Battle of Tarnopol

The Battle of Tarnopol was one of the few Russian successes of the summer of 1915. At the end of August Austria-Hungary launched its own offensive in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, intended to take the Russian fortresses of Lutsk, Dubno and Rovno and finally to break the Russian South-Western Front. In Eastern Galicia, however, the Russians fell back only as far as the Seret river and defended bridgeheads on its western bank, the largest of which covered Tarnopol. From these bridgeheads, on 6 and 7 September 1915, the Russian Eleventh Army of General Dmitry Shcherbachev and the right wing of General Platon Lechitsky’s Ninth Army struck the German-Austrian South Army and the left wing of the Austro-Hungarian Seventh Army. For ten days fighting raged between the Seret and the Strypa. The Russians took thousands of prisoners, pushed the enemy back behind the Strypa and forced the Austro-Hungarian command to throw into Galicia divisions intended for the attack on Serbia. On 16 September, when the attack had petered out, they withdrew to their old positions on the Seret.

Name and dates

On this page we use the dates 7–16 September 1915, following the British chronology of the war on which our timeline is based. They agree with the Russian account: by the Julian calendar the ten-day battle lasted from 25 August to 3 September. The Austrian official history divides the fighting differently. It counts the “Battle on the Seret” from 6 to 12 September, because the first Russian attack from Trembowla came on the afternoon of 6 September, and describes the fighting from 12 to 17 September as the continuation of the Russian offensive in Eastern Galicia. The commander of the Russian South-Western Front gave the order to return to the Seret on 16 September, and the troops of the Central Powers noticed the withdrawal on the morning of 17 September.

In German and Austrian literature the battle is called the “Battle on the Seret” or the “Battle of Tarnopol”. The town itself remained in Russian hands throughout the fighting, as it had since the first weeks of the war.

Background

After the fall of Brest-Litovsk at the end of August 1915 Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, chief of the general staff of the Austro-Hungarian army, wanted to deal the Russians a blow without German participation. The attack, known in the literature as the Black-Yellow Offensive (after the colours of the Habsburg monarchy), began on 26 and 27 August. In the north the armies of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand were to outflank General Aleksei Brusilov’s Russian Eighth Army from the direction of Lutsk. In the south the Austro-Hungarian Second Army of General Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli, the South Army of the German General Felix von Bothmer and the Seventh Army of General Karl Pflanzer-Baltin attacked the positions the Russians had held since the beginning of July, after the Battle of the Gniła Lipa. On 31 August the Austrians took Lutsk. In Eastern Galicia they broke the Russian defence on the Złota Lipa and at Złoczów, and on 2 September the South Army crossed the Strypa and pushed the Russian rearguards back into the Seret valley.

The Seret was the last of the rivers of Podolia on which the Russians could make a stand before the frontier. The commander of the South-Western Front, General Nikolai Ivanov, decided to hold its line. The Eleventh Army and the northern wing of the Ninth Army occupied fortified bridgeheads on the western bank, at Załośce, Tarnopol, Mikulińce, Strusów, Trembowla, Budzanów and Czortków. The Seventh Army’s attacks of 3–5 September brought it only small gains at Budzanów and Bilcze, at heavy cost. Ivanov did not feel strong enough for a great counter-offensive. The most dangerous situation was in Volhynia, where the Austrians had broken through the Eighth Army at Podkamień and Radziwiłłów and were approaching Dubno. Ivanov therefore withdrew the XXX Corps from the Seret front and sent it by rail to Brusilov, and from the remaining forces of the Eleventh and Ninth Armies he formed strike groups. Short sorties from the bridgeheads were to draw the enemy away from the Eighth Army.

At the same time Bothmer was preparing an attack of his own. The German 3rd Guards Infantry Division and the 48th Reserve Division from General Marschall’s corps were to break the Seret front south of Tarnopol on 7 September. The preparations dragged on, because the artillery got stuck on roads softened by rain. The weakest sector of the South Army was held by General Hofmann’s Austro-Hungarian corps, made up largely of units of the Landsturm (the levy). According to the Austrian official history, its 55th Infantry Division and 131st Infantry Brigade had in total 14 weak battalions in front of Mikulińce, Strusów and Trembowla, on a front about 30 kilometres long.

Course of the battle

The breakthrough at Trembowla, 6–7 September. On the afternoon of 6 September units of the Russian XI Corps, preceded by cavalry, came out of the bridgeheads at Trembowla and broke into the shallow trenches of the 55th Infantry Division. The Austrian reserves failed to throw them out. During the night Russians of the XXII Corps passed through the gap and at dawn on 7 September fell on the flank and rear of Colonel Bolzano’s brigade, which was due to attack together with the Germans within a few hours. The Austro-Hungarian Infantry Regiments No. 81 and No. 88 were routed and fled beyond Nastasów, and the Russians captured eight German guns placed just behind the front line. Bothmer was saved from a widening of the breach by two regiments of the German Guard, which struck the Russians from the north and recovered some of the guns. The Germans and Austrians beat off the attack of the XVIII Corps from the Tarnopol bridgehead. Further south things went worse. The 55th Division, broken in several places, fell back in the afternoon to the hills above the Strypa near Burkanów, the 131st Brigade was cut off from Hofmann’s corps, and in the evening the 36th Infantry Division of the Seventh Army was pushed back from the Seret at Budzanów. On the same day General Brudermann’s Austro-Hungarian cavalry did take more than 3,700 prisoners on the lower Seret, but a Russian counter-attack forced it back to its starting positions in the evening.

The crisis of the South Army, 8–12 September. On 8 September Bothmer counter-attacked at Nastasów, but managed only to push the Russians back a little towards the Seret. Böhm-Ermolli sent to his aid General Csicserics’s group, which was to strike through Załośce at Zbaraż, in the rear of the Russians fighting at Tarnopol. In rain and fog the attack began only on 9 September and stalled in front of the Russian VI Corps. On the same day the Russian XI Corps broke the left wing of the Seventh Army at Kossów. The Austro-Hungarian XIII Corps, which had lost 17,000 men, more than half its strength, since crossing the Złota Lipa, withdrew during the night to the bridgehead at Buczacz. On 10 September Shcherbachev struck Marschall’s corps. At Nastasów the Guard repulsed waves of Finnish riflemen of the XXII Corps, but the XVIII Corps broke into the positions of the Austro-Hungarian 19th Infantry Division at Dołżanka, and on 11 September went beyond the village. At the same time the Ninth Army routed a Landsturm brigade at Szypowce and pushed General Henriquez’s corps back into the bridgehead of Zaleszczyki.

The defeats on the Seret took Conrad by surprise. On 6 September at Pless he had signed a military convention with Bulgaria, in which Austria-Hungary undertook to field six divisions against Serbia. Now, on 10 September, he had to send the VI Corps, earmarked for that expedition, to Eastern Galicia. Further divisions from Volhynia and from the Kingdom of Poland followed it. The chief of the German general staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, agreed to this, but in a telegram to Conrad wrote bitterly of the “political and military damage” already done and of the impression it would make on the Russian army and in Romania. On 11 September Böhm-Ermolli halted the attack on Zbaraż and on the line of the Ikva and sent General Czibulka’s corps to help Bothmer. A hastily assembled German regiment and a Hungarian Honvéd regiment drove the Russians out of Dołżanka, but on 12 September Bothmer judged that Marschall’s corps could be crushed from two sides, and in the evening pulled it back westwards to the hills above Jezierna.

The general Russian attack, 13–15 September. Encouraged by these successes, Ivanov ordered the Eleventh Army and the right wing of the Ninth Army to attack along the whole front. On 12 and 13 September the Russian XXXIII Corps attacked the Zaleszczyki bridgehead. On the morning of 13 September, in fog, the Russians also broke the Austro-Hungarian V Corps at Rydoml, in the Second Army’s sector between the Ikva and the Horyn, and forced it to withdraw towards Łopuszno. On 14 September the Russian XI Corps broke through the lines of the 55th Division at Burkanów and crossed to the western bank of the Strypa. Panic broke out in the division, and Hofmann’s corps withdrew behind the river. That evening Bothmer reported that the 75th Honvéd Brigade had only 400 rifles left, and that from the 19th Division, made up mostly of Czechs, many soldiers and reserve officers had given themselves up to the Russians. The Austro-Hungarian command even considered a retreat all the way to the Złota Lipa. Falkenhayn, who arrived at headquarters in Teschen on 14 September, advised pulling the whole Austro-Hungarian army back to a shorter line. Conrad refused, because so large a retreat would have given the Russians back all their gains and would have had a bad effect on Romania’s attitude, and decided to defend the Strypa and the Ikva.

The Russians did not exploit the breakthrough at Burkanów. Still on 14 September the Czech Infantry Regiment No. 88 from Bolzano’s brigade stopped them on the western bank of the Strypa. On 15 September General Tabajdi’s group from the Seventh Army attacked from Buczacz towards Dobropole, and the 32nd Infantry Division and the 38th Honvéd Division from Czibulka’s group pushed the Russian XVIII Corps back along the Seret and took more than a thousand prisoners. The Russian XXII Corps once more attacked the Guard without success along the railway from Tarnopol to Brzeżany. On the night of 15–16 September the Russians also broke onto a hill near Gontowa in the Second Army’s sector, but were driven off it in the morning.

The end of the battle, 16 September. On 16 September the fighting turned into an artillery duel. The exhausted Russian infantry stayed in its trenches, while the Central Powers brought further divisions and thousands of replacements into Galicia. That day Ivanov judged that the aim of the short offensive had been achieved, as the Eighth Army in Volhynia had gained a breathing space, and ordered the troops attacking towards the Strypa to return to their old positions on the Seret. On the morning of 17 September Bothmer and Pflanzer-Baltin sent pursuit detachments after them, and Hofmann’s corps again occupied the bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Strypa.

Losses

There are no complete figures for the losses. According to the Austrian official history, the 19th Infantry Division lost more than 6,500 men in the fighting at Dołżanka, Henriquez’s corps more than 7,000 since 1 September, and the Second Army about 45,000 since 27 August, including the fighting in Volhynia. In mid-September its divisions numbered about 5,000 rifles each. Russian sources state that as early as 7 September more than 8,000 prisoners and over a dozen guns were taken at Tarnopol and Trembowla. The Russian historian Neznamov, whom the Austrian history cites, estimated that by mid-September the Eleventh and Ninth Armies had taken about 36,000 prisoners, 34 guns and 126 machine guns. Russian losses in killed and wounded were not compiled.

Significance

The Battle of Tarnopol halted the Austro-Hungarian offensive in Eastern Galicia. Conrad had hoped that after the victories in Volhynia and on the Złota Lipa he would push the Russians beyond the frontier of Galicia and, on his own, without German help, end the campaign with a victory for the monarchy. Instead his troops once again had to be rescued by German divisions, and he himself had to bring into Galicia units intended for use against Serbia. On the Seret and the Strypa the front came to a standstill for many months. Tarnopol, from which the Russians had launched their attack, remained in their hands until the summer of 1917.

For Russia it was the first clear success in many months. It came just after Nicholas II had assumed supreme command on 5 September, which is why Russian propaganda was keen to link it with the person of the Tsar. The battle did not, however, change the situation at the front. A few days later Brusilov began his own counter-attack in Volhynia and retook Lutsk on 23 September, but, threatened from the north by General Linsingen’s German divisions, gave it up again after a few days. Until the end of 1915 the front in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia froze in the trenches.