Germans capture Novogeorgievsk

On 20 August 1915 the commandant of the fortress of Novogeorgievsk, General of Cavalry Nikolai Bobyr, signed the capitulation before the German General Hans von Beseler. The largest fortress of the Russian Empire, today’s Modlin, fell after less than two weeks of encirclement and a week of fighting for the forts. The whole garrison went into captivity. The German communiqué of that day spoke of 6 generals, more than 85,000 prisoners and more than 700 guns, and later Russian tallies of about 90,000 men, including twenty-odd generals, and more than 1,600 guns.

The last night

The fortress was left on its own when at the beginning of August the Russian armies abandoned Warsaw and fell back eastwards. Beseler’s siege group, made up mainly of Landwehr and Landsturm but equipped with the heaviest German and Austro-Hungarian mortars, struck at the north-eastern forts. Within a few days it took the “Tsarsky Dar” fort group, and on 17 August Bobyr ordered the outer ring on that sector abandoned. The next day the Germans crossed the Wkra.

At dawn on 19 August the assault on the inner ring of forts on the right bank of the Vistula began. By noon Forts II and III had fallen, and the heavy artillery, moved closer, was already shelling the citadel. In the evening whole units of the defenders began hanging out white flags, and at about 7 p.m. the Germans entered the citadel. According to the German communiqué more than 20,000 Russians went into captivity on that day alone. The German high command and the Austrian official history give 19 August as the day the fortress was taken.

During the night Bobyr drove to Beseler to discuss surrender. Russian works state that the talks began at about 2 a.m. and that the terms were signed towards morning. The act of capitulation, dated “Schloss Zegrzinek, 20 August 1915”, that is at the small manor house in Zegrzynek on the Narew, ordered fighting to cease immediately on all fronts of the fortress. Bobyr surrendered the fortress on both banks of the Vistula with all its forts, bridges, guns, ammunition and food supplies. Severe penalties were threatened for blowing up anything after the capitulation, and the whole garrison, including labour detachments, went into captivity. The towns and villages within the ring of forts were to pay contributions.

The last shots

Not everyone laid down their arms at once. Some officers and men in the citadel refused to capitulate and held out for several more hours. Several forts on the left bank of the Vistula, which the news of the surrender had not reached, also kept firing. By the evening of 20 August the whole fortress was in German hands.

The same day Emperor Wilhelm II came to Novogeorgievsk to thank Beseler and his troops. The German communiqué called the fortress “the enemy’s last bulwark in Poland”, while the Austro-Hungarian one stressed the part played in its bombardment by Austro-Hungarian mortars. In the evening a crowd of several thousand gathered in front of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, and the Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, said that the Russian fortresses had been “smashed like clay pots”.

What came next

Three days earlier the Germans had taken Kovno. The fall of both fortresses within a few days was a shock to Russia. Russian historians later called the capitulation of Novogeorgievsk one of the most shameful pages in the history of the tsarist army, blaming Bobyr for passivity and the supreme command for leaving tens of thousands of soldiers in a cut-off fortress at all. For the Germans the victory opened navigation on the Vistula and Narew and the railway from Mława to Warsaw, and Beseler’s troops could move east. A few days later Beseler himself became Governor-General in occupied Warsaw. Of the whole Kingdom of Poland the Russians now held only scraps in the east, which they lost in the following weeks.