The White Eagle Takes Flight
A Poland AAR
Prelude III- The Russian Winter
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Marshal Denikin, upon learning the outcome of the Warsaw Conference, was infuriated. The last couple months of his life had been dedicated to the Crusades against the Communists in Ukraine. Now that this Polish Army under Rydz-Smigly had so easily accomplished his self-ordained ‘holy task’, he had no direction to turn to. Furthermore, him and his Russian White forces were betrayed as Skoropadsky was awarded his government in Kiev and not the other way around.
Pretender to the Russian Throne, Grand Duke Nicholas the Younger, sought out Denikin before the Marshal himself could act. The two concluded an anti-Bolshevik, anti-Polish personal alliance that sought to rid Southern Russia from the “two enemies of the Russian peoples”. They later met with Peter von Wrangel (Pyotr Wrangel, in some circles), who quickly defected to their side and brought with him a couple thousand White soldiers. This new faction in the war, the “White Crusaders”, immediately set up in Cherkasy and would be known as one of the greater threats to the Rada in Kiev for the rest of the Polish-Bolshevik Conflict.
Meanwhile, back in Warsaw, Piłsudski concluded a string of agreements that officially set up the Ukrainian Republic. Skoropadsky was given dictator-like status and the official borders between Poland and Ukraine were set, though, not on ethnic lines. Almost immediately, a large-scale migration of Ukrainian and Ruthenian peoples migrated from the defeated West Ukrainian People’s Republic to the decimated, war-torn territory of the nascent Republic in Kiev.
Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky
Technically, Skoropadsky’s power didn’t extend past the farmlands surrounding Kiev—the Polish Army still occupied the area and a mixture of reeling White and Red troops were still wandering around “Ukraine”. Towns grew in their autonomy as Ukrainian and Polish militias vied for local control of villages and cities across the Ukraine to a point of total anarchy. It would have to wait until after the Reds were completely defeated for the Hetmanate in Kiev to officially take control of the new nation.
On the Northern Front, Haller’s split-of-the-line breakthrough had worked beautifully, as only an isolated group remained centered in Minsk. The fighting capabilities of the mostly-undefeated Polish armies were quickly deteriorating, however, if not for the near entire year of total war they had endured, but also due to the fact that the harsh Russian winter was setting in. This combined with Soviet partisan activity behind the Polish lines led to a series of routs on the established front that demanded further attention be placed on the Northern campaigns.
Two new armies were raised and ready for the fight by November 1: the Polish 1st Army, retired after the Siege of Lwow, was reactivated and put under control by its original commander, Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski (recently promoted to Lt. General). The Second was the Polish 6th, commanded by Jozef Piłsudski himself and had been formed from garrisons occupying Pinsk and Baranowicze. The 1st and 6th Armies were moved to the southern section of the Belarussian Front and had occupied Slutsk with minimal resistance by November 14.
This would be the furthest advance of the Polish armies for the remainder of the Polish-Bolshevik War.
During the Winter of 1919, The Soviet army almost mimicked the success of the early Polish advances into Russia
Mikhail Tukhachevsky was a prominent general amongst the Red forces and, by the arrival of the Russian Winter, had seen little success. Lenin issued young Mikhail an expeditionary force to achieve a breakthrough against the so-far superior forces of the Polish 2nd and 4th Armies under highly-praised General Kowalski and Belarussian-exile Jan Sierada. While the outlined plan of the Red breakthrough was fairly straightforward and simple, Tukhachevsky expanded on the plan and convinced Lenin that intervention from Poland’s neighbors were the only means at which the Western Power-aligned state could be soundly defeated.
With Slutsk occupied, Tukhachevsky set out with a rather large set of divisions from the Minsk pocket and trapped an unsuspecting Polish garrison left abandoned at Swiecany. Kowalski was quickly notified and suspected that the Red Army was attempting to encircle the Polish units from behind his lines. Already being beaten back by the Reds at the front, Kowalski ordered a retreat of the 2nd Army and placed Sierada in charge of holding the established line at Wilejka that the two Generals had fought so hard to liberate but three months ago.
Mikhail’s army soon crossed into the border of Lithuania on December 1, immediately receiving attention and praise from the largely anti-Polish population. The Kaunas infant government had been outraged at the Polish occupation of Wilno and Upper Lithuania and pledged unnerving support to the Bolsheviks if the lands deemed Lithuanian would be returned to Kaunas after the war. Tukhachevsky half-heartedly agreed and proceeded to recruit some 15,000 Lithuanian volunteers in the fight against the Poles.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a major figure of the Russian revival in the middle of the war.
Meanwhile, Haller’s Blue Army, outfitted with the most modern equipment available to the Western Powers, had been routed time and time again in a series of skirmishes outside of Mozyr. In fear of being cut off from Polish supply, Haller opted to withdraw his Legion from the depths of Inner Russia and opted to fall back down the River Dneiper, where Skoropadsky and his liberated Kiev Regime had successfully defended the city from renewed Red attacks. The Russian success during the winter months was old news—Napoleon had taught the world to stay out of Moscow by the time winter began its onset; Piłsudski had not heeded this very important advice.
All of the Polish Armies concentrated on the Northern Front—the 1st (Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski), the 6th (Piłsudski), the 2nd (Kowalski) and the Belarussian-led 4th (Sierada) had been beaten and abused back deep into the Polish borders by the time Christmas had arrived. Reeling troops took refuge in small Polish towns and villages that dotted the disputed border zone between the two nations. By January of the new year, Piłsudski had retired from the position of General and was bound for Warsaw to revise his war strategy.
Kowalski’s 2nd Army received a fresh batch of greenhorns on the 5th and set out to destroy the Red-aligned Lithuanians. While on his search for Tukhachevsky in the Lithuanian frontier, no trace of the man or his army was found. Abandoned and alone, the Kaunas government fell to Kowalski’s “retreating” army on February 2nd. The official status of occupied Lithuania would not be determined until the war’s end.
The Red Army, still on the offensive, had Nowgrodek and Lida from the Poles by mid-February. Late one night in a confused, drunken stupor, Jan Sierada left the Polish camp, later to be found shot dead by a militant troop of Polish farmers. The Polish 4th, leaderless, began to break, fleeing in all directions. The absence of a prominent figure in the Northern front (Piłsudski was in Warsaw and Kowalski was in Kaunas) put a largely disorganized group of Polish armies numbering upwards 135,000 men were put under the command of still-amateur Lt. General Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, Hero of Lwow and commander of the Polish 1st.
Both sides were suffering from a prolonged case of War Exhaustion—the Reds had rebelled against the Russian Empire had still had a long fight ahead of them in hopes of eradicating the White presence from the nascent Union. Poland, on the other hand, was fighting an enemy that was far numerically superior and had just emerged from the ashes of a group of partitioned state, not to mention that they were already weary from the effects of the Polish-Ukrainian War fought only a month before. Negotiations between the two nations began in Kiev on February 20, even as the war raged on in the North.
The Miracle on the Neman
Almost out of nowhere, Tukhachevsky appeared on the horizon of the Polish defenses at Grodno. There, only six months ago, had Kowalski and his ever-enthusiastic 2nd Army marched through and conquered on behalf of the White Eagle. Now, with upwards 230,000 Red soldiers, the Poles were in the same situation that the Russians had been in only two seasons ago.
Immediately, Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski descended on the scene with his combined armies. A grand standoff was set up, as the amateur general built up his armies on the southern side of the Neman and ordered an evacuation of all of Grodno. Piłsudski was notified to arrive at Grodno immediately with reinforcements, and multiple messages were sent to Kowalski’s 2nd Army—he, however, was too occupied with being the self-appointed Autocrat of Lithuania.
The epic battle was in place. It was a complete gamble—if the inexperience of Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski caused a Polish defeat, not only would a staggering four armies be further battered in a large-scale battle, but the path to Warsaw would be wide open. If he pulled it off, however, it would be a "Miracle on the Neman". This was no longer a matter of losing what was gained in the offensives of 1919, this had become a matter of survival. If Tukhachevsky pulled out of this battle victorious, it was widely speculated that once again, Poland would be integrated into a Russian Empire...
