679 prisoners (of which 18 were generals and 2,923 officers), 1,076 machine guns and 3,205 guns (of which 2,941 were in fortresses).[12] The number of prisoners declared to the International Committee of the Red Cross exceeds the number of missing, probably due to the prisoners taken in the last days of August, when the Austro-Hungarian troops began to attack Volhynia and the boom beyond Grodno and Vilna, as well as a result of errors in calculations and underestimation of the missing among the rear units and services of Kovno, Ivangorod, Łomża and Osowiec.
However, in this case, there is a tendency when almost all the missing are in captivity. The increase in the number of Russian prisoners, even in comparison with the Gorlice campaign, was primarily due to the surrender of the Novogeorgievsk garrison (almost 90,000 men). Despite the threats of repressive measures against both the so-called “voluntarily surrendered” and the families of prisoners (deprivation of government rations), the distribution of “stories” by order of the alleged mass destruction of those captured by the enemy, the proportion of missing remained large and outnumbered the number of wounded. The Chief of the staff of the Southwestern Front (whose troops in July–August suffered casualties as prisoners to a much lesser extent), General of Artillery N. Ivanov, on August 10, ordered all commanding persons to conduct thorough investigations of "such shameful phenomena for the Russian warrior" when " a very large, unprecedented in the Russian army, the number of military ranks missing during marches and battles, a significant and even most of which either disperse, making escapes, or surrender to the enemy". Ivanov emphasized: “Senior commanders must show special care and forethought in preventing these phenomena that shame our army”.[13]
Along with objective factors - the severity of the battles, when shelters and trenches were destroyed during prolonged shelling, burying soldiers under them, night crossings in a state of extreme fatigue, continuous retreat – subjective factors also influenced the increase in the number of missing persons, namely the weakness of officers and non-commissioned officers, poor training of replenishment. A glaring fact of the fall in the level of training of young soldiers was the incident with the 12th company of the 164th reserve battalion, sent on July 17, 1915, to replenish the 61st Infantry Division. On July 20, on the 4th day of the march, the company fled; out of 250 men, only six came to their destination.[14]
The number of wounded in the fingers Russians continued to grow, which caused repeated criticism from the commanders, threats of reprisals and even condemnation by courts-martial to death of those convicted of self-mutilation. After the beginning of the July fighting, the chief of staff of the 2nd Siberian Army Corps ordered not to evacuate the wounded in the fingers and hands, but to bring them to justice; regimental commanders were required to submit monthly reports on the number of lower ranks with such wounds.[14]
During the repulse of the summer offensive of the Central Powers, Russian troops captured 281 officers and 20,353 soldiers, as well as 25 machine guns. Given this number, it can be assumed that on the Central Powers's side the death toll could rise to 101,064 men (71,523 on the German side and 29,541 on the Austro-Hungarian side), which exceeds the number of deaths on the Russian side. Such serious damage clearly affected the position of the Chief of the German Great General Staff, E. von Falkenhayn, who insisted on the immediate curtailment of the offensive and the transition to defense in the achieved advantageous positions. But in general, the casualties of the Imperial Russian Army turned out to be almost three times higher than that of the Central Powers, mainly due to the prisoners (a ratio of more than 20:1).[4]
The 1st Army was a field army-level command in the ground forces of Austria-Hungary during World War I. The army fought in Galicia and Russian Poland in 1914–15 before being briefly dissolved in the summer of 1916. Shortly afterwards, it was reformed and sent to fight in the Romanian Campaign for the next two years. The 1st Army was demobilized in April 1918 due to its heavy losses, following Romania's surrender.
The Battle of the Vistula River, also known as the Battle of Warsaw and Ivangorod, was a major Russian victory against the German Empire and Austria-Hungary on the Eastern Front during the First World War.
The First Battle of the Masurian Lakes was a German offensive in the Eastern Front 2–16 September 1914, during the Russian invasion of East Prussia. It took place only days after the Battle of Tannenberg where the German Eighth Army encircled and destroyed the Russian Second Army. Using the rapid movements aided by the East Prussian railway network, the Eighth Army reformed in front of the spread-out Russian First Army and pushed them back across their entire front, eventually ejecting it from Germany. Further progress was hampered by the arrival of the Russian Tenth Army on the Germans' right flank.
The Gorlice–Tarnów offensive during World War I was initially conceived as a minor German offensive to relieve Russian pressure on the Austro-Hungarians to their south on the Eastern Front, but resulted in the Central Powers' chief offensive effort of 1915, causing the total collapse of the Russian lines and their retreat far into Russia. The continued series of actions lasted the majority of the campaigning season for 1915, starting in early May and only ending due to bad weather in October.
The Battle of Limanowa-Łapanów took place from 1 December to 13 December 1914, between the Austro-Hungarian Army and the Russian Army near the town of Limanowa.
The Rovno offensive — the operation of the Austro-Hungarian Northern armies against the armies of the Russian Southwestern Front — the so-called campaign on Rovno, or Lutsk-Rovno offensive operation. The purpose of the offensive was the liberation of Eastern Galicia, but by the end of the operation, a small part of Eastern Galicia was still held by the Russian Imperial Army.
Paul Freiherr Puhallo von Brlog was a general of Austria-Hungary. During World War I, he commanded the Austro-Hungarian Army's 3rd and 1st Armies.
The siege of Novogeorgievsk was a battle of World War I fought after the Germans broke the Russian defenses in Paul von Hindenburg's Bug-Narew Offensive. In terms of the ratio of casualties and trophies, the German victory at Novogeorgievsk surpassed the victory at Tannenberg in 1914. It is also one of the most brilliant victories in world military history in capturing a heavily fortified fortress defended by superior enemy forces. Numerous Russian sources call the fall of Novogeorgievsk the most shameful page in the history of the Russian Imperial army.
The Gorlice breakthrough occurred in the May 1–10, 1915 as part of the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive during World War I. The German 11th Army led by General August von Mackensen, with the support on the flanks by the 3rd and 4th Austro-Hungarian Armies, defeated the 3rd Russian Army. For the first time in the history of the First World War a heavily fortified and long-term defensive position was broken through during the Gorliсе offensive.
The 3rd Army was a field army-level command within the ground forces of Austria-Hungary during World War I. It was primarily active on the Eastern Front against the Russian Empire and in the Balkans against Serbia and Montenegro. Later on, the 3rd Army took part in some fighting on the Italian Front before returning to the eastern theater by 1917 to repulse the Kerensky Offensive. Its remaining units were merged with the 7th Army in January 1918.
The Carpathian Front, sometimes referred to as the Carpathian Winter War of 1915 was one of the largest military operations on the Eastern Front in terms of scale, duration, the number of troops involved in it and the losses of the parties.
The Bug-Narew Offensive from July 13 to August 27, 1915 was a major German victory during World War I on the Eastern Front. The Imperial German Army broke through 4 heavily fortified positions, inflicted defeats on superior enemy forces and pushed the Russian Army 300 km to the east, capturing 215,000 prisoners. But the German army also suffered relatively heavy casualties, about 30,000 killed and missing.
The World War I German Narew offensive followed after the minor success in the Second battle of Przasnysz. In stubborn battles, the Imperial German army forced the numerically superior forces of the Russian Army to retreat, but could not inflict a decisive defeat on them.
The Vistula–Bug offensive from July 13 to August 28, 1915, was a major Central Powers offensive with the decisive role of the German Imperial Army during World War I on the Eastern Front to defeat the forces of the Russian army in South Poland and Galicia.
The Dniester front a series of battles on the eastern front between Russia and the central powers summer offensive.
The Riga–Schaulen offensive was a major Imperial German Army's offensive, launched by the Army of the Niemen of Paul von Hindenburg's group of armies to divert Russian forces from the direction of the main German blow of the summer offensive on Narew. However, it gradually changed into an offensive of two German armies to capture the Kovno fortress and reach the Western Dvina. In the course of a successful offensive, the German army defeated the superior forces of the Russian army and reached the approaches to the important city of Riga.
The Battle of Łomża was a series of large-scale battles between the Imperial German and Imperial Russian armies in the spring of 1915 on the territory of modern Poland. The Russians were able to repulse the Second German offensive on Przasnysz, but the Imperial German army also repulsed several major offensives of the Russian army.
The Second battle of Przasnysz took place at the beginning of a major Bug-Narew Offensive of the Imperial German army on the German Eastern front. In the course of a stubborn battle, German troops under the command of Max von Gallwitz broke into the heavily fortified defenses of the outnumbered Russian army and took the city of Przasnysz.
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First Riga offensive was a military operation of the German Imperial Army with to divert Russian forces from the direction of the main blow of the German summer offensive on Narew River. The Germans broke through the heavily fortified defenses of the Russian army and defeated the vastly superior enemy forces. However, no decisive success was achieved, and at the beginning of August the Russians launched a counteroffensive.
References
1 2 С.Г. Нелипович, Русский фронт Первой мировой войны. Потери сторон 1915, 2022, pp. 509–519
↑ Sanitaetsbericht ueber das Deutsche Heer, bd. III, Berlin 1934, pp. 43–45
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Austria-Hungary 
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