Battle of Łódź (1914)

Background

In October 1914 the Germans and Austro-Hungarians had been driven back from Warsaw and Ivangorod, and retreated through Poland to the borders of Silesia, wrecking the railways behind them. The wrecked lines slowed the Russian pursuit. By early November three Russian armies stood between the Vistula and Częstochowa, and the Grand Duke Nicholas was preparing the 'steamroller' for a deep invasion of Germany through Silesia and Posen. Ruzsky's North-Western Front would supply the 2nd and 5th Armies, with the 1st Army covering their right along the Vistula. The offensive was to start on 14 November.

Hindenburg, who became Commander-in-Chief East on 1 November, handed the 9th Army to August von Mackensen. Russian wireless messages, some sent unencrypted, gave away the date and the plan. On 3 November Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided not to meet the blow head-on. Instead the 9th Army would go north by rail from the Silesian border to the Posen–Thorn area, some 200 km, and strike the weakly protected right flank of the Russian mass between the Vistula and the Warta, aiming at Łódź, the industrial town and rail centre behind it. The railways ran some 80 trains a day. The 8th Army in East Prussia had to give up two corps for the attack and fall back to the Masurian lakes. Silesia was left to Woyrsch's army detachment, Landsturm and fortress troops, cavalry and the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army, brought up by rail.

The Russians did not detect the move and believed the 9th Army was still near Częstochowa. By 10 November Mackensen was ready, with his left on the Vistula and his right north of the Warta.

The armies

Mackensen's 9th Army had about five and a half corps and five cavalry divisions: the XI, XVII and XX Corps, the I and XXV Reserve Corps from East Prussia, the 3rd Guards Infantry Division and the cavalry corps of Richthofen and Frommel. Russian historians count about 155,000 men and 960 guns in the strike group, and some 280,000 with the Landsturm corps Posen, Breslau and Thorn. Hindenburg admitted that his troops were too few, and not good enough, to pin the Russians everywhere; much depended on speed. Scheffer-Boyadel of the XXV Reserve Corps was 63 and had been recalled from retirement. Heavy 21 cm howitzers, and an Austro-Hungarian 30.5 cm battery, came up from mid-November. From late November four divisions and more came from the west, and by early December the army had 21 infantry and 5 cavalry divisions.

The Russian 1st, 2nd and 5th Armies under Ruzsky counted about 367,000 men and 1,300 guns: Rennenkampf's 1st Army about 123,000, Scheidemann's 2nd 158,500, and Plehve's 5th 85,000. They included tough Siberian corps. Ruzsky's command was slow and erratic, and wireless messages that the Germans read repeatedly gave away its intentions. The fighting was done in early winter, with snow, fog and frost; the temperature fell to about −12 °C, and short, misty days ruled out much air reconnaissance.

The battle

This page covers 11 November to 6 December. CDB90's single engagement 'Lodz' (12–25 November) covers the German breakthrough, the near-encirclement of Łódź and the breakout at Brzeziny.

11–16 November: through the Russian flank. The 9th Army moved off on 11 November. On the left, the I and XXV Reserve Corps marched up the Vistula on Włocławek, while XX Corps swung round Lake Gopło towards Lubraniec, behind Richthofen's cavalry. On 12 November they hit Sidorin's 5th Siberian Corps of the Russian 1st Army, which had no time to dig in, and threw it back; Włocławek fell, and General von Briesen of the 49th Reserve Division was killed. The 6th Siberian Corps, sent to help, was held up at the Vistula crossing at Płock. Scheidemann sent his II Corps north, and it fought hard at Dąbrowice on 13–14 November, but at Kutno on 15–16 November it was beaten. A gap of some 40 km opened between the Russian 1st and 2nd Armies, and the Germans crossed the Bzura on 16 November. They had taken about 12,000 prisoners. Mackensen left Morgen's I Reserve Corps to cover his flank towards Łowicz and turned south.

17–21 November: Łódź almost encircled. The Grand Duke abandoned the invasion of Silesia. Scheidemann pulled the 2nd Army back to the line Stryków–Lutomiersk, and Plehve's 5th Army marched north, covering about 116 km in two days. On 17 November the XX, XVII and XI Corps met strong Russian forces north of Łódź. Further east, the Scheffer group (the 49th and 50th Reserve Divisions, Litzmann's 3rd Guards Division and Richthofen's 6th and 9th Cavalry Divisions) passed Brzeziny on 18–19 November and swung round behind Łódź towards Rzgów, intent on closing the ring from the south. An army order to guard its flank towards Skierniewice never reached it. On 19 November the first corps of the 5th Army arrived south-west of the city and drove XI Corps back over the Ner. By 20 November Łódź was enclosed on three sides, with a gap of about 20 km to the south-east, but the seven Russian corps inside showed no sign of giving up.

21–22 November: the hunter surrounded. From Łowicz, Slyusarenko's group of the 1st Army (the 43rd Division, the 6th Siberian Rifle Division and three more brigades) pushed south towards Brzeziny and Stryków into a gap held by little more than a dragoon regiment. The Russian IV Corps drove XX Corps back at Stryków and came between it and Scheffer. With the 5th Army pressing from the south and the 2nd Army from the west, Scheffer was cut off. On the afternoon of 22 November he was ordered to withdraw. Intercepted messages showed the Russians ordering trains for the prisoners: 20,000, or by some accounts 50,000. Scheffer had about 11,000 fighting men and 3,000 wounded.

23–24 November: the breakout at Brzeziny. Scheffer formed three columns on the roads north, with Richthofen's cavalry turned about to screen the rear. They marched through a freezing night. At dawn on 24 November Litzmann's Guards, with bayonets fixed, broke into Brzeziny, where most of the 6th Siberian Division was sheltering from the cold, and took much of the town before a shot was fired; the division collapsed. By evening all three columns were at Brzeziny. They came out with their wounded, about 10,000–12,000 prisoners and 64 captured guns, and regained touch with XX Corps by 26 November. CDB90's engagement ends here.

26 November – 6 December: the Russians give up Łódź. Reinforcements reached the Germans: II Corps on the Ner, the 48th Reserve Division further south, the 1st Division for Morgen and XIII Corps near Gostynin. On 29 November the Grand Duke ordered a withdrawal nearer Warsaw. Mackensen's concentric attack opened on 1 December, and II Corps took Pabianice. In the night of 5–6 December the Russians slipped out of Łódź with their stores, and XI Corps marched in unopposed on the evening of 6 December.

Aftermath

Losses are badly disputed. The German medical report gives about 33,000 killed, wounded and missing in the 9th Army for 11–30 November; Russian historians give 122,000–160,000 German losses, and Russian losses of 110,000 to more than 300,000, many of them missing. Scheffer's group is said to have lost 70 per cent of its men. Four German generals were killed, and about 35,000 wounded of both sides filled the larger buildings of Łódź.

Mackensen, Scheffer and Litzmann received the Pour le Mérite, and Litzmann became 'the Lion of Brzeziny'. In 1940 the Nazi occupiers renamed Łódź Litzmannstadt after him. On the Russian side Scheidemann was replaced on 1 December and Rennenkampf, blamed for his slowness, in early December; an inquiry later cleared him. The Russians fell back to the Bzura and the Rawka, and the Germans took Łowicz on 15 December.

Who won is still argued. Russian historians call it a Russian tactical victory: the encirclement failed and the Russians avoided a second Tannenberg. Ludendorff admitted the great aim had not been attained, and Hindenburg that his forces had not been strong enough. Yet Silesia was safe, the Russians had lost Łódź and never came so close to German soil again; German and Polish writers call the result indecisive but strategically favourable to Germany. CDB90 scores it a German win. A war cemetery at Gadka Stara, near the main fighting, marks the dead.

Wargaming it

Łódź is the great manoeuvre battle of the Eastern Front, and its scale suits an operational game: divisions or brigades as units, half-day or daily turns, on a map running from the Vistula at Włocławek to Piotrków. The terrain is open, rolling Polish plain cut by the Bzura, the Ner and the Warta, with Łódź, Brzeziny, Stryków and Łowicz as road and rail hubs. What matters is space, time and information rather than ground.

Give the German player much of the Russian order traffic, as the intercepts did, and let the Russian player discover the German move late. The Russian command should suffer friction: contradictory orders from front headquarters, slow river crossings for the 1st Army and armies that do not co-ordinate. Winter matters: short days, fog that blinds reconnaissance, frozen and exhausted men.

The breakout of 22–24 November makes a fine smaller scenario at battalion or regiment level: three German columns, cavalry screening the rear, a night march in snow and a dawn assault on Brzeziny against a dispersed defender who must guess where the blow will fall.

Good 'what ifs': Scheffer receives the order to guard his flank; Rennenkampf moves faster from Łowicz; the Russians retreat from Łódź on 17 November, as an intercepted message suggested they might; or the western reinforcements arrive a fortnight earlier, as Ludendorff wished.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.