End of the second battle of Przasnysz

By 17 July 1915 the Russian 1st Army had withdrawn from Przasnysz to fortified bridgeheads in front of the Narew, at Różan, Pułtusk and Serock. In five days of fighting, which had begun on 13 July with a German breakthrough, it had given up a belt 25–35 kilometres deep. The Soviet military encyclopedia regards this day as the end of the Przasnysz operation. The German divisions, exhausted and delayed by rain, halted their advance in front of the new Russian line to prepare an assault on it.

Five days of retreat

On 14 July the Germans occupied Przasnysz, abandoned by the Russians during the night. The town, taken twice within a few days in February, this time passed into German hands for more than three years. On 15 July, after another hurricane bombardment, General Max von Gallwitz’s army group attacked the second Russian position. According to Russian works ten German divisions were then attacking four and a half Russian ones. The German 38th Division took Ciechanów after street fighting (local sources say that the fighting for the town lasted until 16 July), and units of the XVII Reserve Corps approached Nasielsk, threatening the area east of the Novogeorgievsk fortress (Modlin).

The Russians counter-attacked. A brigade of the 14th Cavalry Division charged the German infantry and broke its first ranks, but was stopped by fire. The commander of the North-Western Front, General Mikhail Alekseyev, sent the 1st Army reinforcements from the 2nd and 4th Armies and from the Novogeorgievsk garrison. They were not enough to regain the lost positions, but they allowed General Aleksandr Litvinov to withdraw his corps in good order and occupy the bridgeheads on the river.

The balance

According to Russian and German data the 1st Army lost about 40,000 men in these days, including many prisoners. The Siberian divisions, which had taken the first blow on 13 July, suffered most. Estimates of German losses vary widely, from about 10,000 according to German data to about 20,000 according to the calculations of the Russian historian Sergei Nelipovich. The Polish Wikipedia, which describes the “second battle of Przasnysz” as the fighting of 13 and 14 July, gives about 16,000 German and 39,000 Russian killed and wounded. The area around Przasnysz, across which the front had already passed several times, was ruined. Many villages, among them Jednorożec, all but ceased to exist.

The Germans had achieved a breakthrough, but not a decision. The Russians had been neither encircled nor routed and had time to dig in on the Narew line, where further heavy fighting for the crossings took place. Every day of delay allowed the Russian command to withdraw troops from the Vistula salient before the German pincers, closing from the north under Gallwitz and from the south with Mackensen’s armies, could snap shut.