The Austrians retake Zaleszczyki

The British chronology of the war states that on 30 July 1917 Austro-German troops recovered Zaleszczyki, a small town in a loop of the Dniester, on the border of Galicia and Bukovina. According to the Austrian official history, the Zaleszczyki bridgehead had been taken a day earlier, on 29 July (16 July in the Julian calendar), in an attack from the north, by the Hungarian 38th Honvéd Infantry Division (PL) of Major-General Molnár. On 30 July the fighting moved to the other bank of the river, where German divisions were already advancing between Zaleszczyki and Zastawna.

The Russians had held Zaleszczyki since June 1916, when, after the defeat at the village of Okna, the Austrians had abandoned the local bridgehead without a fight. A year later the town was once again on the front line. After the breakthrough at Złoczów and the fall of Tarnopol and Stanisławów, the Russian armies were falling back towards the frontier. The new commander of the South-Western Front, General Lavr Kornilov, ordered the Eighth Army to defend itself on the Dniester as far as Zaleszczyki, and south of the river on a line through Kisielów towards Śniatyn. Beyond the Dniester there were still three Russian corps which had to manage to withdraw through Bukovina.

On the evening of 28 July the 38th Honvéd Division, which was advancing on the left flank of the German XXVII Reserve Corps as part of the South Army, met resistance north of Zaleszczyki. Prisoners stated that the Russians intended to move a whole corps across to the northern bank here. The commander of the South Army, General Felix von Bothmer, therefore ordered the bridgehead to be taken on the morning of 29 July. That same day the Hungarians seized it. During the night of 29/30 July, under pressure from the German divisions of General Karl Litzmann’s group, the Russians also abandoned their positions between the Dniester and the Prut.

The capture of Zaleszczyki came after the main counter-offensive in Eastern Galicia had ended, during the fighting for the Zbruch line and the pursuit in Bukovina. In these days the Russians were putting up ever stronger resistance, and their cavalry was covering the retreat between the Zbruch and the Dniester. Even so they continued to fall back: on 31 July Litzmann’s group took Zastawna, and on 3 August the Austrians entered Czernowitz. Zaleszczyki remained on the side of the Central Powers until the end of the war, and in reborn Poland it became a border resort on the Dniester.