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March 22-23, 1915: Fall of Przemyśl
For 131 twenty-four hour period from November 12 , 1914 to March 23 , 1915 , the Austrian fortress town of Przemyśl ( Puh - SHEM - ish - le ) was under siege , with around 130,000 Habsburg troops trapped by a Russian strength of about the same size , determined to starve the enemy into submission . The beleaguered defenders eventually threw in the towel on March 22 - 23 , 1915 , when they destroyed their own fortification and surrendered en masse shot .
In fact this was the 2nd siege of Przemyśl during the warfare , reflect the dramatic “ seesaw ” dynamic that run on the Eastern Front in the opening months of the conflict : the Russians had to break off a previous siege from September 27 - October 11 , 1914 after Habsburg forces came to let off the defend force . However travel along Hindenburg ’s drug withdrawal from central Poland in late October , the Russians returned to the attempt , capturing the nearby fort of Jaroslav , about 20 miles northwest of Przemyśl , on October 23 .
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Now Austrian chief of the general faculty Conrad von Hötzendorf made what was possibly the majuscule error of his career , by tell part of the Habsburg Third Army and the fortress garrison , number 130,000 men , to taste to maintain out in Przemyśl rather than retreat with the rest of Austria - Hungary ’s forces . Conrad hop he would once again be able to lift the beleaguering and relieve the Third Army , while it bond down substantial Russian forces in the rear in the meantime .
Conrad ’s counteroffensive in early December met with some success , scoring a victory at the Battle of Limanowa - Lapanów and forcing the Russian Third Army back about 40 miles from Krakow – but then ground to a halt due to a lack of reserves and supply . Around this time the ignominious defeat by ragged Serbian defenders atKolubaraspelled even more trouble for the beleaguered Dual Monarchy . Nonetheless , Conrad ordered two more desperate attempts to salvage the fortress in January and February 1915 , which also fail at great toll , as under - supplied Habsburg soldiers fell by the 1000 in Carpathian good deal liberty chit clad in the snow and ice of midwinter . Bernard Pares , a British historian accompanying the Russians as an observer , witness an ill - fated violation by an Austrian unit from Tyrol in February 1915 :
With the loser of these offensives it was only a topic of time before Przemyśl succumbed . The defenders had been subjected to bombardment by Russian artillery on a more or less daily basis for months on end , and supplying were dwindle down . On March 13 the Russians enamor the nearby village of Malkovise , permeate the outer line of the townsfolk ’s defenses , which allow them to begin pelt the intimate defenses with mortal truth ( below , wrecked fortifications ) .
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By March 18 the remaining provisions were finished , and subject area was breaking down as hungry soldier desperately searched for solid food . The follow day a final attempt to bankrupt out go bad utterly in the facial expression of Russian defense , which include 30 statute mile of trenches and 650 mi of thorny wire . On March 21 Helena Jabłońska , a Polish inhabitant of Przemyśl , recorded the final hour of the besiege urban center in her journal as Habsburg soldiers ( many of them Hungarian and ill - disposed towards Slavs and Austrians ) began plunder their own countrymen :
The following daytime , with capitulation looming , in parliamentary procedure to preclude the Russians from using the fort themselves the Habsburg commander General von Kusmanek ordered his troops to ruin the stay on justificative whole shebang with explosive accusation , even as the Russians continued to rain shell down on them . Jabłońska described the striking sight that greeted the remaining indweller :
On the afternoon of March 22 Kusmanek lastly sent a message of fall to the Russian air force officer , General Selivanoff , who order his troop to occupy the city the undermentioned day . entirely the Russians enamour 119,500 officer and men , along with 1,000 pieces of artillery unit , though much of it was disused ( below , Austrian prisoners ) .
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And still the fight continued , as the Austrians and Russians get by for controller of the strategic passing through the Carpathian Mountains , and century of thousands of soldiers on each side met their demise in dense forests and snowfall - get across slopes . Dominik Richert , a German soldier from Alsace recently shift to the Eastern Front , recalled the battle to enchant Zwinin Mountain on April 9 , 1915 :
By this point in 1915 the Habsburg forces had already suffer astronomical losses in their ineffectual conflict to recapture the Carpathian passes and release Galicia . Indeed , out of 1.1 million Habsburg troops deploy on the Carpathian front in the first four month of 1915 , over half ( 600,000 ) were killed , wounded , taken captive , or disable by disease .
Typhus Epidemic Spreads in Serbia
As human beings were slaughtering each other by the 100 of one thousand , a microscopical killer was stalking Europe as well – Rickettsia prowazekii , the bacterium responsible for epidemic typhus spread by human body louse .
Although typhus affected soldier on both side and all fronts during the war , the worst eruption hap in the Balkans and the Eastern Front , admit Serbia , Romania , Poland , and Russia . Russia alone suffered three million deaths during the Russian Civil War from 1918 - 1922 . However Serbia was the first and hardest hit in relative terms , with over 200,000 deaths out of a total population of three million , including 70,000 Serbian troops – a loss which the Serbian military machine just could n’t afford . Roughly half of the 60,000 Habsburg captive of warfare held in Serbia also give out of typhus .
agree to Ruth Farnam , a British nanny who volunteer in Serbia , local assurance were completely unable to cope with the shell of the epidemic . In other 1915 she wrote : : “ The infection quickly disperse and presently the deaths were so numerous that in the smaller settlement the dead could not be buried . The only way the dead body could be disposed of was by piling rubbish in the doorways of the houses where such deaths had occurred and setting blast to it . ” In a measure of the Serbian government ’s desperation , prisoner of warfare were now drafted as nurses to help care for the sick . In February 1915 Josef Šrámek , a Czech soldier in the Habsburg forces taken prisoner by the Serbs at Kolubara , wrote :
Unsurprisingly in other March Šrámek himself accrue crazy . On March 22 and 25 he finally update his diary after a three - hebdomad disruption :
Of of course , typhus was n’t the only disease threatening Europe ’s armed services from the arse . Typhoid pyrexia ( not to be confused with typhus ) , dysentery , malaria , and cholera were also constant concerns – although with cholera at least there was the possibility of preventive vaccination . One British prisoner - of - war , Henry Mahoney , report the naive method acting used by German prison doctors on their wards :
South African Victory at Riet
Although the Great war in Southwest Africa involve far fewer battler than the state of war in Europe – around 43,000 South Africans fighting for the British , versus fewer than 10,000 German colonists – it was fully as epic in geographic term , as these low forces range over thousands of land mile of rugged desert , great deal , and scrubland .
After a delay due to the Boer rebellion , finallycrushedin December 1914 , the basic British program of attack on the German dependency call for three expeditions – one led inland by South African select minister Louis Botha from the camp he lay down after landing at Walfisch Bay in January ; a second , direct by General Duncan Mackenzie , from the interface of Luderitzbucht , capturedin October 1914 ; and a third , compose on various forces from the south and west , converging on the township of Keetmanshoop , where they would link forces with Mackenzie .
The first major Allied victory in the campaign do on March 20 , 1915 , when Botha conduce his flock east to assail a German violence holding defensive stead on hills east of Swakopmund , where it threatened to cut the railing line and communications the South Africans would need to proceed into the interior .
Botha hoped to turn the German flank with attacks on the rightfield and forget , but the attack on the good wing , south of the Swakop river , trip up as the South African horse could n’t negotiate the steep , bouldery hill . However the attack on the left flank north of the river evidence more successful , as the South Africans capture the entrance to a fling at the animal foot of Husab and Pforte Mountains , a key part of the German defenses . Another South African personnel then pushed forward along the railway , threatening the Germans from the rear and forcing them to recede .
Needless to say , struggle in the African bush was no pass in the green . Eric Moore Ritchie , an observer with Botha ’s force , described the conditions :
A few Day later , on March 26 , Botha led his troops back to their base at Walfisch Bay , and Ritchie paint an eerie picture of the column proceeding through a lunar landscape painting without a phone :
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