Fall of Tarnopol and Stanislau

The British chronology of the war records under 24 July 1917 the recovery by the Central Powers of the two largest towns of Eastern Galicia after Lviv: Stanislau (Stanisławów) and Tarnopol. According to the Austrian official history, the Austro-Hungarian 16th Infantry Division entered Stanislau, abandoned by the Russians, on that day. Tarnopol fell a day later: on the morning of 25 July (12 July by the Julian calendar) it was occupied by the Prussian 1st Guards Infantry Division, commanded by Emperor Wilhelm II’s son, Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia. Some Russian studies state that the Russians had already left Tarnopol on 24 July. Both towns were lost by an army that since 19 July had been retreating in disorder before the German counter-stroke from Złoczów.

Stanislau

Stanislau changed hands for the sixth time in this war. The Russians had last taken it in August 1916, during the Brusilov offensive. In July 1917 the town lay just behind the front of the Russian 8th Army, which at the beginning of the month had broken through the Austrian positions to the west of it and reached beyond Kałusz. When the front of the 11th and 7th Armies collapsed north of the Dniester, the 8th Army was in danger of being cut off. On 23 July it began to retreat. The Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army followed it, crossed the Łomnica that same day, and the German 83rd Infantry Division retook Halicz. By evening the Austrians were already standing on their old positions on the Bystrzyca Sołotwińska, just outside the town.

For several days Russian stragglers had been roaming Stanislau, looting shops and houses. According to Polish accounts, from 21 July the inhabitants and the military stores were protected from them by the Polish 1st Uhlan Regiment (PL), expanded only a few days earlier from a Polish cavalry squadron in the Russian army. On the afternoon of 24 July Colonel Bolesław Mościcki’s regiment, about 400 sabres strong and without a single machine gun, was ordered to hold up the German infantry approaching the town and to cover the retreat of a Russian division. At the village of Krechowce the uhlans charged on horseback and fought on foot for several hours. According to Mościcki’s report, the regiment lost one officer and 31 uhlans killed and 46 wounded. The new commander of the South-Western Front, General Lavr Kornilov, thanked him by telegram, and the regiment came to be called the Krechowce regiment. The inscription “Krechowce 24 VII 1917” was later placed on one of the tablets of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

Tarnopol

Tarnopol had been in Russian hands since August 1914. During the occupation it was the seat of a Russian governorate, and in September 1915 the Battle of Tarnopol had halted the Central Powers’ offensive here. Now the town lay in the path of the main German thrust. As early as 20 July German aircraft bombed and machine-gunned the columns of troops and wagons that choked its streets. On 23 July the German Guards reached the hills west of Tarnopol, but in front of the town the new commander of the 11th Army, General Pyotr Baluyev, still held a strong bridgehead. It was defended by the I Guards Corps. General Arnold von Winckler, commander of the German assault group, decided to prepare a deliberate attack on it. It was not needed. On 24 July General Albrecht von Berrer’s German corps crossed the Seret south of the town, and on 25 July the German 6th Infantry Division drove the Russian V Corps, and the Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade fighting at its side, from the hills south-east of Tarnopol. When the Guardsmen in the bridgehead saw their neighbours falling back, they abandoned their positions. The Prussian Guard entered the town before noon. The next day, in the presence of Emperor Wilhelm II, who had come to the front, it occupied the hills north of Tarnopol.

The inhabitants, Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, suffered most. Retreating Russian soldiers looted Tarnopol, and part of the town, including the castle, burned down. Ukrainian historians write of looting, violence and pogroms. Kornilov announced in an order that when the commander of the 11th Army reported to him that soldiers evacuating Tarnopol were plundering property, raping women and killing inhabitants, he had ordered such men to be shot without trial. On 22 July (9 July Old Style) 14 soldiers were shot at the scene of their crimes. On 25 July, the day Tarnopol fell, the Provisional Government restored the death penalty at the front.

The loss of both towns meant that all the gains of the Brusilov offensive and of the summer offensive of 1917 had been lost. On the Dniester and in the Carpathians the Russians fell back further, towards the frontier on the Zbruch and towards Bukovina.