The White Eagle Takes Flight
A Poland AAR
Prelude IV- Miracle
The opening shots of the Battle of 2nd Grodno, later to be renamed the
Miracle at the Neman, were fired not from either of the opposing forces’ innumerable ground units, but from war machines soaring in the skies above. It was the true horror of modern technology—combat airplanes, humming thousands of feet above ground, shooting their machine guns and dropping their bombs, causing unforeseen havoc on the battlefield that was to be below. Both sides employed a large percentage of their still-infant air forces (in Poland’s case, the entirety of it) over Grodno, and for three days, while both nations’ invading armies sat and waiting, a war of attrition in the skies was fought.
The official Battle of 2nd Grodno opened up after many long hours of air raids and weak ground attacks on the near-deserted streets of Grodno itself, with the opening moves starting late on the night of February 24th. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, mockingly called “Napoleon” by his uninspired troops, had deployed his armies on the vacant side of the Neman, opposite the actual Grodno city limits, in fear of a Russian strike. He had deceived the Russian army through his use of aircraft; by attacking the flanks of the city, not only had he done some damage to potential Russian strong points but also gained valuable surveillance of the area and gave Tukhachevsky that he would be crossing the river to the far left or right of the City. Under cover of Polish Artillery, mostly confiscated from the second-hand Austrian guns supplied to the West Ukrainians, the 4th Army (once commanded by Belarussian-exile Jan Sierada), numbering in the 20,000’s, crossed the Neman in a full-scale, midnight attack on the Russian center. To the Poles surprise, the landing zone was completely deserted.
The entirety of the Polish Air Force was concentrated at Grodno
A stronghold was set up as Polish defenses were erected in the infiltration zone. Soon, a large block of Tokarzewski’s own forces, the 6th, filed in, and by the morning, atleast 80% of the Polish Army under “Napoleon” had crossed into Grodno in the code-named “Sierada Zone”. Perhaps a bit too late, Tokarzewski realized that the Russians had laid a trap for the Poles, just as Kowalski had for the Reds in the Battle of 1st Grodno. Skirmishes at the edges of the Polish infiltration began at about 10:00 AM on the 25th, with a massive Red artillery presence completely devastating what was once South Grodno. Casualties were high for both sides, and, by evening, neither nation had gained any head way. By cover of night (with light fighting still continuing), 40,000 Poles were evacuated, leaving the Polish presence in Grodno at a good 8 ½ divisons, while the Russian army continued to grow in strength and numbers in an attempt to repel the landing force.
The night of the 25th, a squadron of French-trained Commandos, once under the guidance of General Haller, landed far behind enemy lines well to the north of Grodno. They succeeded in personally raiding a Russian air field, destroying atleast half of the fighters present in the initial air battle over the city.
With air supremacy evident, Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski revised his strategy. It was determined that the next morning, only three and a half divisions were to be deployed over the river in the landing point within Grodno. He devoted six and a half divisions to flanking the building Russian presence in the south of the city, where the Polish intelligence presumed that Tukhachevsky was attempting to rout the landed divisions by simply overwhelming them with numbers. This was not far from the truth—young Mikhail had gotten a bit too ambitious and was determined to “kill and push the Polish straight into the Neman!” Perhaps, historians agree, that he devoted a bit too many troops to flushing out the invaders.
The morning of the 26th, a new front was opened up, as two divisions of the Polish 1st Legion erupted into battle on the Upper West Neman, quickly routing streams of reinforcements bound for the Russian pile-up in the South. The Polish Air Force went up and accurately reported ground movements to Tokarzewski’s HQ. By noon, another three and a half divisions were deployed on the Upper East Neman, though, it was not as successful as the initial deployment from earlier in the morning.
The Battle of 2nd Grodno
By that time Tukhachevsky must have realized what kind of a trap he was in. He had devoted a good three quarters of his force to battling back the Polish Pocket at Sierada, and now, there was a considerable chance that his troops would be cut off entirely. He sent up the Air force in a proposed wave of semi-suicidal attacks that would cripple the Polish advances on his flanks and would allow him more time to withdraw his troops from the slaughter grounds that were now the Sierada Zone.
The morning of the 27th, good news had arrived: Piłsudski was three days away. With him was 15,000 Polish Cavaliers, the Hussars—not used in battle since the days of the Commonwealth and its subsequent partition some century ago. Kowalski, too, had sent a reply to the plea for help that had arrived this day; his message, however, only told the amateur general to handle it himself.
Practically both armies had become immobile on this third straight day of pitched ground battle. The deep Polish penetrations on the Russian flanks had been reduced to little less than a lost expeditionary force, wandering the streets of Grodno aimlessly, searching for supply lines to raid. At the Sierada Zone, both forces had dug in and had withdrawn enough troops to make it more resembling the tight-knit trench warfare that had been fought over the terrain only years before.
The next two days little to no progress was made. Tukhachevsky received word from his HQ that no reinforcements were available—he was on his own. Apparently, the Polish war had lost some priority in the wake of Soviet advances and the emerging threat of the Whites under Grand Duke Nicholas, Denikin, and Wrangel had been restored atop the “greatest enemy” list.
It would be March 1st (1920 was a leap year), as the sun rose on the horizon, that the Polish Hussars would arrive, to relieve the doughboys in the trenches. Gloriously, Jozef Piłsudski lead a full-scale attack on the Russian lines, virtually risking all of the available divisions on a single, crushing charge, straight at the enemy. And, through a set of events only explained by sheer divine intervention, the Red Army was completely routed. It was a miracle…The Miracle at the Neman.
It took a month to count the bodies and it would be years before Grodno was rebuilt and re-inhabited to its extent before the great battle.
In the end, the Poles would see some 25,000 casualties. The Russians—three times that number.
Tukhachevsky left with a completely battered army and returned home to Moscow, where he was promptly executed for his unreliability and his unforgivable waste of Russian lives.
Lenin, ashamed, brokered for peace immediately.
Vladimir Illych Lenin, Communist protégé
The ensuing armistice was known as the
Peace of Kiev. Representatives from the original Warsaw Conference from a year earlier (minus Sierada, of course), joined a league of Soviet ambassadors featuring Vladimir Lenin himself in a two-week set of meetings that would conclude the Polish-Bolshevik War. No treaty was signed—no, the two nations were far too proud for that. Piłsudski pushed for complete annexation to Poland of all the lands to the Dneiper and even some beyond—the Soviet Union would only settle on integration of everything from the Vistula to the East and onwards.
It was decided that Skoropadsky would get his Ukrainian Republic as a legitimate government after all, something that took some convincing on behalf of the British ministry’s part to sway Lenin over with. Lithuania, a Communist ally for a good three weeks in the war, was to be regarded as a “Polish protectorate”: that is, a ‘completely autonomous’ republic under supervision from a rather suggestive Polish government in Warsaw. In exchange, the Entente guaranteed Lenin similar access to the Baltic state of Estonia as a power bargain. Latvia would become a League of Nations-occupied buffer zone between the two nations, a neutral, refugee-centered haven in case a conflict broke out between the countries again. With Jan Sierada long dead and buried, Lenin would not give in to the demand that Belarus be released, but Piłsudski suggested that the matter not be pushed. Lenin had his own problems with Grand Duke Nicholas and his Crusaders. Jozef even commented that
“there will, one day, be a time when the next generation of Soviets looks back at all that is now as ancient and wonders if they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice…”
. Excellent AAR, glad to see it's back.
