The famous Battle of Galicia was part of the campaign of the Russian army at the very beginning of the First World War. On this site, divisions of the Southwestern Front fought with Austria-Hungary.
The situation on the eve of the operation
The First World War began with an emergency offensive by the army of the Russian Empire to the west. The conflict erupted suddenly, and in all the capitals of the world until the last day they hoped to avoid bloodshed. Nevertheless, the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary to Serbia did its job, and Nicholas II issued a manifesto on the outbreak of war. In the first month of the campaign, there were not only intense battles, but also an unprecedented mobilization of civilians. The peasants underwent hasty training and went to the front as ordinary soldiers.
To the north, the Russian army launched an attack on East Prussia, the German province. In the south, the tsarist generals had to face another adversary - Austria-Hungary. The Habsburg monarchy was a faithful ally of Germany, and now both of these countries have coordinated their actions against the Romanov empire.
Austria-Hungary was a large country; among other things, it included Galicia, Bukovina and Romania. All these provinces were a dead corner of the empire. Western Europeans knew practically nothing about these parts - for them, civilization ended in Budapest. It was there that the battle of Galicia took place.
Russian headquarters
To confront Austria in July 1914, the Southwestern Front was quickly created. This strategic alliance included several armies. Its commander in chief was the artillery general Nikolai Ivanov. Over the years of military service, he went through a number of important campaigns - the Russian-Turkish war in Bulgaria, as well as the Russian-Japanese war.
The personality of this general enjoyed controversial popularity. So, for example, Anton Denikin spoke of him as a person who did not possess sufficient knowledge of the strategy. In the Russian army, there was a widespread view that, with all his successes, the commander in chief was obliged to chief of staff Mikhail Alekseev.
New conditions of warfare
The battle of Galicia, like any battles of the beginning of the war, showed that the entire military school of that time was simply outdated. The generals were still guided by the principles adopted in the 19th century. However, the importance of new types of weapons — artillery and aviation — was not taken into account. At the beginning of the 20th century, cavalry had already become a relic of the past, as the First World War clearly showed. The battle of Galicia and the horror of its bloodshed was completely unexpected for contemporaries.
Happiness on the eve of the war reigned in all the opposing countries - Germany, Russia, France, etc. Each power believed that it would have enough quick march to defeat the enemy. For example, in Berlin, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 was often cited as an example, when in less than a year the entire French army was defeated. In fact, the Entente and the central powers were faced with a long and exhausting massacre.
Failure in the Polish direction
It should be noted that the Battle of Galicia was not a battle as such, but a whole operation consisting of several battles. Five Russian armies under the command of Nikolai Ivanov began their offensive on August 5 (according to the old style). Several connections went different roads. The width of the front was 500 kilometers. The initial target of the offensive was Lviv, or in German Lemberg.
Separated armies went along different roads to the west. The first serious battle took place at Krasnik, when the 4th army of Antoni Zalts collided with the 1st army of Victor Dankl. The Austrians attacked the advancing army. After a protracted and stubborn battle, Salz ordered the retreat to the strategically important city of Lublin. Thus, the Russian offensive on the Polish sector of the front failed.
Due to failure in the north, Ivanov had to transfer several divisions to the flank of the advancing 1 Austrian army. Maneuvers took on a chaotic character. They were complicated by poor roads in the devastated front line. From the very beginning, Russian troops acted dispersed over a wide area of the offensive. And during the operation, and especially after it, this tactic was criticized.
Russian march to the west
If the tsarist army was unlucky in the north, then the Austrians failed in the central direction. The main battles in this region took place on the banks of the Golden Lime. The Habsburg army retreated. Lviv fell on August 21, Galich on August 22. The Austrians tried to recapture large cities. Fierce fighting was 50 kilometers from these settlements. By September, the retreat of Franz Joseph ’s army had become so disorganized that it looked more like an escape.
Meanwhile, Samsonov’s army was surrounded and defeated by Germans in East Prussia . The general himself committed suicide, unable to bear the shame. This happened due to the fact that in East Prussia the Russians acted through two divided armies. And if one was destroyed, the second is now connected to the battle with the Austrians, which gave an additional impetus to the offensive in the southwest.
By September 13, the entire region was occupied by Russian units. Thus ended the battle of Galicia in 1914. Subsequently, the many-month siege of Przemysl followed, during which the front between the two powers stabilized and was located about 120 kilometers west of Lviv.
Value
The bloody battle of Galicia, the results of which became clear after the war, showed the complete inability of the Austrian army to military operations. This was due to technical backwardness, poor infrastructure and incorrect calculations of the General Staff. The army was corroded from within because of national contradictions. The fact is that in the army there were not only Austrians and Hungarians, but also representatives of the Slavic peoples. These were Czechs, Slovaks, Croats. Many of them were critical of the Habsburg monarchy, considering their native lands occupied. Therefore, in the Austrian army there were frequent cases of desertion and the transition to the side of Russia. The Slavs hoped that the king would not only break the Habsburgs, but would also grant freedom to their own countries.
Of course, this view was not universal. And among the Czechs there were many royalists who faithfully fought the Entente to the very end. In addition, the Battle of Galicia, briefly, took place in conditions when the war had just begun, and the economic crisis had not yet hit the well-being of the warring countries.
The reaction of Germany and Russia
The inability of the Austrians to confront Russia led the Germans to help their southern neighbor. From the Western Front, where the war assumed a positional character, Germany began to transfer its divisions. Such measures became regular and continued until the signing of peace with the Soviet government.
In Russia, there has been a patriotic upsurge, to a large extent facilitated by the Battle of Galicia. The year of the war, all social forces supported the imperial power. When the front stopped and an economic crisis began in the country, the inhabitants of the empire radically changed their minds about the entire campaign.
Loss of parties
The Austrians lost 300 thousand people killed and wounded, another 100 thousand people were captured. A repeated wave of mobilization took place in the country in order to somehow compensate for the gap in the army. The losses of Russia were also significant. About 200 thousand people died or were injured, another 40 thousand were captured.
The Battle of Galicia (1914), in short, showed all the horrors of a new type of war. After shelling by artillery, people received such injuries that field surgeons had not encountered before. The terrible fate of the soldiers led to the start of a propaganda campaign in Russia to raise funds for humanitarian aid. Infirmaries were opened throughout the country, where they looked after new disabled and disabled people. A little later, the imperial family ordered the opening of a special hospital in the Winter Palace, which included wounded front-line soldiers, including from the South-Western Front.