Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War. Ryszard Kaczmarek

the march undisturbed throughout the next day. Despite the announcements, there were no regular ←60 | 61→Russian units in Częstochowa. The day before, a local military commandant issued an order to abandon the city. Therefore, the Germans entered the city convinced about a total cave-in in Russian resistance. Unexpectedly, there were some shots fired toward the marching soldiers of the second battalion in the vanguard. Just after the end of fire – ascribed to Russians soldiers in civilian clothes – the commander of the regiment ordered the execution of two persons. Whereas, the city was obliged to pay contribution. The houses, from which the shots were fired, were demolished. However, the situation in Częstochowa was still unsteady and the soldiers were not allowed to spend the night in city lodgings. They pitched a bivouac outside the city. The regiment remained in Częstochowa until August 7, to be replaced later by the Landwehr’s Infantry Regiment No. 51 and return to the barracks in Lubliniec and Opole.¹⁶⁵

      One of the Poles, that served in Landwehr’s corps, admits that the German soldiers committed violence toward the local population:

      After a week of field training, we marched out through Gliwice and Prussian Herby toward Russia…. following the retreating Russians, because we were the Silesian Landwehr Corps that was to protect the borders. After a few minor skirmishes, we reached the Vistula River and a bridge built by the Austrians, by the village of Józefów near Kraśnik, where we came into contact with the Austro-Hungarian Army. Although the people in Russian Poland were scared and reserved, we could not complain about the lodgings. Jewish people were more arrogant than scared. And so, for example, in Kazanów people rejoiced when we marched in and sighed with relief as they were freed them from the Cossack scourge. However, I have to admit that even among us there were unremorseful elements that ought to answer for the damages they did.¹⁶⁶

      Presumably, the Landwehr regiment was responsible for the August violence in Częstochowa, and not the troops that marched into the city on August 4.¹⁶⁷

      On August 8, occupational administration was established over the whole seized eastern zone by the former border with the Kingdom of Poland, from Kalisz – bombed in the first days of the war – up to Będzin, seized without a fight in the south. The reports on war booty in the first days of the war drew much ←61 | 62→attention in Greater Poland and Silesia. The press eagerly reported on the matter. Only in the first week, the Upper Silesian regiments looted from the Dąbrowa Basin nine cars and twenty horse carts driven by Russian coachmen and escorted by the Prussian soldiers. They brought to Bytom uniforms, coats, furs, and high leather boots from confiscated storages. Particularly valued were saddle horses confiscated from the Cossacks in Będzin and allocated to officers that constantly complained about the shortages in this regard.¹⁶⁸ The officers headed out to the Western Front on these new mounts.

      The troops from the corps of Gdańsk and Olsztyn also engaged in Eastern Front actions. The situation looked different here. Those were German troops that found themselves in the defensive. Germany did not plan to take any offensive actions in the Eastern Front, because it focused on the Western Front and the fastest possible elimination of French forces from the war, even before the full mobilization of the Russian forces. The unforeseen triumphs of the Russian Army in East Prussia forced the German staff to counteract the events, even at the cost of weakening the strength of the Western offensive. The German Eighth Army under the command of General Paul von Hindenburg – who replaced Colonel General Maximilian von Prittwitz und Gaffron, deemed responsible for the defeats in the first weeks of the war – contained the Russian offensive in East Prussia only after a month, in the Battle of Tannenberg (August 26–30) and the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 8–10). However, at that time, there began the sequence of Austrian defeats in the Eastern Front.

      After pushing away the Russian threat in East Prussia, Germany came to help the army of Franz Joseph I to prevent it from suffering a defeat in Galicia. On September 28, 1914, the German Ninth Army formed for this very purpose headed under the command of Hindenburg from Silesia towards Radom. This very day, the Austrian counteroffensive began under the command of field marshal Conrad, which reached Warsaw and Dęblin. However, the San River defeat of the Austrians who escorted the right flank of German troops thwarted Hindenburg’s and Conrad’s plans. The Russians conducted a huge assault toward Cracow and Poznań. It forced Hindenburg to order a retreat of the Ninth Army (on October 27) and form a line of defense that stopped the Russian offensive in the Battle of Łódź at the turn of November and December. The Austrians also managed to defeat the Russians in the Battle of Limanowa (December 3–14). At the beginning of December of 1914, the fights weakened and the Eastern Front ←62 | 63→was established on the line: Great Masurian Lakes – the Bzura River – the Rawka River – the Nida River – the Dunajec River.¹⁶⁹

      In August and September 1914, the immediate danger that menaced East Prussia caused it to assume extraordinary preventive measures. Apart from the mobilization of Landsturm in the eastern military districts, all men that could still serve in the field joined the ranks of first-line troops. The order also applied to the Poles of Warmia and Masuria who had to face fighting against their compatriots for the first time. The Poles that served in the Russian Army were recognized among the fallen Russians:

      A company [in Olsztyn], formed from the survivors and freed prisoners, was to maintain order and prospectively restrain the Russian offensive by blasting the bridges and destroying the railway line…. The company in which I served “retreated” from Olsztyn and wandered around the Warmia district and later the Szczytno district…. We heard the cannons pound, but we fortunately never encountered the enemy. Meanwhile, Hindenburg defeated the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg. The Russians were in Olsztyn only for a day. Unexpectedly, the Germans invaded there and organized a bloody wedding. Reportedly, among Russians corpses, people found Polish soldiers who they identified by their scapulars, holy medals, and prayer books. Where can’t you find Poles, after all.¹⁷⁰

      Such encounters between Poles became routine not only in East Prussia but also in Galicia and the fights in the Carpathian Mountains.

To the West

      Since August 8, the 12th Armored Infantry Division’s regiments successively moved toward the Western Front in trains. The dispatch procedure developed surprisingly well, despite the many military transports passing through the railway junctions of the Upper Silesian Industrial Region. As many as sixty-four trains passed in eight hours through the medium-sized railway junction in Żory, already during the fights in the Eastern Front; that is, at the peak of military transportation needs. It means that individual trains passed the station every seven-and-a-half minute. All of them passed through Żory without delays or ←63 | 64→jams, which only testified to the precision of German mobilization plan developed over the years.¹⁷¹

      Most of the military transports headed west, toward the already ongoing German offensive conducted according to the Schlieffen Plan. The Belgian border was the target. This was where the entire Upper Silesian division was sent. As a rule, the soldiers did not know where the concentration place; however, close to Wrocław, they already guessed that they headed towards the Rhine.¹⁷²

      The Upper Silesian regiments headed to the frontline in separate transports. The 62nd Infantry Regiment was one of the first regiments to arrive at the Belgian border. Having departed on August 7 in Racibórz, the full transport with reserve soldiers then comprised eighty-four officers, 3307 soldiers and non-commissioned officers (three battalions of about 1000 soldiers each), and 236 horses. Furthermore, it consisted of wagons, field kitchens, sanitary wagons, victualer wagons, and ammunition.¹⁷³ The scorching summer strongly heated the transport