Battle of Warsaw ends

The British chronology of the war records the end of the Battle of Warsaw under the date of 19 October 1914. In those days the German units which had stood in the approaches to the city for a week began to withdraw west and south-west. Warsaw escaped German occupation, although the fighting in the Kingdom of Poland continued for several more weeks.

At the gates of the city

A few days earlier the situation had looked quite different. The northern wing of the German Ninth Army, the group of General August von Mackensen, had turned on Warsaw and by about 12 October stood some ten to twenty kilometres from the city. The Russians, however, were bringing more and more corps into Warsaw by rail, including Siberian ones. The Second Army of General Sergei Scheidemann attacked frontally out of the city, while the Fifth Army of General Pavel Plehve was crossing the Vistula to strike the German flank. On 15 October the Russians pushed back Mackensen’s left wing near Błonie and Grodzisk, and their cavalry began to threaten his rear in the area of Sochaczew.

The order to retreat

Against Mackensen’s few divisions the Russians now had a manifold superiority. The commander of the Ninth Army, Paul von Hindenburg, and his chief of staff, Erich Ludendorff, concluded that staying any longer before Warsaw risked encirclement, and around 17 October they decided to pull their troops back to a new line. Sources differ on the day the retreat began. Some give 18 October, others 19 or 20 October. According to the Austrian account of the campaign published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1922, the Ninth Army held its positions until 19 October and then fell back to the line Łowicz – Skierniewice – Rawa – Nowe Miasto – Radom. Before that, German cavalry had scattered a Russian cavalry corps near Sochaczew, which allowed the army to break contact with the enemy.

The retreating Germans blew up bridges, tracks and railway stations behind them to hamper the Russian pursuit. In the last days of the German presence before the city Warsaw also suffered the most tragic of its first air raids. On 19 October bombs fell on several streets in the city centre and on Praga. According to the Polish Wikipedia, 18 people were killed and 38 wounded.

The battle went on

For the Russians the German withdrawal from Warsaw was a great success, but it did not end the campaign. On the new line the Ninth Army still put up resistance, and Hindenburg asked the Austrians to take over the sector at Ivangorod, that is Dęblin. In the following days the Russians attacked along the whole front, from Łowicz to the Vistula. Only on 27 October, after the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian First Army at Ivangorod, did the Central Powers break off the fighting and begin a general retreat. That is why Polish studies treat the fighting at Warsaw and Dęblin as a single operation, which ended at the beginning of November, when the pursuing Russian armies halted far to the west of the Kingdom.