Germans take Brest-Litovsk

On 25 August 1915 the troops of Field Marshal August von Mackensen’s army group broke through the ring of forts of Brest-Litovsk, the largest Russian fortress on the Bug. During the night the Russians, who were preparing to leave in any case, abandoned the fortress, blowing up the fortifications and setting the town on fire. On the morning of 26 August the victors entered the citadel. That day the German war communiqué announced briefly: “The fortress of Brest-Litovsk has fallen.” Although the British chronology credits its capture to the Germans, the Austro-Hungarians played the decisive role in the assault.

A fortress that was not defended

The Brest Fortress was built in the 1830s and 1840s on the orders of Tsar Nicholas I, at the confluence of the Mukhavets and the Bug. Towards the end of the century it was surrounded by a ring of forts, and just before the war work began on a second, outer ring, which was never completed. The fortress was also a junction where the railway lines linking the front with the Russian interior met. As late as the beginning of July the Russian command expected to fall back to the Kovno–Grodno–Brest line and stop there.

The summer overturned these plans. After the capture of Warsaw and Ivangorod, the Central Powers’ armies approached Brest from the west, north and south, while General Alexander von Linsingen’s German Bug Army crossed the river near Włodawa and was outflanking the fortress from the east. The Russians had already handed over some of the fortress’s heavy guns to the field armies. When within a few days Kovno fell and Novogeorgievsk capitulated with a garrison of several tens of thousands, the view prevailed in the Russian command that another encirclement must not be risked. According to Russian studies, the decision to evacuate the fortress was taken around 20 August, and government offices, supplies and a large part of the inhabitants were moved out of the town. The Austrian official history states that the final order of the commander-in-chief of the North-Western Front, General Mikhail Alekseyev, issued on 25 August, instructed the Third Army to pull back its left wing, which meant abandoning the fortress. The Germans and Austrians knew of this intention from intercepted radio messages.

The assault

The main weight of the attack from the south-west rested on the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps of Lieutenant Field Marshal Arthur Arz von Straussenburg, later chief of the general staff of the Austro-Hungarian army. On 24 August the Hungarian 39th Honvéd Infantry Division (PL) took the trenches near Dobrynka, and that night the Russians gave up their forward positions. On 25 August heavy artillery fire continued from the morning. Fires raged in the fortress and the town, and explosions shook the surrounding area, but the garrisons of the forts still put up fierce resistance. The Austro-Hungarians forced their way through the entanglements between exploding mines, suffering heavy losses. Towards evening the Honvéd troops broke into the fort near Kobylany, and the 12th Infantry Division, made up of regiments from western Galicia, Silesia and northern Moravia, took the neighbouring fort south of Koroszczyn. At the same time the German XXII Reserve Corps of General Eugen von Falkenhayn, brother of the chief of the German general staff, attacked from the north-west.

Once the outer ring had been breached, it turned out that the inner forts had already been blown up and were empty. At about three o’clock in the morning of 26 August Austro-Hungarian battalions reached the citadel and the burning bridge over the Bug. According to the Austrian official history, VI Corps was the first to enter the citadel and the town, and the German 43rd Reserve Division joined it. The German communiqué, on the other hand, credited the Brandenburg XXII Reserve Corps with breaking into the core of the fortress, while the Austro-Hungarian one reported that it was the Germans who occupied the citadel by the railway bridge in the morning. Both sides agreed that once the forts had been breached, the Russians gave up the fortress of their own accord.

The burnt town

As they withdrew, the Russians blew up the forts, powder magazines and bridges and set fire to barracks and stores. The fire also engulfed the town. According to various estimates, 70 to 80 per cent of its buildings burned down. The Austrians nevertheless recorded that despite the destruction they managed to capture enormous stocks of food and ammunition. The main forces of the Russian Third Army escaped east, towards Kobryn and Pruzhany, and the victors set off after them along the edge of the Polesie marshes.

The capture of Brest closed the most important stage of the Central Powers’ summer offensive. The line of fortresses on which the Russians had meant to stop ceased to exist, and the front moved further east, towards Polesie and Vilna. Eugen von Falkenhayn received the Pour le Mérite for his corps’ fighting. In the ruined fortress the Germans later set up the headquarters of the supreme command in the east, and it was there, on 3 March 1918, that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed with Bolshevik Russia.