End of the Battle of the Bzura

The British chronology of the war records under 17 December 1914 the end of the battle of Łowicz and Sanniki, which in Poland is usually called the Battle of the Bzura. It took this date, like the name, from the official German list of battles. Polish Wikipedia treats the fighting more broadly and ends it on 20 December. Whatever the date adopted, the phase of heavy fighting on the northern wing of the front in the Kingdom of Poland, which had lasted since 30 November, ended in mid-December. The Russian First Army fell back behind the lower Bzura, and the German Ninth Army halted in front of its new positions.

The last days of fighting

The Russians decided to retreat after the loss of Łódź, which the Germans took on 6 December. At Łowicz, however, they held out for more than another week. According to the Russian collection of documents on the Łódź operation, the First Army withdrew behind the Bzura from 12 to 17 December, while German corps attacked its rearguards. On 15 December the I Reserve Corps of General Kurt von Morgen entered Łowicz, abandoned by the Russians, without a fight. A German communiqué of 16 December reported the capture of several strong Russian strongpoints in northern Poland and the taking of about 3,000 prisoners.

The last clashes took place north of Łowicz, on the roads leading towards Sochaczew. A Russian communiqué issued in Petrograd on 17 December admitted that throughout the day the Germans had attacked stubbornly in the general direction from Kiernozia towards Sochaczew, and that the Russian troops, fighting on unfavourable ground, had “fallen back somewhat” towards evening. The same day the northern wing of the Ninth Army reached the new Russian positions on the Bzura. They ran along the eastern bank of the river from its confluence with the Vistula through Sochaczew, and further south along the Rawka.

Communiqués of victory

Berlin and Vienna proclaimed a great success. The German communiqué of 17 December declared that the Russian offensive announced against Silesia and Posen had “completely collapsed”, and that the Russian armies throughout Poland had been forced to retreat after fierce frontal fighting. The decision in the fighting of the two previous days was attributed to West Prussian and Hessian regiments. The Austro-Hungarian staff announced the same day that the resistance of the main Russian forces had been broken, and that the enemy, beaten in the south at Limanowa and in the north at Łódź and on the Bzura, had begun a general retreat.

The Russians presented it differently. In its communiqué of 18 December the General Staff wrote that on the left bank of the Vistula, after several days of repulsed German attacks, an almost complete calm had set in, and that in connection with the movement of some troops towards the Bzura certain armies had had to be “regrouped accordingly”. The German press quickly took this phrase to be a euphemism for retreat.

The balance

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg had achieved his aim only in part. The Russians had lost Łódź and Łowicz, and their march on Silesia had been stopped. The Russian armies, however, had not been destroyed and had occupied a new, shorter line of defence, only a few dozen kilometres from Warsaw. The Germans did not intend to stop there. The very next day their units began attacking the positions on the Bzura and the Rawka, where the front was to remain stuck for many months.