On 15 August 1920 the Battle of Warsaw was at its height. On the eastern approaches to the capital Polish troops fought off the Red Army at Radzymin, Zielonka and Ossów, while to the north General Władysław Sikorski's 5th Army attacked along the Wkra. The bridgehead held, and the next day Józef Piłsudski's strike group attacked from the Wieprz river into the rear of the overextended Soviet armies. The victory, remembered as the Miracle on the Vistula, saved Polish independence, and 15 August has been Polish Armed Forces Day since 1923, apart from the communist years.
At the gates of the capital
In the summer of 1920 the Red Army under Mikhail Tukhachevsky drove across Poland toward Warsaw; for the Bolshevik leadership, as the historian Mirosław Szumiło of the Institute of National Remembrance writes, Poland was the barrier between Soviet Russia and revolution in Germany. On 12 August the Red Army opened its attack on the Warsaw bridgehead and approached Radzymin and Wołomin, and that day Piłsudski left Warsaw for Puławy to take command of the strike group forming on the Wieprz.1
The Polish plan depended on holding the bridgehead east of the Vistula until that group was ready. The battle began on 13 August with fighting for Radzymin, Ossów, Nieporęt and Okuniew. Radzymin, about 25 km from the center of Warsaw, changed hands for three days. At Ossów on 14 August the army chaplain Father Ignacy Skorupka was killed among the attacking Warsaw volunteers, and that same day Sikorski's 5th Army went over to the offensive from the Wkra.2
15 August
The Polish History Museum's calendar records fierce fighting on 15 August at Radzymin, Zielonka and Ossów, around Modlin, on the Wkra and near Nasielsk. Szumiło describes the enemy attack at Radzymin as finally repulsed, with heavy fighting also north of Warsaw and in the defense of the Vistula crossing at Płock. Soviet prisoners were already being marched through Radzymin that day, as the photograph above shows.3
On 16 August Piłsudski's counteroffensive began from the Wieprz. Szumiło writes that the Poles advanced 45 km northward on the first day alone and that within ten days Tukhachevsky's armies were broken, with 25,000 killed and 66,000 taken prisoner, while almost 50,000 Soviet soldiers cut off from retreat crossed into German East Prussia. The whole battle, from Piłsudski's plan to the codebreakers who helped make it, is told in our article on the Battle of Warsaw.4 › Józef Piłsudski
Armed Forces Day
In 1923, on the order of General Stanisław Szeptycki, 15 August was made the official Soldier's Day in memory of the victory of 1920; before that, soldiers had celebrated on 6 August, the anniversary of the march of the First Cadre Company. After the Second World War the communist authorities replaced it in 1947 with 12 October, the anniversary of the Battle of Lenino fought by the Kościuszko Division. Since 1992, 15 August has again been the holiday of the Polish Armed Forces, marked each year with ceremonies in Warsaw.5
Also on this day
- 1702: Battle of Luzzara. At Luzzara on the river Po, Prince Eugene's imperial army attacked the French and Savoyard forces of the Duke of Vendôme in the War of the Spanish Succession.
