The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12): Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12): Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes
World War, 1914-1918
Von Mackensen again came to the rescue by making a great turning
movement in the district of Zolkiev, about sixteen miles north of
Lemberg, and attacking the Russian positions about Janov, forcing
the Russians over the hills and the Rawa-Ruska railway to Zolkiev.
His left wing, resting on Lubaczov, swung northward in a wheeling
movement to envelop Rawa-Ruska. But the Russians intercepted the
move; ferocious encounters and Cossack charges threw the Germans
back to their pivot with heavy losses on both sides. Von Mackensen's
center, however, was too strong, and Ivanoff desired no pitched
battle--the only way to check its advance. He therefore fell back
between Rawa-Ruska and Lemberg, yielding the former to Von Mackensen
and the latter to Boehm-Ermolli, who was able to lead his battered
troops into the town on June 22, 1915, without further resistance.
Brussilov now had to withdraw from the Dniester. As at Przemysl,
the Russian garrison departed with all stores and baggage before
the victors arrived. Lemberg had been in Russian possession for
293 days.
A German attack near Rawa-Ruska was repulsed by the Russians on
June 25, 1915. For two days the "phalanx" rested to replenish its
stock of shells; when these had arrived along the Przemysl line,
Von Mackensen turned northward in the direction of Kholm on the
Lublin-Brest-Litovsk railway. On his left marched the Austro-Hungarian
army of the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand. These two armies drop out of
the Galician campaign at this stage and become part of the great
German offensive against the Polish salient. The gigantic enveloping
movement had failed in the south; it was now to be attempted against
the Russian line in front of Warsaw, conducted by Von Hindenburg
and Von Gallwitz in the northern sector, and by Von Mackensen,
assisted by General Woyrsch and Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, in the
southern. These operations are described in the pages following.
More than three-fourths of Galicia had now been reconquered, and it
was left to the Austrians and the Germans to complete the conquest.
The campaign was one of the greatest operations of the war. An
English military writer thus describes the achievement: "Only a
most magnificent army organization and a most careful preparation,
extending to infinite detail, could execute a plan of such magnitude
at the speed at which it was done by the Austrian and German armies
in May, 1915."
Not yet, however, were the Russian armies destroyed; to the German
War Staff it was not now a question of taking or retaking territory,
but of striking a final and decisive blow at the vitals of Russia.
The continuous series of reverses suffered by Boehm-Ermolli and Von
Linsingen exerted an important effect on the end of the Galician
campaign: it frustrated the plan of eliminating the Russian forces.
The battle lines in France and Flanders could wait a while till
the Russian power was annihilated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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