Who won the Battle of Łódź in 1914?
Both sides could claim it. The Russians avoided the encirclement Germany planned around Łódź and in that sense won tactically, but Germany achieved its aim: the Russian offensive toward Berlin and Silesia was stopped, and on 6 December 1914 the Russians left the city. Some 200,000 soldiers died in about three weeks of fighting.1
In November 1914 Łódź, the last large city on the western edge of the Russian Empire, stood at the center of one of the biggest battles of the First World War. Several armies maneuvered around it for nearly four weeks, and about 200,000 men died. Today, writes the ethnologist Andrzej Daszyński, it is the largest and almost completely forgotten battle of the Great War, a Polish Verdun.2
A Russian road to Berlin
After the first months of war on the Eastern Front, Russia gathered its armies in central Poland for an offensive against Germany. According to dzieje.pl, its goals were Berlin, Silesia and Vienna, and Łódź was the center of the whole movement. Germany answered with a newly formed Ninth Army under General August von Mackensen, sent, as HistoryOfWar.org explains, to help the hard-pressed Austrians and to stop any Russian advance into the heart of Germany. The Ninth Army was reinforced by two fortress corps from Breslau and Posen, and Austro-Hungarian units also took part.3
The German blow
Mackensen struck on 11 November between the Russian First and Second Armies. HistoryOfWar.org says he crushed the First Army and came close to surrounding the Second around Łódź. The fighting spread over more than half of today's Łódź region, from the Warta River through Łęczyca and Łowicz to Piotrków and the south.4
The Russians saved the Second Army with counterattacks, helped, HistoryOfWar.org notes, by a march of seventy miles in forty-eight hours. The battle's most famous episode came at Brzeziny, east of Łódź. Daszyński tells how General Karl Litzmann disobeyed an order and took the town; he became known as the Lion of Brzeziny. The drawing at the top of this page, made for a German illustrated history of the war, shows his troops in the breakthrough at Brzeziny.5
Who won?
The answer depends on the scale. As dzieje.pl puts it, the Russians won tactically, because they did not let their forces be surrounded in Łódź, while the Germans won strategically, because they stopped the offensive toward Berlin. On 6 December 1914 the Russians left the city. HistoryOfWar.org puts it the same way: technically a Russian victory, but the Germans achieved their aim, and the Russians withdrew and never again came so close to German soil.6
The cost
The numbers are staggering, and the sources differ only a little. Dzieje.pl, in a Polish Press Agency report, gives more than 600,000 soldiers taking part and about 200,000 dead, 110,000 Russian and 90,000 German and Austro-Hungarian, about 10,000 a day over three weeks. Daszyński speaks of more than 700,000 soldiers and the same 200,000 dead, and compares the daily toll with Verdun: about 9,500 a day at Łódź against 3,800 at Verdun.7
The dead lay on the fields for a long time. Daszyński quotes the engineer Eugeniusz Krasuski, who walked over the battlefield south of the city and saw German dead still unburied in their trenches, their pockets turned out and their boots taken, while the Russian dead had already been buried.8
Poles in three armies
Łódź was a battle between the empires that had partitioned Poland, but it was fought on Polish soil and in large part by Poles. Men were drafted into all three armies, so Poles fought against Poles. Ziętek points to the names on the gravestones as evidence, and Daszyński reports that historians estimate at least one fifth of the soldiers in the operation were Polish.9
170 cemeteries and a forgotten battle
More than 170 war cemeteries and burial sites around Łódź date from the battle. Many were laid out on the very lines of attack and defense. Daszyński describes how German and Russian dead were buried with the same care, both called brave on their stones, and how oaks and birches were planted to stand for the two armies. At Gadka Stara the Germans lie mostly on one side and the Russians on the other.10
Why was the battle forgotten? Daszyński gives three reasons. In Soviet Russia the glories of the tsar's army were dangerous to remember. In Germany the battle was used by the Nazis, who in 1940 renamed Łódź Litzmannstadt after the general of Brzeziny, by then a member of the NSDAP, and after 1945 it became an embarrassment. In Poland it was seen as a foreign battle of the partitioning powers. Only in recent decades, with exhibitions such as the one at the Textile Museum in Łódź on its centenary, has it come back into memory. Four years to the day after it began, Poland regained its independence; on the same date in 1673 a Polish army won at Khotyn.11
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”; John Rickard, “Battle of Lodz”. ↩
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”. ↩
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; John Rickard, “Battle of Lodz”. ↩
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; John Rickard, “Battle of Lodz”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Lodz”; Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”. ↩
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; John Rickard, “Battle of Lodz”. ↩
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”. ↩
- Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”. ↩
- dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”; Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”. ↩
- Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”. ↩
- Andrzej Daszyński, “Operacja Łódzka 1914”; dzieje.pl, “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej”. ↩
Sources
- dzieje.pl (PAP), “Wystawa upamiętniająca 100. rocznicę Operacji Łódzkiej” (in Polish)
- Andrzej Daszyński, Łódzkie Studia Teologiczne 24 (2015), no. 2, “Operacja Łódzka 1914: armia cieni” (in Polish)
- John Rickard, HistoryOfWar.org, “Battle of Lodz”
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