Start of the Battle of Kupiškis

On 30 July 1915 Russian units attacked at Kupiškis, a small town in northern Lithuania about 40 kilometres east of Panevėžys. The attack struck the gap between two cavalry corps of the German Niemen Army, which were to set off far to the east the next day. So began the battle that the German official list of battles calls the Battle of Kupiškis and dates to 30 July – 7 August 1915. The British chronology of the war also records its start under 30 July.

Five days earlier the Battle of Šiauliai had ended. In it General Otto von Below’s Niemen Army had taken western Courland, Šiauliai and Panevėžys, and on 28 July Below moved his headquarters to Šiauliai. General Pavel Plehve’s Russian 5th Army had suffered heavy losses, but escaped encirclement. The German command regarded it as broken and was already preparing further tasks. Below’s main forces were to turn south against the fortress of Kovno. General Manfred von Richthofen’s cavalry corps was to set off from Panevėžys south-eastwards towards Vilna, and General Egon von Schmettow’s corps eastwards towards Dvinsk. Some forces were sent north against Mitau, where on 29 July an attack had begun on the Russians defending the line of the Aa river.

The Russians, meanwhile, quickly recovered. General Mikhail Alekseyev, commander of the North-Western Front, sent Plehve reinforcements, and his army was brought up to strength with fresh companies. According to Russian studies, the southern group of the 5th Army, including units of the XIX and III Corps, went over to the counter-offensive. The German official history admits that the enemy displayed “surprising mobility”. The thrust from Kupiškis halted the cavalry expedition to Vilna and Dvinsk before it had begun.

At first Below underestimated the danger. General Curt von Morgen, commander of the I Reserve Corps, proposed putting his corps into the gap between the cavalry, but Below refused, because the corps was to march on Kovno and he considered the Russians in the east weak. He changed his mind on 1 August, when Russian pressure increased, and threw into the attack both Morgen’s corps and that of General Otto von Lauenstein. On 2 August fighting flared up on a broad front about 30 kilometres east of Panevėžys. The Russians did not abandon their positions until the night of 2/3 August, and on 4 and 5 August the Germans pushed them back to the line Anykščiai – Kvietkiai. They went no further. At Vilkomir Richthofen’s corps ran into superior Russian forces and on 7 August had to fall back.

The Battle of Kupiškis showed that the Niemen Army did not have the strength for a simultaneous march on Vilna, Dvinsk and Kovno. In August Below went over to the defensive here, and around Kupiškis the Germans began to build fortified positions. On his northern wing his troops took Mitau on 1 August.