The Germans take Šiauliai

On 30 April 1915 German troops occupied Šiauliai (Szawle in Polish), an important railway junction in northern Lithuania, in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire. Before leaving, the retreating Russians set fire to the government buildings, and the fire spread to the town. German cavalrymen rode into burning Šiauliai after several days of rapid marching from the border of East Prussia.

The raid to the north

At the end of April both sides held only weak forces on the northern wing of the Eastern Front, between the Niemen and the Baltic. In March the Russians had taken advantage of this to occupy Memel for a few days. Now the Germans took the initiative. The Eastern Front command, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff, was given the task of mounting a diversionary attack. In Galicia a great German and Austro-Hungarian offensive at Gorlice was being prepared in the utmost secrecy. The raid into Lithuania and Courland was meant to draw Russian reserves north and divert attention from Galicia.

The task was entrusted to General Otto von Lauenstein, whose reserve corps was turned into an independent army group on 22 April. Lauenstein was given three cavalry divisions (the 3rd, the 6th and the Bavarian) and three reserve infantry divisions. The attack began on 26–27 April in three columns. The right, with the Bavarian cavalry and the 3rd Cavalry Division, set out from near Jurbarkas on the Niemen, the centre from near Tauragė, and the left, with the 6th Cavalry Division, from the area of Memel. The Russians, taken by surprise, fell back without much resistance. According to German studies the cavalry covered about 75 kilometres in two days and reached the area of Raseiniai and Kelmė.

The burning town

Šiauliai, which before the war had more than 20,000 inhabitants, many of them Jews, was famous for its tanneries and leather factories. The Russian authorities had not managed to evacuate their offices. According to inhabitants’ accounts, archives, money and other property were burned on the spot, and the fire spread from the administration building to the neighbouring houses. Several hundred buildings burned down, most of them belonging to Jews. After the Germans entered, a citizens’ committee of four Jews and four Christians tried to keep order in the town, while the German army imposed requisitions.

The German cavalry moved on from Šiauliai northwards, towards Mitau (Jelgava), the capital of Courland. It soon met growing resistance, however. The Russian command reacted as the Germans had hoped: it began transferring new units north, including a corps from another sector of the front and reserve divisions.

What came next

On 2 May the offensive at Gorlice began in Galicia. In the north the Germans took Libau, a naval port on the Baltic, on 7 May, but they did not hold Šiauliai. In the face of approaching Russian reinforcements they left the town on the evening of 10 May and fell back to the Dubysa. The Russian command, looking for someone to blame for its defeats, accused the local Jewish population of treason and in May ordered the mass expulsion of Jews from the Kovno and Courland governorates. The Germans returned to Šiauliai in July 1915 and remained there until the end of the war.