End of the Battle of Dvinsk

On 1 November 1915 the British chronology of the war records the end of the battle of Dvinsk. The German Army of the Niemen, which had moved on the town on 9 September, had spent almost two months pushing the Russians back from its approaches, but did not take Dvinsk itself. The same date ends the battle in the German official list of battles for some of the divisions, and from November the list records only positional fighting at Dvinsk. The date is, however, a convention. Russian accounts end the fighting on the Dvinsk axis on 3 November, that is 21 October by the Julian calendar. According to them, the Germans were still driving the Russians out of one of the isthmuses between the lakes on 2–3 November, and French communiqués of the first days of November mentioned violent fighting in the Dvinsk area.

An attack that petered out

The Germans won their last major success on 23 October, when after a bombardment lasting many hours they took the ruined town of Illukst on the Dvina. Further attacks in the last days of October brought no comparable gains, and the Russians answered with counter-attacks. General Erich Ludendorff, chief of staff of the German Eastern Front command, recalled after the war that the Army of the Niemen still hoped to take the bridgehead, but communications with the rear were so poor that a further advance was out of the question. The operation was therefore broken off at his wish.

The decision fitted the wider picture. At the beginning of October the Battle of Vilna had died down, and German supreme headquarters was moving divisions to the west, where the offensives in Champagne and at Loos were under way, and to the Balkans for the attack on Serbia. The Eastern Front command of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg moved to Kovno in October and turned to organising the conquered country and building positions for the winter.

The front on the Dvina

Once the fighting had died down, the front line in the north ran from the Gulf of Riga along the Dvina as far as Dvinsk, and then south through the belt of lakes towards Naroch and Smorgon. The Russians, however, held three bridgeheads on the left bank of the river, which was in German hands: before Riga at Ikšķile, German Uexküll, at Jakobstadt and before Dvinsk itself. From them they could in future strike at the other bank, and the Germans had to keep strong forces facing them.

Dvinsk, an important railway junction on the line from Warsaw to Petrograd, found itself just behind the front line. In October it was bombed by German airships. Captain Ernst Lehmann, an airship commander on this front, recalled that LZ 85 alone dropped some 12 tonnes of bombs that month on the railways and bridges around Dvinsk, Riga and Minsk. Many of the inhabitants left for the interior of Russia, and the government offices and factory equipment were evacuated with them.

Plehve and the new trench warfare

Russian and Latvian accounts credit the defence of Dvinsk above all to the commander of the Fifth Army, General Pavel Plehve. The fighting among the lakes and marshes outside the town already resembled the trench warfare of the Western Front. In October Plehve ordered special detachments of “bombometchiki” to be formed in every company of his army, armed with hand grenades, axes, spades and wire-cutters. Russian accounts regard them as among the first assault units in the Russian army. In December Plehve took command of the whole Northern Front from the ailing General Ruzsky.

The Battle of Dvinsk closed the Russian army’s Great Retreat of 1915 in the north. The front on the Dvina stood without major changes throughout 1916. The Germans took Riga only in September 1917, and Dvinsk in February 1918, when the Russian army was already disintegrating.