Battle of Warsaw

The Battle of Warsaw, fought from 13 to 25 August 1920, decided the Polish–Soviet War. The Red Army’s Western Front under Mikhail Tukhachevsky, which since July had been advancing west through Belarus and Podlasie, reached the gates of Warsaw and the lower Vistula in August. The Poles stopped it on the fortifications of the Warsaw bridgehead and on the Wkra, and on 16 August a strike group led by the Commander-in-Chief, Józef Piłsudski, attacked its exposed left flank from the Wieprz. Within a week the Soviet armies that were to carry the revolution to the Vistula and further west were retreating in disarray to the Niemen, leaving tens of thousands of prisoners behind.

Name and dates

In Polish historiography the name “Battle of Warsaw” has become established. Equally well known is the phrase “Miracle on the Vistula”. According to the widespread version it was coined by the journalist Stanisław Stroński (PL), in reference to the “miracle of the Marne”, as the halting of the Germans before Paris in September 1914 had been called. It was readily used by Piłsudski’s opponents, who denied him the credit for the victory, and its association with the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August gave it a religious overtone. Some historians, such as Lech Wyszczelski, prefer to speak of the battle on the approaches to Warsaw, because the fighting took place on a front several hundred kilometres long and the city itself was not shelled. The battle should not be confused with the Battle of Warsaw and Dęblin of October 1914.

This page uses the dates 13–25 August given by most Polish and Russian accounts: from the first Soviet attack on the bridgehead to the day on which Polish troops reached the East Prussian border. The 1996 edition of the operational documents uses wider dates, 13–28 August.

Background

Tukhachevsky’s offensive, launched on 4 July, broke the Polish front in Belarus. On 14 July the Red Army took Vilna, on 19 July Grodno and on 1 August Brest-Litovsk. In the south the First Cavalry Army (PL) of Semyon Budyonny (PL), part of the South-Western Front, whose commissar was Joseph Stalin, was pushing towards Lviv. On 30 July the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee was set up in Białystok, with Felix Dzerzhinsky among its members. It was to take power in Poland once Warsaw had fallen.

In Warsaw the Council of National Defence had been at work since July, and on 24 July a coalition government under Wincenty Witos was formed. Volunteers, organised by General Józef Haller, flowed into the army. On 22 July General Tadeusz Rozwadowski became Chief of the General Staff. At the end of July an Allied mission arrived in Warsaw, including General Maxime Weygand and the British diplomat Edgar Vincent D’Abernon. The Briton did not believe the defence would succeed. On 12 August a consignment of Hungarian rifle ammunition reached Skierniewice; it was badly needed, because supplies from the West were being blocked by Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Plan

The concept of the battle was worked out on the night of 5–6 August in the Belweder. Part of the forces was to stop the Red Army before Warsaw, while a manoeuvre army was to assemble on the Wieprz and strike the enemy’s flank and rear. Of the two concentration areas proposed by Rozwadowski, around Garwolin and on the Wieprz, Piłsudski chose the more distant one on the Wieprz, which allowed a deeper manoeuvre. Weygand advised a closer and more cautious one. The regrouping order, No. 8358/III, signed by Rozwadowski, was issued on 6 August, and on the night of 8–9 August Rozwadowski supplemented it with order No. 10,000, which also gave the 5th Army offensive tasks.

The troops were divided into three fronts. General Haller’s Northern Front comprised the 5th Army of General Władysław Sikorski on the Wkra, the 1st Army of General Franciszek Latinik in the Warsaw bridgehead and the 2nd Army of General Bolesław Roja on the Vistula from Karczew to Dęblin. General Edward Rydz-Śmigły’s Central Front consisted of the 4th and 3rd Armies, from which the strike group was formed: three divisions of the 4th Army and two Legion divisions with a cavalry brigade. The Southern Front covered Eastern Galicia, together with Petliura’s Ukrainian troops.

The strength of the two sides in the battle itself is reckoned to be similar: according to figures cited in Polish and Russian literature, about 113,000–123,000 men on the Polish side and about 104,000–114,000 on the Soviet side. Tukhachevsky sent his main forces, the 4th and 15th Armies and the 3rd Cavalry Corps, north of Warsaw towards the lower Vistula, to outflank the capital from the west. The 3rd and 16th Armies were to advance on Modlin and on Warsaw, while the left flank was covered only by the weak Mozyr Group. The Red Army high command ordered the First Cavalry Army and the 12th Army to be transferred to the Warsaw axis, but these orders were not carried out in time. Budyonny’s cavalry was still fighting near Lviv.

The fight for the bridgehead

On 12 August Piłsudski left Warsaw for his headquarters at Puławy. Before leaving he handed Prime Minister Witos his resignation as Chief of State and Commander-in-Chief. Witos did not accept it.

On 13 August two Soviet divisions attacked the bridgehead from the north-east, broke through the defences of the exhausted 11th Infantry Division and took Radzymin (PL). That day fighting also began at Ossów (PL), where on 14 August the volunteers’ chaplain, Father Ignacy Skorupka (PL), was killed. On 14 August the Red Army came within about 13 kilometres of the city. The defence nevertheless held. On 15 August a counter-attack by General Lucjan Żeligowski’s 10th Division and the 1st Lithuanian-Belarusian Division recaptured Radzymin, which changed hands several times in those days. By 16 August the bridgehead was secure.

On the Wkra

When Radzymin fell, Haller brought forward the 5th Army’s attack. Sikorski struck from the Wkra on the evening of 14 August to tie down the Soviet forces north of Warsaw. On 15 August the 203rd Uhlan Regiment from Kalisz took Ciechanów and with it the headquarters of the Soviet 4th Army and one of its two radio stations. Polish radio intelligence, which thanks to Lieutenant Jan Kowalewski and his colleagues was reading Soviet signals, knew that the second station was on the move. For two days the Warsaw radio station therefore jammed the 4th Army’s frequency, broadcasting, among other things, passages from the Bible. Tukhachevsky’s orders for the 4th Army to turn back onto Sikorski’s rear never arrived. That army kept marching on Włocławek and Płock and dropped out of the battle. On 16 August Sikorski took Nasielsk.

Counter-offensive and pursuit

On the morning of 16 August the strike group set off from the Wieprz. Five divisions and a cavalry brigade routed the Mozyr Group near Kock and Cyców, advanced several dozen kilometres on the first day and took Garwolin and Włodawa. On 17 August Polish units reached the line Biała Podlaska–Siedlce–Mińsk Mazowiecki and linked up with the defenders of the bridgehead. The 16th Army, disengaging from the fighting before Warsaw, suddenly found the Poles in its rear. On 18 August Piłsudski issued orders in Warsaw for a pursuit that was to pin Tukhachevsky’s armies against the East Prussian border.

The pursuit did not close the whole encirclement, because some of the tired Polish troops failed to cut the roads to the east in time. The 3rd and 15th Armies withdrew with heavy losses. The fate of the Soviet right wing was worst. The 5th Army, advancing on Mława, cut off the 4th Army and the 3rd Cavalry Corps, which, without communications with their command, were still attacking towards Włocławek. Around 24 August these units crossed the border into East Prussia, where the Germans disarmed and interned them. On 22–24 August the Poles recovered Łomża and Białystok, and on 25 August they reached the Prussian border. Tukhachevsky was gathering the remnants of his front on the Niemen.

Casualties

The exact losses are not known. The most frequently cited estimates, repeated in Polish and Russian literature, put Polish losses at about 4,500 killed, 22,000 wounded and 10,000 missing. On the Soviet side they amount to about 25,000 killed and seriously wounded, about 60,000 prisoners and about 45,000 soldiers interned in East Prussia. According to the same estimates the Red Army also lost over 230 guns and about a thousand machine guns.

Significance

The defeat at Warsaw put an end to the plan to carry the revolution westwards through Poland. Vladimir Lenin called it an “enormous defeat”, and D’Abernon counted it among the eighteen decisive battles of world history. The war, however, was not over. Tukhachevsky rebuilt his armies on the Niemen, and in Eastern Galicia Budyonny’s cavalry was still fighting.

The dispute over the credit began at once. On the Soviet side the blame was laid on the command of the South-Western Front and on Stalin, who had delayed handing the First Cavalry Army over to Tukhachevsky, while other commanders blamed Tukhachevsky himself. In Poland Piłsudski’s opponents attributed the victory to Rozwadowski, to Weygand or to Providence. All the operational orders of those days were signed by Rozwadowski; the decision on the deep strike from the Wieprz was taken and carried out by Piłsudski. As early as 21 August Weygand told a French journalist that the victory, the plan and the army were Polish. For the Second Polish Republic the Battle of Warsaw became, alongside the Defence of Lviv, one of its founding myths.