Warsaw Battle of 1920

a battle between the armies of the Soviet Western Front and the main forces of the Polish White troops, from August 13 to 25 during the Soviet-Polish War of 1920. The Soviet command set as the goal of the operation the total defeat of the retreating Polish armies and the control of Warsaw.

According to the original plan, the attack on Warsaw was to be executed along converging directions by the forces on two fronts—the Western Front (commander, M. N. Tukhachevskii; members of the Revolutionary Military Council, J. S. Unszlicht and F. E. Dzierzynski) and the Southwestern Front (commander, A. I. Egorov; members of the Revolutionary Military Council, J. V. Stalin and R. I. Berzin). The Revolutionary Military Council, the commander in chief S. S. Kamenev, and the front commands overestimated the strength of their troops and underestimated the strength of the enemy. On July 22-23 the commander in chief at the headquarters of the Western Front approved a new plan of action for the fronts and gave the order to occupy Warsaw not later than August 12. As a result of the change in plans, the attack from the end of July continued in diverging directions. The main forces of the Southwestern Front now attacked L’vov rather than Lublin and Warsaw. The Soviet command also failed to take into consideration the fact that the Polish ruling circles, with the assistance of the United States, France, and Great Britain, had succeeded in repressing and enervating the Polish Communist Party, in suppressing the workers’ movement, and, playing on national feelings, in kindling a nationalistic fervor. Having gathered large forces, the Polish leaders had succeeded in preparing a counterattack.

Believing that the main forces of the enemy would move toward Warsaw, the command of the Western Front directed its main forces to encircle Warsaw from the north. On August 12 parts of the Third and 15th Armies engaged in battle with the Polish Fifth Army on the northeastern approaches to Warsaw, while forces of the Fourth Army and of the Third Cavalry Corps continued to encircle Warsaw from the north. On August 13 the 27th Division of the 16th Army and the 21st Division of the Third Army engaged in combat for Radzymin, 23 km from Warsaw. While the battle for Warsaw was beginning on the Western Front, the forces of the Southwestern Front were in heavy but unsuccessful combat in the direction of L’vov. The 12th Army of this front and the neighboring Mozyr’ Group of the Western Front (both very small) lagged far behind the 16th Army, which was attacking Warsaw.

In the battles of August 14-16 the Fifth Polish Army, taking advantage of the lack of coordination in the movements of the Soviet Fourth, 15th, and Third armies, stopped their advance at the bank of the Wkra River and halted the 16th Army at the near approaches to Warsaw. On August 16 the Polish Third and Fourth Armies began to advance from across the Wieprz River. On August 16-17 these armies moved 60 to 80 km forward and threatened the rear of the entire Western Front. On August 18 all the Polish armies began a general attack that the Soviet forces could not stop, because of a lack of reserves, and they started to withdraw. By August 25 the main forces of the 15th, Third, and 16th armies, suffering heavy losses, had retreated to the region of Lipsk, Białystok, and Brest-Litovsk. The Fourth Army, with the Third Cavalry Corps and the Second Division of the 15th Army, having exhausted its ammunition, was forced into internment in East Prussia.

The basic reasons for the defeat of the Soviet forces were the superiority of the enemy in numbers, the lack of coordination between the fronts, the unsuccessful use of the forces of the Western Front, the obvious miscalculations of the commander in chief and of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic in evaluating the enemy, the lack of reserves, and the undersupply of ammunition and food to the troops. However, the defeat at the battle of Warsaw did not mean the loss of the war. The effects of the defeats inflicted on the Polish forces prior to the battle of Warsaw were so strong that the government of J. Piłsudski soon (October 1920) agreed to peace on conditions less favorable than those proposed to him by the Soviet government before the war unleashed by bourgeois Poland.