24 April 1915, Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire
General Aleksei Brusilov's Northern Army Front had buckled and taken a mauling, but he had managed to keep the pincers threatening his armies in Poland apart. The Second Army had suffered badly from the German's assault out of East Prussia and had been badly mauled. To the South the Austro-German assault on General Sakharov's 9th Army had been a much slower affair, although the Central Powers had made gradual progress.
The difficulty for Brusilov had been not only military, but also political, with the fate of the 1st and 2nd Polish armies at stake. The Polish had been reluctant to pull back from their fixed positions, but risked being surrounded and destroyed as a field army if they did not do so. Like 2nd Army, 2nd Polish Army, also facing east Prussia, had suffered severely from the German assault.
By early April, 1st Polish Army, in place on the frontier, had been in danger of being surrounded as the embattled Northern armies tried to keep a corridor of retreat open for them when Polish commander General Lucjan Zeligowski had finally agreed to a general withdrawal on 5th April. A screen of fortress and second line troops had held the fortresses around Warsaw to cover the field armies retreat.
Brusilov had been forced to commit units of 7th Army that were charged with defending the Baltic Coast and St Petersburg in counter attacks West of Warsaw. What had finally delayed the Germans was a combination of their own rising casualties, logistical difficulties, the Russian artillery and a counter attack by two Corps of fresh troops detached from 7th Army, backed by over 120 artillery pieces he had assembled that fired a concentrated barrage of over 17,000 Chloropictrin shells, giving the Germans a taste of their own medicine, throwing their troops back in confusion and enabling the line to be held long enough for the Polish troops to escape.
He had managed to reform his armies and shorten his line, although this had involved the abandonment of much of Poland and Polish Galacia, Warsaw now being right on the front line. His own losses had been huge, 61,000 killed, 91,000 captured and 153,000 wounded. These did not count Polish Army losses, which were in the region of 225,000, their second line units still using the old single shot Berden rifle and outdated 1878 Russo Turkish War artillery suffering particularly badly. Another 75,000 fortress troops had been captured or killed as well.
It was not a rout or a disaster, but the situation was serious. The Germans and Austrian had not gotten off scott free, an estimated 250,000 casualties having been inflicted. Thankfully, the Transylvanian Front offensive had finally opened three days ago, smashing open the Austrian front lines yesterday after two days of heavy fighting.
