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Written in Blood
The Battles for Fortress Przemysl in WWI
By Graydon A. Tunstall Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2016 Graydon A. Tunstall, Jr.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-02207-3
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Fortress Przemysl
IN THE EVENT OF WAR, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY — WITH ITS PRECARIOUS 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. 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 Przemysl 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.
Fortress Przemysl, 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 Krakow, 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 Przemysl, 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.
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 Hötzendorf'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 Przemysl. Before the last rifle fell silent in mid-April, the 1916 Carpathian Mountain Winter War offensives had claimed hundreds of thousands of Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German soldiers' lives. The Russians maimed, incapacitated, or captured countless other Habsburg troops — mostly resulting from the futile and desperate Habsburg efforts to liberate the 130,000-man Fortress Przemysl garrison. In hindsight, Conrad's obsession with liberating Fortress Przemysl, though in some ways commendable, produced a tragic and woefully misguided military strategy that almost annihilated the kaiserlich und königlich (k.u.k.; Royal and Imperial) Armee once again by mid-April 1915.
The desperate 1914 and 1915 battles to liberate besieged Fortress Przemysl also constituted the first example of total warfare in mountain campaigning, and the horrendous weather and terrain conditions and casualty numbers have led some European scholars to describe them as the Stalingrad of World War I. The three-month 1915 battle losses during the Carpathian Winter War proved greater than the western front bloodbath battles at either Verdun or the Somme. Although this significant campaign remains largely unknown in English-speaking countries, and despite the Russian General Staff's assessment that fortresses were of no particular military value due to their obsolescent artillery and numerous deficiencies, the fortress played a critical role on the Austro-Hungarian portion of the eastern front during the first nine months of the war.
The origins of Fortress Przemysl can be traced back to the seventh century, when Prince Przemyslaw constructed its first bulwark. A monastic settlement was established t here sometime during the ninth century. When Hungarian tribes invaded the heartland of the Moravian Empire in 899, the region around Przemysl declared its allegiance to Kiev, making it a site of contention among Poland, Hungary, and Kiev. This rivalry provided the oldest and most widely accepted historical mention of the fortress. In the year 981, a date that is widely accepted as the oldest historical mention of Przemysl, it became a wooden stronghold. Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it became the capital of a Ruthenian principality. During the fourteenth century, it was incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, which lasted for almost four hundred years. During the Renaissance period, the Przemysl area was home to multiple nationalities and served as an important trade and population center.
The first partition of Poland, in 1772, brought the province of Galicia into the Austrian Empire (Holy Roman Empire until 1806). By 1778, the Habsburg military displayed serious interest in its new Galician territory and conducted reconnaissance missions in these areas the following year. In 1793, the French Revolution caused the second partition of Poland, and the province of Galicia swiftly became a part of the Habsburg state system. During the third Polish partition, in 1795, West Galicia also entered the Austrian Empire, bringing with it 46,000 square kilometers of flat terrain as well as approximately one million inhabitants. The years between 1772 and 1846 witnessed the development of plans to construct a major fortress that could defend the Vistula and San Rivers against a Russian invasion.
As early as the Napoleonic War period (1799–1814), Viennese military planners had contemplated erecting defensive fortifications along the extensive Carpathian Mountain range. In 1804, construction commenced at the present Fortress Przemysl location; however, builders did not erect a surrounding wall. Encircled by little more than a trench, the fortress remained far from completion. Construction was interrupted again in 1809 when Napoleon conquered significant Austrian territory, including Galicia. The Austrian Empire regained the territory following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which again revived the question of how best to defend the province from invasion. Some Habsburg military leaders believed that the province could not be protected by a fortress, but only by launching an offensive at the outbreak of any hostilities. Fortress Przemysl could provide a central location to assemble and deploy such an offensive operation.
A lingering question concerned whether or not the fortress could protect the approaches to the critical Dukla Pass — a key area for an invasion of Hungary. Plans to construct a depot fortress near the Dukla Pass had been discussed between 1810 and 1814, but nothing resulted because the Austrian army was preoccupied with fighting the French. Following Napoleon's defeat, these and other plans could be reconsidered. In 1818, Habsburg archduke Johann released a report that proposed the construction of a fortress to protect the road junctions at Przemysl extending from Warsaw through Moravia to Vienna. The inspector general claimed that a large fortress could protect the area against an enemy invasion through Galicia by blocking all roads leading east-west at the San River, while simultaneously preventing any crossings of the Carpathian passes, or at least making them more difficult to achieve. Most Habsburg military planners agreed that the first natural obstruction capable of checking an enemy advance into Galicia would be the San-Dniester River line. Przemysl, situated at the major transportation intersection between the San and Dniester Rivers and the Dukla Pass, and controlling the most accessible Carpathian Mountain passes and roads leading into central Hungary, was thus an ideal strategic location. It was designated a second-class fortress and transportation center in 1819.
In 1821, plans were put in place to construct the Przemysl fortress along the hilly terrain extending north to south on the banks of the San River. Habsburg military plans authorized the construction of new entrenchments five kilometers from the center, or noyau (core), of the fortress town of Przemysl in 1830. Between 1833 and 1836, a fifteen-kilometer embankment was constructed around the inner city and reinforced with thirty bastions and gates. Although a series of high-ranking officers had become convinced of the necessity of constructing fortresses, the Przemysl project had its critics, and construction was consistently plagued by a lack of funding.
Fortress Przemysl controlled the roads leading south and southwest with two main defiles in the Carpathian Mountains (Dukla and Turka). Military leaders generally accepted the necessity of constructing a major fortress, but no agreement could be reached about the bulwark's size, the number of garrison troops, or other important details. This led to the creation of a Fortress Commission, which noted that Przemysl's location in the middle of the province provided a major road junction that blocked enemy egress from Lemberg and Brody, as well as flanking northern and southern secondary routes. It would also block egress to all main Carpathian Mountain crossing areas between the Dukla Pass and Eperies.
During the 1840s, fortress planning was overshadowed by the fear of a war with Russia. Fighting such a war required fortified areas that could also serve the army's logistical needs, and until the end of 1846 the Austrian Empire lacked satisfactory fortifications to secure against the important Russian invasion routes. Even then, the protection of rearward communication lines became increasingly important because of the threat of massive Russian cavalry units attacking Fortress Przemysl and cutting it off. Between 1845 and 1847, delicate relations with Russia delayed construction. Although Austrian strategy against Russia depended on this system of fortresses, it was feared that additional fortress construction might cause unnecessary political tensions.
During this decade, development of Fortress Przemysl also slackened because of the continued lack of funds. As a result, the military command leaned toward less costly projects. In 1846, when Krakow, along with Russian portions of Poland, exploded in civil unrest, pressure increased to construct a fortress at Krakow to control internal disturbances. By 1848, the European-wide revolutions renewed the possibility of foreign invasion, and attention was again drawn to Przemysl. In 1849, a new Central Fortress Commission serving with the Fortress Commission (Reichsbefestigungkommission) investigated the matter of fortress construction.
The growing conflict in the Balkan Peninsula between Austria- Hungary and Russia drew attention to the significance of the strategic location of Przemysl as a railroad and road crossing point as well as a fortress that would partially protect the provinces of Galicia and the Bukovina. It also blocked three main tsarist military operational lines. Still, the fortress faced competition for funds. Plans for the expansion of Fortress Krakow, 140 kilometers north of Fortress Przemysl and crucial to defending against a Russian crossing of the Vistula River from the Warsaw region, evolved after 1846. By the 1850s, Fortress Krakow had already become vital to Habsburg eastern front military planning.
Between 1854 and 1857, a workforce of some twelve thousand city laborers constructed a ring of fifteen forts containing thirty modern fortification works which began to surround Fortress Przemysl with a fifteen-kilometer circumference, while work also commenced on Forts I, II, III, VI, and XII on the left side of the San River. Forts I and II encompassed the fortress inner city. The project enjoyed a high profile during this period of activity, with Emperor Franz Joseph himself visiting the fortress in 1855. Once again, however, political circumstances intervened. Although only nineteen of thirty-five planned Fortress Przemysl positions were completed by 1857, the Habsburgs canceled further construction after the Crimean War.
Despite the renewed attention to Przemysl, the fortress was not without competition for funds. As noted, plans for the expansion of Fortress Krakow, evolved after 1846. Construction commenced at Fortress Przemysl in 1854 on the high terrain around the village of Siedliska at the southwestern frontier of the evolving fortification. By 1914, there would be six major fortress works in the critical Siedliska Defensive District VI. These works became vitally important during the two sieges of the bulwark in 1914 and 1915.
During 1861, the construction of a railroad line into eastern Galicia added to Przemysl's importance by connecting it to Fortress Krakow and the provincial capital of Lemberg. It also greatly improved the transportation situation in eastern Galician, encouraging and resulting in accelerated economic development. Ten years later, a line was extended over the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary. Then, during 1863, the importance of building railroads for a potential war with Russia became evident with the 1863–1864 Polish uprising in Russian Polish territories.
On June 14, 1871, Emperor Franz Joseph determined that Fortress Przemysl would be the primary Habsburg bulwark in Galicia. By 1878, several entrenchments built during the Crimean War received improvements, and the first fortress girdle works were constructed. During 1882, the perceived role of Fortress Przemysl was modified following the 1879 Austro-Hungarian-German Dual Alliance treaty. Henceforth, officials placed emphasis on launching an allied offensive against the tsarist empire before its military could deploy its main invasion forces. Fortress Przemysl's new mission became to block tsarist operational lines during a Russian invasion. Fortresses Krakow and Przemysl, therefore, became major military bases for the strategic mobilization and deployment of Habsburg troops, while also protecting against a surprise enemy attack. The chiefs of the General Staffs of Austria-Hungary and its ally Germany agreed to launch offensives into the Polish Sack, the territory that jutted between the Prussian and Austro-Hungarian frontiers.
In 1906, when General Conrad von Hotzendorf became chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, that mission would continue, although without significant improvement to the fortress's defensive power. To General Conrad, Fortresses Krakow and Przemysl would serve mainly as depot centers intended to protect the initial Habsburg deployment. A major problem that affected the citadel's evolution involved the lack of local practical experience in constructing fortress positions and the inadequate training of the workforces, all of which resulted in defective workmanship. The immense cost of building fortress positions drew constant criticism from military and political leaders, particularly Hungarians.
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Excerpted from Written in Blood by Graydon A. Tunstall. Copyright © 2016 Graydon A. Tunstall, Jr.. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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