End of the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes
- Category:
- Military operations
- Front:
- Eastern Front
- Date:
- 22 February 1915
- Author:
- Łukasz Skowroń
- Battle:
- Winter Battle in Masuria
- Tags:
- East Prussia, Russia, Germany, Paul von Hindenburg
On 22 February 1915 the German Supreme Army Command announced the end of the winter battle in Masuria. After two weeks of fighting in snow, frost and mud, the two German armies of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg had driven the Russian 10th Army out of East Prussia and pushed it back to the line of the Niemen and the Biebrza. The day before, the encircled XX Corps had capitulated in the Augustów Forest.
A victory communiqué
The German war communiqué of 22 February spoke of the capture of seven generals and more than 100,000 soldiers and of more than 150 guns and a still uncounted quantity of equipment. In it the Russian 10th Army was declared practically destroyed. In Germany the victory was celebrated as a “second Tannenberg”, and pictures of Kaiser Wilhelm II among the soldiers in Lyck, freshly captured on 14 February, appeared in the press and on postcards.
The reality was less impressive. The numbers of prisoners were most probably inflated. Russian authors put the total losses of the 10th Army at about 56,000 men, and the Polish historian Stanisław Czerep estimates that 20,000–24,000 soldiers of the XX Corps alone were taken prisoner. German losses were many times smaller. According to official German figures, the 8th Army alone lost about 12,000 killed, wounded and missing, and more than 10,000 of its soldiers fell ill during the winter marches.
Counter-attacks from Grodno
The most important thing, however, was that the plan of Erich Ludendorff had failed. Hindenburg’s chief of staff had counted on encircling the whole 10th Army and marching deep into Russia. Instead, three of its four corps slipped out of the pincers, and the stubborn defence of the XX Corps in the Augustów Forest gave them time to occupy a new defensive line from Grodno to the Biebrza. The Russian Stavka sent reinforcements there, among them the XV Corps. In the last days of the battle the reinforced Russian units went over to counter-attacks near Grodno and halted the exhausted Germans. German attempts to take the fortress of Osowiec on the Biebrza also failed.
That same day, further south, in northern Mazovia, the fight for Przasnysz began. A German army group under General Max von Gallwitz was trying to exploit the success there and reach the Narew, while the Russian 12th Army was preparing a counter-offensive.
The balance
After this battle Russian troops never again returned to East Prussia for any length of time. The only exception was a brief raid on Memel in March 1915. Many Masurian towns and villages, from the area around Johannisburg to Lyck and Goldap, had nevertheless suffered during the Russian occupation and the fighting, and their reconstruction went on after the war.
Strategically the battle decided nothing. The Russians had to abandon their plan of an offensive into East Prussia, but their front in the north survived, and the Germans lacked the strength to break it. The defeat set off a search for culprits in Russia. Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Myasoyedov, an intelligence officer on the staff of the 10th Army, accused of spying for Germany, was sentenced and executed in March 1915, although the evidence of his guilt was doubtful. The commander of the 10th Army, General Faddei Sievers, lost his post in April 1915.
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(04)Elsewhere in the same days.
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Related events
(04)The same battle, people or subject.
- 4 February 1915 · Eastern FrontWinter Battle of Masuria beginsThe British chronology dates the start of the Winter Battle of Masuria to 4 February 1915. The Germans were still massing; the attack began on 7 February.
- 31 August 1914 · Eastern FrontBattle of Tannenberg endsOn 31 August 1914 Hindenburg reported to the Kaiser the destruction of the Russian 2nd Army. Over 90,000 Russians were captured and Samsonov was dead.
- 23 August 1914 · Eastern FrontHindenburg takes command of the Eighth ArmyOn 23 August 1914 General Paul von Hindenburg, recalled from retirement, took command of the Eighth Army in East Prussia, with Ludendorff as chief of staff.
- 5 September 1914 · Eastern FrontBattle of the Masurian Lakes beginsAt the beginning of September 1914 Hindenburg's German Eighth Army moved against Rennenkampf's Russian First Army. The Battle of the Masurian Lakes began.