The great Austro-Hungarian retreat in Galicia

On the evening of 11 September 1914 the chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, ordered the four armies fighting in Galicia to make a general retreat behind the river San. It was the end of the Battle of Galicia, the Habsburg monarchy’s first great campaign against Russia. Over the following weeks the Austro-Hungarian forces fell back more than 150 kilometres, behind the Dunajec and into the Carpathians, and the Russian armies occupied most of Galicia. For the Poles, Ukrainians and Jews who lived there, the war rolled over their homes in full force for the first time.

From victories to defeat

The campaign had begun promisingly in August. In the north, in the Kingdom of Poland, the Austro-Hungarian armies won the battles of Kraśnik and Komarów, and Conrad hoped to crush the Russians between the Vistula and the Bug. Meanwhile, in eastern Galicia, superior Russian forces defeated the weaker Third Army on the Złota Lipa and Gniła Lipa and on 3 September took Lviv, the capital of the province.

Conrad still tried to reverse the course of the campaign. He turned Auffenberg’s victorious army south from Komarów and from 8 September threw his forces into an attack at Gródek Jagielloński and Rawa Ruska in order to retake Lviv. The attack stalled, and in the meantime the Russian armies broke through the front of General Viktor Dankl’s First Army at Tarnawka and pushed into the gap between the Austro-Hungarian armies. On 11 September, when the Russians broke the defences at Rawa Ruska and their cavalry appeared in the rear of the Fourth Army, Conrad had no choice left. His armies were threatened with encirclement and with being cut off from the crossings over the San.

Retreat in rain and mud

The retreat took place in dreadful conditions. Torrential rain fell, and the few roads of Galicia turned into muddy ruts, crowded with columns of troops, baggage trains, artillery and fleeing civilians. After three weeks of fighting the soldiers were utterly exhausted, hungry and often sick. Many stragglers fell behind and ended up in Russian captivity. Whole units, especially those made up of Slav soldiers unconvinced by the Habsburg cause, surrendered without a fight. Guns, wagons and supplies were abandoned.

The Austro-Hungarian armies crossed the San in mid-September. The Russians set off in pursuit late, because they were exhausted themselves and their supplies, especially of artillery ammunition, could not keep up with the front. The San line, however, could not be held. Russian troops began to cross the river, and the Austro-Hungarian armies were incapable of further fighting. Conrad therefore ordered another retreat, behind the Dunajec and its tributary the Biała. The troops reached this line at the end of September. In that time the Russians advanced as far as the Wisłoka and the Carpathian passes, taking further towns of central Galicia on the way.

Przemyśl under siege

In the path of the Russian armies stood the fortress of Przemyśl, one of the largest in Europe. Conrad decided not to evacuate it. The fortress, with a garrison that numbered more than 100,000 men including all services, under the command of General Hermann Kusmanek, was to tie down Russian forces and defend the crossing over the San. The Russians surrounded it in the second half of September. Sources give different dates for the start of the siege, usually 16 or 17 September, when Russian troops began to close the ring, with full encirclement a few days later.

At the beginning of October the Russians launched a bloody assault on the fortress, which the garrison repulsed. A few days later the siege was broken by an Austro-Hungarian counter-offensive. It was, however, only a temporary relief. In November the Russians surrounded Przemyśl again, and the second siege ended with the fortress’s surrender in March 1915.

Losses

The Battle of Galicia and the retreat were a catastrophe for Austria-Hungary. We do not know the exact figures, and estimates vary widely. According to various authors, the Austro-Hungarian army lost between about 300,000 and 400,000 soldiers killed, wounded, missing and captured in August and September, including more than 100,000 prisoners. Several hundred guns were lost. Even more painful was the loss of about a third of the professional officers and experienced non-commissioned officers, the core of the pre-war army, which could never be rebuilt. Russian losses are usually estimated at about 225,000–250,000 men.

Refugees

Hundreds of thousands of civilians moved west with the army. Officials, landowners, townspeople and peasants fled, and Galician Jews, who feared Russian violence and pogroms, were especially numerous. Their fears were not unfounded. At the end of September Russian soldiers carried out a pogrom in Lviv. The refugees went to Kraków and from there to Vienna, Moravia, Bohemia and other lands of the monarchy, where the authorities set up camps and aid stations for them. Many of them returned home only after Galicia was recaptured in 1915, or later.

The retreat also brought suffering to those who stayed behind. The withdrawing troops requisitioned food and horses, and the Ukrainian population, suspected of pro-Russian sympathies, faced arrests and sometimes summary executions. In the occupied lands the Russians introduced their own military administration.

Poles in the retreat

Polish volunteer formations took part in the retreat. The Eastern Legion, formed in Lviv, had been evacuated west before the city fell. Under the influence of agitation by opponents of cooperation with Austria, most of the volunteers went home, and on 21 September at Mszana Dolna the decision was taken to dissolve the Eastern Legion. Only some of the soldiers, among them those around Captain Józef Haller, took the oath and joined the newly formed 3rd Regiment of the Polish Legions.

The 1st Regiment of the Legions under Józef Piłsudski, which had been operating in the Kielce region since August, covered the northern flank of the retreating Austro-Hungarian armies against Russian cavalry on the Vistula, near Nowy Korczyn, in the second half of September. In October the legionaries took part in the Central Powers’ counter-offensive on the Vistula.

The Russians outside Kraków

The September retreat was not the last. In October German and Austro-Hungarian forces went over to the counter-offensive, reached the Vistula and the San and broke the siege of Przemyśl. After it failed, the Russians moved west again. In November their troops approached Kraków, and their forward units reached the area of Wieliczka, some fifteen kilometres from the city. The fortress of Kraków prepared for a siege. The threat was averted only by the Austro-Hungarian victory in the Battle of Limanowa at the beginning of December 1914.

Significance

The defeat in Galicia changed Austria-Hungary’s position in the war. Within a few weeks the monarchy’s army lost a large part of its pre-war cadres and never regained its former strength. From then on it depended more and more on help from Germany, which had to send its troops to the Eastern Front to rescue its ally. Russia won the richest part of Galicia and stood at the foot of the Carpathians, from where it could threaten Hungary, and in its propaganda it presented the occupied lands as recovered “Russian” land. In the eyes of Russian public opinion, the victory in Galicia offset the defeat at Tannenberg.

Russian rule in Galicia lasted until the spring and summer of 1915, when, after the breakthrough at Gorlice, the armies of the Central Powers recaptured Przemyśl and Lviv.