Battle of Komarów (1914)

Background

In August 1914 Austria-Hungary's chief of staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, planned a great pincer against the Russian salient in Poland, with the northern wing of his armies advancing from Galicia towards Lublin and Chełm. He had been eager to attack, and had repeatedly proposed such an operation, according to Prit Buttar. On 2 August Moltke had written to him of a German corps that would advance on Radom.

The opening collision came at Kraśnik, where Dankl's 1st Army forced the Russian 4th Army back towards Lublin. The Russians then reacted on the other side of the gap, with Plehve's 5th Army trying to turn the Austro-Hungarian eastern flank, its 19th, 5th and 27th Corps advancing along the Bug and its 25th Corps to the west. Plehve's army was ordered to wheel right and strike what the Russians took to be an isolated Austro-Hungarian flank guard. Each side misread the other: the Russians expected the main enemy mass further east around Lemberg, and the Austro-Hungarians expected a slow Russian concentration.

The result was a meeting engagement. Plehve's corps marching south-west ran into Moritz von Auffenberg's 4th Army marching north, and from 26 August both commanders tried to envelop the other. The Austro-Hungarians call it Komarów, after the village near Zamość; the Russians call it the Battle of Tomaszów.

The armies

Auffenberg's 4th Army had four corps, II, VI, IX and XVII, with nine infantry and two cavalry divisions. Dankl's X Corps, from the neighbouring 1st Army, took part on the western side, and Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's XIV Corps, four infantry divisions, guarded the eastern flank and became the instrument of the envelopment. Opposite stood Plehve's 5th Army: the 5th, 17th, 19th and 25th Corps, with ten infantry and five cavalry divisions.

Figures disagree, as they so often do for 1914. Zayonchkovski, via Wikipedia, gives the Austro-Hungarians 250,000 men to 147,000 Russians; an English-language summary counts 156 battalions and about 470 guns against 144 battalions and 526 guns. The two sets of figures give different pictures of the balance. CDB90's 300,000 against 260,000 is larger on both sides; I could not find what it counts.

Neither side had good intelligence of the other. Both believed at first that they faced only a few divisions, and the story of the battle is largely one of commanders reacting to reports of enemy threats to their own flanks. Auffenberg and his chief of staff, Soós, later claimed a great victory and called for a pursuit into Russian Poland.

The battle

26–27 August: the meeting engagement. Dankl's X Corps and Auffenberg's II Corps attacked the Russian 25th Corps, which fell back from Zamość towards Krasnystaw. Plehve's 17th Corps reached Sokol while his 19th and 5th Corps advanced south-west. A Russian corps on the march brushed past an Austro-Hungarian one and took artillery fire. The Austro-Hungarian left reached Zamość on 27 August. The same day an overreaching Austro-Hungarian cavalry division was broken and fled south. Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's XIV Corps took station on the eastern flank, to the right of XVII Corps, and VI Corps faced the Russian 17th and 5th Corps. After two days neither side had gained much, though the Russian 25th Corps was weakened.

27–28 August: the soldiers' battle. Near Łaszczów an isolated Austro-Hungarian infantry division lost nearly all its guns and about 4,000 prisoners. Around Komarów itself, frontal attacks by both armies produced what the account calls a soldiers' battle, with little for the commanders to steer. Meanwhile each side kept shifting its forces towards the other's open flank, the Russians moving steadily to their right, and for three days the fighting was confused. By the end of one day the Austro-Hungarians had advanced five to ten miles on both flanks and had a real chance of surrounding the Russian army, though both sides still thought they faced only a few divisions.

28–30 August: the flank blow. Auffenberg sent the archduke's XIV Corps against the Russian left. On 28 August XVII Corps attacked the eastern flank of the Russian 5th Corps and disrupted its own attack, while the archduke's corps struck the rear of the Russian 17th Corps, which retreated in disorder by evening. One account says XIV Corps took about a third of the Russian troops there prisoner, with sixty guns. By 29 August II Corps was advancing east from Zamość and the archduke's corps had reached Hulkze. On 30 August X Corps occupied Krasnystaw. Plehve's two central corps were now in danger of encirclement.

30 August – 1 September: the trap that did not close. The Austro-Hungarians were positioned to close the ring on 31 August, but poor intelligence doomed the attempt. Commanders on each flank received reports of Russian threats to their own flanks and slowed or halted. Plehve ordered a retreat rather than advance into the ring, and his central corps withdrew northwards. The fighting is dated to 1 or 2 September by different sources. Auffenberg ordered a short pursuit but could not catch the Russians, as his army was exhausted and short of supplies.

Further west, Dankl's 1st Army was part of the same operation. CDB90 records a single engagement, KOMAROV (283), for 26–31 August, with the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army as attacker and the Russian 5th Army as defender, and codes it as a clear-cut attacker win.

Aftermath

The 4th Army claimed about 20,000 prisoners and nearly 100 guns, and one account has Plehve's army losing about 40 per cent of its strength. Wikipedia, citing Oleynikov, gives Russian losses of 30,000 to 40,000 including around 10,000 prisoners and 150 guns; it gives the Austro-Hungarian loss as 40,000. These figures do not reconcile, and the prisoner counts in particular range from 10,000 to 20,000 depending on the source.

Komarów was a tactical Austro-Hungarian victory and an operational disappointment. Plehve escaped and saved much of his army, and the planned encirclement failed. Conrad then decided, on 30 August, to let the Russian 3rd and 8th Armies advance towards Lemberg and strike their open flank with the 4th Army. The 4th Army, tired, marched south-east across Rawa Ruska and met the Russian forces head-on instead. In early September the Austro-Hungarians suffered a more serious defeat at Rava Ruska, which forced a retreat to the Carpathians, and the gains at Kraśnik and Komarów were abandoned. The Russians took Lemberg and besieged Przemyśl.

The Russians remember it as the Battle of Tomaszów, a name that survives in Wikipedia's article on the battle.

Wargaming it

Komarów is a good battle for an operational game at corps level, with divisions as units and two daily turns on a map from Zamość to Krasnystaw and Sokol. The interest is the double envelopment: each side has a flanking force, and the question is who gets round whom first. The archduke's XIV Corps is the Austro-Hungarian hook, and Plehve's counter is to turn his 19th, 5th and 17th Corps against the Austro-Hungarian wing at the same moment.

Fog of war is the heart of it. Both armies believed they faced only a few divisions at the start, and the failure to close the trap on 31 August came from commanders reacting to reports, often exaggerated, of threats to their own flanks. Hidden unit counters and a deliberately unreliable reconnaissance system will reproduce this better than any combat rule. Give each player incomplete and delayed information about the enemy corps, and let a flank commander lose nerve when threatened.

Key terrain is modest: Zamość, Komarów and Krasnystaw, and the roads between them. Supply and fatigue matter late; the Austro-Hungarian army cannot pursue.

The what-ifs are obvious. A closed ring on 31 August could have destroyed two Russian corps and perhaps changed the decision to turn the 4th Army towards Lemberg, where it met the Russians head-on. A more cautious scenario variant lets the Russian player receive the new 9th Army early.

Maps and pictures