The Germans abandon Šiauliai

The British chronology of the war records under 11 May 1915 that German troops abandoned Šiauliai (Szawle in Polish). The Germans had entered this railway junction in northern Lithuania on 30 April, during the raid by the army group of General Otto von Lauenstein. According to Lithuanian and German studies, the German units left the town as early as the evening of 10 May, and on 11 May they were fighting the Russians north of it. The British lists give the date of 11 May, when the withdrawal was already a fact.

The Russian response

The raid into Lithuania and Courland was meant to draw Russian reserves away from Galicia, where on 2 May the offensive of the Central Powers had begun at Gorlice. The aim was achieved, but in time it turned against the Germans themselves. The commander of the Russian North-Western Front, General Mikhail Alekseyev, sent several infantry divisions to the area between the Niemen and Riga. An attempt by the German cavalry to reach Mitau, today Jelgava, broke down at the beginning of May, and the German communiqué of 9 May admitted that in the face of strong forces assembled by the enemy near Mitau the forward units were “slowly giving way”. The Germans did manage to occupy Libau on 7 May, but inland the situation was deteriorating rapidly.

The Russian XIX Army Corps arrived by rail at Panevėžys and at once set off towards Šiauliai. One Russian division was approaching the town from the south-east, another from the north-east. Šiauliai was defended by the German 78th Reserve Division, which held good positions, but the second division, the 6th Reserve, had not yet arrived. The threat of encirclement settled the matter. The Germans withdrew from the town, taking with them the stocks of hides from the local tanneries that had been collected there.

Fighting near the town

The withdrawal did not mean the end of the fighting. The 78th Reserve Division took up positions a few kilometres south-west of Šiauliai, while the approaching 6th Reserve Division attacked the Russians north of the town. According to German figures, quoted in various lists, in the fighting of 11 and 12 May it took between about 1,400 and 2,000 prisoners and halted the Russian advance. German communiqués of the following days spoke of an “undecided” battle at Šiauliai. In mid-May heavy fighting went on around Kuršėnai, north-west of the town.

The headquarters of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, however, had no intention of giving up the northern wing. More cavalry and infantry divisions were sent to Lithuania and Courland, and at the end of May Lauenstein’s units became part of the new Niemen Army under General Otto von Below. The front settled for many weeks along the Dubysa and the Venta. Šiauliai, burned in April, was back in Russian hands, and the Russian authorities, looking for someone to blame for their defeats, began in May the mass deportation of Jews from the Kovno and Courland governorates. The Germans returned to Šiauliai in July 1915, during the great offensive on the northern wing of the Eastern Front.