Second German offensive against Warsaw

The British chronology of the war records under 16 November 1914 the start of the second German offensive against Warsaw and of the Battle of Łódź. On that day the German Ninth Army of General August von Mackensen, which for five days had been advancing from the Vistula into the Kingdom of Poland, crossed the Bzura. The Russian Second Army was falling back towards Łódź, and the fighting began to shift to the approaches to the city.

Why 16 November

The offensive itself had begun earlier. On 11 November the Germans struck near Włocławek, and for that reason many studies, including the English Wikipedia, date the Battle of Łódź from 11 November. The Polish Wikipedia notes, however, that the literature gives either 11 or 16 November as its start. The first days were a march and fighting on the Vistula and near Kutno, and only from 16 November, when the Germans forced the Bzura and the Russians began to gather near Łódź, did the battle for the city itself begin. The British chronology adopts the latter date.

The name “second offensive against Warsaw” refers back to October, when the Germans stood some fifteen kilometres from the city but had to withdraw. This time Warsaw was not the direct objective. Mackensen was to strike the flank of the Russian Second Army, cut it off from Warsaw and encircle it. According to some studies, after such a victory Łódź was to become the Germans’ starting point for a renewed march on Warsaw, hence the British name.

The blow from Thorn

After the Battle of Warsaw and Dęblin the Russians had recovered almost the whole Kingdom of Poland. The commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, was preparing a great offensive into Silesia and deep into Germany, which according to the English Wikipedia was to begin on 14 November. The Germans knew of these plans from intercepted Russian wireless messages. Paul von Hindenburg, from 1 November commander-in-chief of the German forces in the east, and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff moved the Ninth Army by rail from around Częstochowa and Kalisz to the area of Thorn.

On 11 November the Germans attacked the V Siberian Corps of General Paul von Rennenkampf’s First Army near Włocławek and threw it back to the east. A gap opened between the First and Second Armies, and the Germans drove into it. After bitter fighting they took Kutno on 15 November and the next day crossed the Bzura. The commander of the Second Army, General Sergei Scheidemann, withdrew his corps towards Łódź and turned them to face north.

The Russians call off the march on Silesia

The Russian command long underestimated the German blow. Only on 16 or 17 November (sources give different dates) did Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich realise that the whole Second Army was in danger, and he called off the offensive into Silesia. The Fifth Army of General Pavel Plehve set off from the south to the rescue; within a few days its soldiers covered more than a hundred kilometres in forced marches.

The Austrians were also counting on the German offensive. On the same day, 16 November, the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army came out of the fortress of Kraków and struck the flank of the Russian Ninth Army. Both attacks were meant to stop the Russian steamroller before it entered German territory.

Before Łódź

In the following days the Germans attacked Łódź from the west and north, while their right wing went round the city to the east, through Brzeziny. From the morning of 18 November gunfire could be heard right outside Łódź, and the battle line formed a semicircle from Aleksandrów through Zgierz to Stryków. That day the first shells began to fall on the city. Its inhabitants, who since the start of the war had lived in the shadow of the front, found themselves in the very middle of one of the greatest battles of manoeuvre of the First World War. The fighting around Łódź lasted until 6 December, when the Russians abandoned the city and withdrew closer to Warsaw.