Russians lose Czernowitz for good

Before dawn on 3 August 1917 (21 July in the Julian calendar) the advance units of the 42nd Honvéd Infantry Division, made up of Croatian Domobrans, entered Czernowitz, the capital of Bukovina, from the north, and units of the group of Lieutenant Field Marshal Ludwig von Fabini from the east. Before noon, along the southern bank of the Prut, the Austro-Hungarian 5th Infantry Division marched into the town, with the front commander, Archduke Joseph August, riding at its head. The Austrian official history speaks of the capital of Bukovina “liberated for the third time”. For the Russians the loss was final: they never returned to the town, which had changed hands many times since the beginning of the war.

The pursuit through Bukovina

The Russians had held Czernowitz since June 1916, when during the Brusilov offensive they retook it for the third time. Before that they had occupied the town in September and in November 1914, and the Austrians had recovered it in October 1914 and in February 1915. This time the town’s fate was decided by the counter-offensive in Eastern Galicia. When, after the breakthrough at Złoczów, the whole Russian front from the Seret to the Carpathians began to retreat, the troops of the Russian Eighth Army, standing between the Dniester and the Carpathians, were in danger of being cut off. From the north, between the Dniester and the Prut, the Austro-Hungarian Third Army was advancing, its main striking force the group of the German General Karl Litzmann, while Colonel-General Hermann Kövess’s Seventh Army was coming down from the mountains. On 29 July the Hungarians won a bridgehead at Zaleszczyki, and on 31 July the Transylvanian 16th Infantry Division and the German 16th Reserve Division reached Zastawna.

The new Russian Commander-in-Chief, General Lavr Kornilov, who had taken up the post a few days earlier, ordered the commander of the Eighth Army, General Vladimir Cheremisov (PL), to hold Czernowitz for at least six days, so that the large military stores gathered in the town could be removed. Cheremisov threw every division fit for battle into the fight. On 1 and 2 August, in the heat, fierce fighting raged on both banks of the Prut and further north as far as the Dniester. The Russians counter-attacked several times, especially against the Bavarian 8th Reserve Division. On the afternoon of 2 August, however, they began to abandon their positions in front of Litzmann’s group, and the same day Fabini’s group, after heavy artillery fire, dented the Russian front north-west of Storozhynets. Threatened with encirclement from the north, Cheremisov gave up Czernowitz and ordered a retreat towards the Khotyn–Boian line, right on the border of Bessarabia.

The end of the pursuit

On 3 August the victors pressed on after the retreating Russians. Litzmann’s group reached the border of Bessarabia and on 4 August entered its territory, but just beyond Czernowitz the Austro-Hungarian XIII Corps ran into strong Russian defences. On the evening of 4 August its units broke onto the western slopes of the Dolzhok hill, from which the Russians could shell the town. On 5 August a Russian counter-attack threw them back. In the north, on the frontier river Zbruch, the Germans had already broken off their attempts to force the river, and on 2 August the Commander-in-Chief in the East, Field Marshal Prince Leopold of Bavaria, ordered them halted. On 4 August the command of the Austro-Hungarian Third Army concluded that the advance was coming to an end and ordered permanent positions to be taken up.

The pursuit had exhausted the victors too. The German and Austro-Hungarian divisions were more than a hundred kilometres from their railheads, the bridges were destroyed, and the worn-out horses found no fodder in the unsown fields. The Austrian official history admits that the Russians, who only two weeks earlier had been fleeing, put up a resistance on the border of their own state that could not be broken. The eastern tip of Bukovina remained in their hands. The Central Powers had hoped to strike from Bukovina into northern Moldavia and, together with the troops of Field Marshal August von Mackensen advancing from the south, to occupy the rest of Romania, but supply shortages and growing Russian resistance thwarted these plans.

For Austria-Hungary the recovery of Czernowitz was one of the few causes for rejoicing in 1917. On 6 August Emperor Charles I visited the town and made Kövess a field marshal. Czernowitz remained in Austrian hands until the end of the war, and in November 1918, after the collapse of the monarchy, it was occupied by the Romanians.