Written in Blood

Graydon A. Tunstall

Description

Bloodier than Verdun, the battles for Fortress Przemyśl were pivotal to victory on the Eastern Front during the early years of World War I. Control of the fortress changed hands three times during the fall of 1914. In 1915, the Austro-Hungarian armies launched three major offensives to penetrate the Russian encirclement and relieve the 120,000 trapped in the besieged fortress. Drawing on myriad sources, historian Graydon A. Tunstall tells of the impossible conditions facing the garrison: starvation, "horse-meat" diets, deplorable medical care, prostitution, alcoholism, dismal morale, and a failed breakout attempt. By the time the fortress finally fell to the Russians on March 22, 1915, the Hapsburg Army had sustained 800,000 casualties; the Russians, over a million. The fortress, however, had served its purpose. Tunstall argues that the besieged garrison kept the Russian army from advancing farther and obliterating the already weakening Austro-Hungarian forces at the outset of the War to End All Wars.

List of Maps
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Fortress Przemyśl
2. The Opening Battles, August-September 1914
3. Siege and Liberation, October 1914
4. The Second Siege, November 1914
5. Limanova-Lapanov and Defeat, December 1914
6. The First Two Carpathian Mountain Offensives, January to Mid-March 1915
7. The Third Carpathian Mountain Offensive, Early March 1915
8. Breakout Attempt and Surrender of the Fortress, March 1915
9. Gorlice-Tarnov and After
10. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• World War I
• Military
• Première Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253022073
• Langue: English

Extrait

Written in Blood
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Written IN Blood
The Battles for Fortress Przemy l in WWI
GRAYDON A. TUNSTALL
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Graydon A. Tunstall, Jr.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tunstall, Graydon A. (Graydon Allen), author.
Title: Written in blood : the battles for Fortress Przemy l in WWI / Graydon A. Tunstall.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2016. | Series: Twentieth-century battles | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016024511 (print) | LCCN 2016025866 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253021977 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253022073 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Twierdza Przemy l (Przemy l, Poland) | World War, 1914-1918-Campaigns-Poland-Przemy l. | Przemy l (Poland)-History, Military-20th century.
Classification: LCC DK4800.P7 T86 2016 (print) | LCC DK4800.P7 (ebook) | DDC 940.4/22-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024511
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
To
ALLEN, ALISON, ISABELLA, GRAYDON, AND CHLOE
Contents
List of Maps
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Fortress Przemy l
2 The Opening Battles, August-September 1914
3 Siege and Liberation, October 1914
4 The Second Siege, November 1914
5 Limanova-Lapanov and Defeat, December 1914
6 The First Two Carpathian Mountain Offensives, January to Mid-March 1915
7 The Third Carpathian Mountain Offensive, Early March 1915
8 Breakthrough Attempt and Surrender of the Fortress, March 1915
9 Gorlice-Tarnov and After
10 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Index of Military Units
Maps
MAP 1.1
Overview of Fortress Przemy l
MAP 2.1
Mobilization and deployment, 1914
MAP 2.2
Military situation, September 2-September 11, 1914
MAP 2.3
Fortress Przemy l during the first siege, September 18-October 9, 1914
MAP 3.1
Fortress Przemy l, 1914
MAP 3.2
Defense of Fortress Przemy l, 1914-1915
MAP 4.1
Situation at the beginning of the second siege, November 1914
MAP 5.1
Fortress Przemy l, December 1914
MAP 5.2
Fortress Przemy l sorties
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Vannina Wurm for her enormous assistance on my behalf. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Benjamin Sperduto, David Beeler, and Philip Davis for their editorial finesse and unflinching willingness to assist in the typing of this manuscript; to my good friend, Casimir Robak, and to Natalie Misteravich for their valuable assistance with Polish sources; and to Robert Sloan for his patience and faith in this work. Kudos to Laurie Andrews for the excellent maps.
Last, but not least, to Wendy for her continual support and to Willy and Nicky.
Written in Blood
1

Introdu c ion: Fortress Przemy l
IN THE EVENT OF WAR, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY-WITH ITS PRE carious location in Central Europe-had to defend its interests on multiple fronts and against multiple opponents. Constructing fortresses was a necessity to hold or delay enemy invasions, particularly because of the Dual Monarchy s extended frontiers; however, sufficient funds rarely became available for such construction. In a two- or three-front war against numerically superior enemies, fortresses enabled Habsburg war planners to spare troops to deploy on all fronts. As field armies used interior lines to defeat one enemy at a time, fortresses assumed an important role in Austro-Hungarian as well as German military planning-strategic and operational.
The numerically inferior Habsburg army could not compete against potential enemy troop numbers; therefore, fortresses had to be erected to compensate for its lack of mobile forces. 1 The defense of the Galician frontier depended largely on the neighboring Carpathian Mountains because fortifications could not secure the bow-shaped, extended terrain. This led to the necessity of fortifying the open frontiers against Russia, which had become a European great power and eventually a potential enemy of the Dual Monarchy over their Balkan Peninsula competition. Repeatedly, however, financial problems intervened, because Vienna had fallen into enormous debt and bankruptcy after the Napoleonic Wars. Fortress Przemy l would soon serve as the first line of defense against a tsarist invasion of Galicia. Because the Russian army had many light infantry and cavalry units, this made it increasingly important to protect Habsburg rear echelon connections in that province. The inferior and insufficient Galician roads and railroads and lack of significant geographical barriers to halt a tsarist advance into the province also had a major effect on military planners.

Map 1.1. Overview of Fortress Przemy l.
Fortress Przemy l, an isolated and basically unknown garrison town on the San River that was surrounded by a series of hills only twenty-eight kilometers from the Galician frontier, slowly assumed a pivotal role in Habsburg eastern front military strategy and the battles against Russia during the disastrous 1914 deployment, the chaotic September retreat, the fall 1914 Habsburg offensives, and the ill-fated Carpathian Winter War campaign during the first half of 1915. As the strongest Habsburg bulwark in the region, Fortress Krak w, 140 kilometers to the north, became significant because it represented a flank threat to any enemy force attempting to cross the San River and proceed into the Carpathian Mountains. During the Habsburg military campaigns of late 1914 and early 1915, one specific objective stood out-the liberation of Fortress Przemy l, the strongest northern Dual Monarchy bulwark, initially under siege in September because of the disastrous mid-September 1914 Austro-Hungarian retreat, liberated on October 10, and besieged again during early November 1914. By the following spring, the fortress had become the eastern front s Verdun. 2
For eight months during 1914-1915, the fortress became the focus of Habsburg offensive operations against Russia. From its initial besiegement in September 1914, after the Habsburg retreat that followed the two devastating Lemberg field battle defeats, until its capitulation on March 22, 1915, the fortress remained the bellwether for General Franz Conrad von H tzendorf s strategic planning. Following the ill-fated battles of Lemberg, Habsburg troops mounted offensives in October, November, and December 1914 in conjunction with allied German operations in an attempt to reconquer the beleaguered fortress. Then, during winter 1915, Conrad, under extreme time pressure, launched three separate, strikingly similar frontal offensives to liberate the San River bastion before it had to capitulate, reputedly because the inhabitants were starving. Conrad s strategy compelled his armies to initiate the ensuing frontal assaults over rugged, snow-covered mountainous terrain in harsh fall and winter weather conditions because of the pressure relative to Fortress Przemy l. Before the last rifle fell silent in mid-April, the 1915 Carpathian Mountain Winter War offensives had claimed hundreds of thousands of Au