A portrait of German General Paul von Hindenburg superimposed on a map of his victories in East Prussia and conquests in Russia. In Prussia (in pink) the Russians took Gumbinnen and Insterburg before being defeated at Allenstein (in the Battle of Tannenburg), and in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes in the first two months of war in 1914. Before the year had ended, German troops advanced well into Polish Russia before being driven back. In 1915 von Hindenburg was victorious, taking the fortresses and cities of Ivangarod, Grodno, and Warsaw, in his Gorlice-Tarnow offensive. Tarnow in Galicia is at the bottom of the map, Austria-Hungary being show in yellow.
Sieges-Sonne im OstenSun of Victory in the Eastv. Hindenburg
". . . by September 18[, 1915] the failure of the encircling movement was sealed.Vilna, of course, was lost to the Russians, and the railway line which went with it, but yet again the salient had been straightened out, and there was little prospect another could be formed. The failure had cost the Germans more than the attempt was worth. The Russians had struck hard at the cavalry at Vilecka on the 23rd, capturing men and eight guns; they inflicted other checks on them at Smorgon and along the line of the Vilia while they made their own retreat good."
Excerpt from an account by Edwin Grewe of Germany's last great prize of the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. The Germans attempted to encircle the defenders of Vilna, but the Russians were able to fight their way out. German forces lost 50,000 men in two weeks in taking the city. Generals Paul von Hindenburg and his chief-of-staff Erich Ludendorff, commanding Germany's armies on the Eastern Front, wanted to continue their offensive, but Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn was preparing for an invasion of Serbia and anticipating a French offensive in Champagne.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. III, 1915, p. 322, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
1915-09-18, 1915, September, Vilna, Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, Hindenburg victory sun