Siege of Przemyśl
Siege of Przemyśl | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Eastern Front of World War I | |||||||
Przemyśl Fort I in March 1915 | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Austria-Hungary | Russian Empire | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Hermann Kusmanek Svetozar Boroević |
Andrei Selivanov | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
Przemyśl fortress garrison |
3rd Army 11th Army | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
138,000 men: 93,000 soldiers 45,000 impressed levy[2] | 300,000 men | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
137,000 20,000 dead 117,000–120,000 captured (including wounded) 700 artillery pieces[2] | 115,000 total casualties (40,000 casualties were sustained in the first few days of the siege.[3]) |
The siege of Przemyśl
Background
In August 1914, Russian armies moved against both German
50 kilometres (30 mi) of new trenches were dug and 1,000 km (650 mi) of barbed wire were used to make seven new lines of defence around the perimeter of the town. Inside the fortress, a military garrison of 127,000, as well as 18,000 civilians, were surrounded by six Russian divisions. Przemyśl reflected the nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – orders of the day had to be issued in fifteen languages. Austrians, Poles, Jews and Ruthenians (Ukrainians) were together in the besieged town, that was hit constantly with artillery fire, and as the toll of dead and sick and wounded rose, and starvation threatened, so did mutual distrust and ethnic tension.[7]
First siege
On 24 September, General
During the
Second siege
By the end of October, the German and Austro-Hungarian armies were retreating west after their reversals in the
In February 1915, Boroevic led another relief effort towards Przemyśl. By the end of February, all relief efforts having been defeated, Hötzendorf informed
Life in Przemyśl under siege
Diaries and notebooks kept by various people in the town have survived. The diary of Josef Tomann, an Austrian recruited into military service as a junior doctor, reveals the results of the activities of garrison officers: "The hospitals have been recruiting teenage girls as nurses. They get 120 crowns a month and free meals. They are, with very few exceptions, utterly useless. Their main job is to satisfy the lust of the gentlemen officers and, rather shamefully, of a number of doctors, too … New officers are coming in almost daily with cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and soft chancre. The poor girls and women feel so flattered when they get chatted up by one of these pestilent pigs in their spotless uniforms, with their shiny boots and buttons." Other accounts reveal the pervasive presence of starvation and disease, including cholera, and the diary of Helena Jablonska, a middle-aged, quite wealthy Polish woman, reveals class and antisemitic and racial tensions in the town; " The Jewish women in basements rip you off the worst", and on March 18, 1915 – "The Jews are taking their shop signs down in a hurry, so that no one can tell who owns what. … They've all got so rich off the backs of those poor soldiers, and now of course they all want to run away!" When the Imperial Russian Army finally took the city in March, the Tsarist soldiers unleashed a violent pogrom against the Jewish population of the city. Jablonska noted: "The Cossacks waited until the Jews set off to the synagogue for their prayers before setting upon them with whips. There is such lamenting and despair. Some Jews are hiding in cellars, but they'll get to them there too."[11]
Mail communications
Results
The fall of Przemyśl led many to believe that Russia would now launch a major offensive into Hungary. This anticipated offensive never came, but the loss of Przemyśl was a serious blow to Austro-Hungarian morale. A further blow to Austria-Hungary was the fact that Przemyśl was only supposed to be garrisoned by 50,000, yet over 110,000 Austro-Hungarians surrendered with the fortress, a much more significant loss. The Russians held Przemyśl until the summer of 1915 when the Gorlice–Tarnów offensive pushed back the Russian front in Galicia. Przemyśl stayed in Austro-Hungarian hands until October 1918, at which point Eastern Galicia left the Austro-Hungarian Empire and became part of the newly created independent state of Poland. The Austro-Hungarian army never recovered from its losses in the winter of 1914–1915 and the Habsburgs would rely henceforth on German assistance both in their sector of the Eastern Front and in the Balkans.[14]
Meanwhile Austro-Hungarian attempts to relieve the fortress ended catastrophically as the poorly supplied and outnumbered imperial forces attempted offensive after offensive through the Carpathian Mountains. Casualties for January to April 1915, in the Carpathians, were officially reported as 800,000, mostly due to weather and disease rather than combat. Russian casualties were nearly as high, but easier to replace, and balanced out more by the surrender of 117,000 Austro-Hungarian troops at the end of the siege.[15] All told, the siege and the attempts to relieve it cost the Austro-Hungarian army over a million casualties and inflicted on it significant damage from which it would never recover.
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59884-948-6.
- ^ a b "Przemysl leltára" [account of Przemyśl] (in Hungarian). Budapest, Hungary: Huszadik század. April 1915. Retrieved 2 August 2011.
- ^ "Przemyslt teljesen felszabadítottuk" [Przemyśl has been fully liberated] (in Hungarian). Budapest, Hungary: Huszadik század. October 1914. Retrieved 2 August 2011.
- ^ A War in Words, p. 69, Svetlana Palmer & Sarah Wallis, Simon & Schuster 2003 [ISBN missing]
- ^ Watson, Alexander (2020-07-22). "World War I's Stalingrad: The Siege of Przemyśl and Europe's Bloodlands". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. Retrieved 2024-04-03.
- ISBN 978-0-674-98762-3.
- ^ A War in Words, p.70, Svetlana Palmer & Sarah Wallis, Simon & Schuster 2003
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4728-1318-3.
- ^ Rothenburg 1976, p. 185.
- ISBN 978-1-4728-1937-6.
- ^ A War in Words, pp. 87–88
- ISSN 0739-0939.
- New York Times, p. 2, 1914-11-29
- ^ A War in Words, p. 93
- ^ Tucker, Spencer. World War I: A Student Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO Publishing. 2005. p. 349.
References
- Dowling, Timothy C. (2014). Russia at War: From the Mongol Conquest to Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Beyond. Przemyśl, Siege of (September 24, 1914 – March 22, 1915). Vol. 2 volumes. ABC-CLIO. pp. 170, 681–682, 913. ISBN 978-1-59884-948-6.
- Rothenburg, G. (1976). The Army of Francis Joseph. West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-0-911198-41-6.
- Tucker, Spencer (2002) [1997]. The Great War, 1914–1918. Routledge. ISBN 1134817495– via Goggle Books.
Further reading
- Tunstall, Graydon A. (2016). Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemysl in WWI. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253021977.
- Watson, Alexander (2019). The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl. London: Allen Lane.
- Watson, Alexander (2020). The Fortress: The Siege of Przemysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-5416-9732-4.
External links
- Fall of Przemysl (1915) on YouTube
- The Siege of Przemysl – A Sketch from a British War-Correspondent. Wayback capture.