Battle of Łódź (1914)


The Battle of Łódź took place from November 11 to December 6, 1914, near the city of Łódź in Poland. It was fought between the German Ninth Army and the Russian First, Second, and Fifth Armies, in harsh winter conditions.

Background

By September 1914 the Russians had defeated the Austro-Hungarians in the Battle of Galicia. The Austro-Hungarian retreat isolated their fortress of Przemyśl, which was besieged by the Russian Eighth Army. The armies on the Russian Northeast Front, commanded by Nikolai Ruzsky, had driven the outnumbered Germans back out of Poland in the Battle of the Vistula River, although the German incursion had postponed the projected Russian invasion into German Silesia. The Russian high command considered how to capitalize on their recent successes. Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich favored an offensive into East Prussia, while his Chief of Staff, Mikhail Alekseev, favored an invasion of Silesia, as soon as they had repaired the extensive damage the Germans had done to the roads and railways on the Polish side of the border.
On 1 November, Paul von Hindenburg was appointed commander of the two German armies on the Eastern Front. His Eighth Army was defending East Prussia. It was withdrawn from the frontier to occupy a defensive line. The Russians followed, attacking the line and re-occupying the eastern parts of the province, so its inhabitants fled once again. Hindenburg's Ninth Army, under General August von Mackensen, was on the border between Poland and Silesia. Intercepted, decoded Russian wireless messages revealed that Silesia would be invaded on 14 November. Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided not to meet the attack head-on, but to seize the initiative by shifting their Ninth Army north by railway to the border south of the German fortress at Thorn, where they would be reinforced with two corps transferred from Eighth Army. The enlarged Ninth Army would then attack the Russian right flank. In ten days Ninth Army was moved north by running 80 trains every day. Conrad von Hotzendorf, the Austrian commander, transferred the Austrian Second Army from the Carpathians to take over the German Ninth Army's former position.
General Nikolai Ruzsky had recently assumed command of the Russian Northwest Army Group defending Warsaw. Ruzsky had under his command General Paul von Rennenkampf's Russian First Army, most of which was on the right bank of the Vistula River; only one corps was on the left bank. Ruzsky also directed the Russian Second Army, under General Scheidemann, which was positioned in front of the city of Łódź.
Both armies were still in summer clothing, and the Russians were short of artillery ammunition.

Central Powers Forces6 Weltkrieg 459 ff.

- Gen. Ruzsky
The Russians had no inkling that the Germans had moved north, so they were stunned on November 11 when Mackensen's German Ninth Army struck V Siberia Corps of Rennenkampf's First Army, his only unit on the left bank of the Vistula. The Siberians were routed; 12,000 were taken prisoner. The Siberians were unable to dig effective defensive positions because they had few shovels and the ground froze at night. The Germans were forcing open a corridor between Łódź and Warsaw, creating a gap between the Russian First and Second Armies. Scheidemann's Russian Second Army retreated eastward towards Łódź, they were threatened with encirclement. Rennenkampf wanted to support V Siberia Corps by moving more men across the Vistula, but Ruzsky suspected that the target was Warsaw, so First Army remained in place.
Grand Duke Nicholas's primary objective was saving Second Army and avoiding a repeat of the disaster at Tannenberg. On 16 November he ordered Wenzel von Plehve's Russian Fifth Army to abandon the proposed offensive into Silesia and to move northward towards Łódź; they marched in only two days. As soon as Hindenburg saw the transcript of this order, he knew that his maneuver had succeeded. Now seven Russian corps were defending the city. Plehve smashed into Mackensen's right flank on November 18 in bitter winter conditions. German casualties were 35,000, while Russian losses were 70,000 plus 25,000 prisoners and 79 guns.
Hindenburg summed it up: "In its rapid changes from attack to defense, enveloping to being enveloped, breaking through to being broken through, this struggle reveals a most confusing picture on both sides. A picture which in its mounting ferocity exceeded all the battles that had previously been fought on the Eastern front!" The Polish winter bought a lull to the major fighting. A Russian invasion of Silesia must wait for spring. By this time, the Russians feared the German army, which seemed to appear from nowhere and to win despite substantial odds against them, while the Germans regarded the Russian army with "increasing disdain." Hindenburg and Ludendorff were convinced that if sufficient troops were transferred from the Western Front, they could force the Russians out of the war.