Russians retake Czernowitz

On 17 June 1916 the decisive fight for Czernowitz, the capital of Bukovina, was fought outside the city. After several hours of shelling, Russian infantry broke into the Austro-Hungarian bridgehead on the northern bank of the Prut, and during the night crossed the river. The British chronology of the war and The Times record the Russian entry under 17 June, and the American monthly Current History even under 16 June. According to the Austrian official history, however, the city fell only in the early morning of 18 June, and the Vienna communiqué of that day says Czernowitz had been evacuated during the night. The same date, 5 June in the Julian calendar then in force in Russia, i.e. 18 June in the Gregorian, appears in Russian sources. The Russians took Czernowitz for the third time in this war, after September and November 1914.

A city under fire

Since the breakthrough at the village of Okna on 10 June, the Austro-Hungarian 7th Army of General Karl Pflanzer-Baltin had been torn in two. The larger part was falling back westwards, towards Kolomea, while the capital of Bukovina was defended on the Prut by the XI Corps of General of Cavalry Ignaz von Korda, made up largely of Landsturm units. Against it General Platon Lechitsky, commander of the Russian 9th Army, turned most of his forces: the XI and XII Corps, two divisions of the Composite Corps and a division of Terek Cossacks. The Austrians estimated that Pflanzer-Baltin’s whole army now numbered only 80,000 rifles, and Lechitsky’s army about 160,000 men.

The city had found itself on the front line a few days earlier. The correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt described how on 11 June the police warned the inhabitants that Czernowitz would come under artillery fire, and how crowds of Christians and Jews, Germans, Romanians and Poles left the city. Russian shells fell mainly on the lower districts around the station, fires broke out, and the town council sat through whole nights in the town hall. The new chief of staff of the 7th Army, the German general Hans von Seeckt, wrote to Conrad von Hötzendorf on 16 June that he doubted whether the present positions would withstand a strong attack, and that an army required to cover both Bukovina and the road to Kolomea at the same time would “tear apart in the middle”. The two divisions promised to it were, however, sent to Bothmer’s South Army.

Crossing the Prut

On 16 June the Russian heavy artillery began shelling the trenches of Korda’s corps. On 17 June, after a three-hour artillery preparation, at about four in the afternoon, troops of the Russian XI Corps broke into the Czernowitz bridgehead. The 13th Infantry Regiment defending it, which had been beating off attacks for several days, withdrew after heavy hand-to-hand fighting across the river to the northern edge of the city. The Austrians managed to blow up the bridges. The Russian XII Corps crossed only with weak forces near Zawale, where it was stopped by a hussar regiment.

During the night of 17/18 June units of the XI Corps crossed the swollen Prut in boats above and below the city. East of Czernowitz they broke through the line of Colonel Papp’s brigade, and before dawn entered the suburb of Kaliczanka. Korda had no reserves at hand. The corps reserves stood, on the orders of army command, some 15 kilometres away, and the general decided he could not dispose of them. At three in the morning he ordered a retreat to the line of the Siret. The Austrian official history admits that at this moment the command may have lost its nerve. The retreat was costly. Baggage trains jammed the streets of the city and two batteries could not get through. Papp’s brigade lost 3,000 men during the flight along rain-soaked roads, and the 10th Infantry Brigade, which defended itself to the last on the edge of the city, 2,000.

After the fall of the city

On 18 June the Vienna staff announced that the garrison of the bridgehead had withdrawn before overwhelming fire, and that the enemy had forced the Prut during the night and burst into Czernowitz, which had been evacuated. The Russian Stavka stated briefly that the city had been taken and that cavalry was pursuing the retreating enemy. In Austria the loss of Czernowitz came as a shock. Conrad had to accept that Korda’s corps could now only delay the Russian advance towards the Carpathian passes, and the high command feared that the Russian entry into Bukovina would prompt neighbouring Romania to enter the war.

Lechitsky halted the XI and XII Corps on the Prut, because the broken railway line had first to be restored. He at once formed, however, from two infantry divisions and the III Cavalry Corps, a pursuit group under General Mikhail Promtov, which set off southwards deep into Bukovina. The third Russian occupation of Czernowitz proved the longest. The Austrians, who had retaken the city in February 1915, had held it for sixteen months. Now Czernowitz remained in Russian hands for more than a year, until 3 August 1917.