Battle of Łódź (1914)

Battle of Łódź
Part of the Eastern Front during World War I
Eastern Front September 28 – November 1, 1914
Date 11 November – 6 December 1914 (26 days) Location Łódź , Russian Empire (present day Poland) Result Inconclusive
Belligerents
German Empire	Russian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Erich Ludendorff August von Mackensen	Nikolai Ruzsky Paul von Rennenkampf Sergei Scheidemann Pavel Plehve
Units involved
Ninth Army	North-Western Front First Army Second Army Fifth Army
Strength
250,000 troops	500,000 troops
Casualties and losses
35,000 killed, wounded or captured	90,000 killed, wounded or captured

The Battle of Łódź took place from November 11 to December 6, 1914, near the city of Łódź in Poland. It was fought between the German Ninth Army and the Russian First, Second, and Fifth Armies, in harsh winter conditions.

By September 1914 the Russians had defeated the Austro-Hungarians in the Battle of Galicia, the Austro-Hungarian retreat isolated their fortress of Przemyśl, which was besieged by the Russian Eighth Army. The armies on the Russian Northeast Front, commanded by Nikolai Ruzsky, had driven the outnumbered Germans back out of Poland in the Battle of the Vistula River, although the German incursion had postponed the projected Russian invasion into German Silesia. The Russian high command considered how to capitalize on their recent successes. Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich favored an offensive into East Prussia, while his Chief of Staff, Mikhail Alekseev, favored an invasion of Silesia, as soon as they had repaired the extensive damage the Germans had done to the roads and railways on the Polish side of the border.

On 1 November Paul von Hindenburg was appointed commander of the two German armies on the Eastern Front. His Eighth Army was defending East Prussia, it was withdrawn from the frontier to occupy a defensive line. The Russians followed, attacking the line and re-occupying the eastern parts of the province, so its inhabitants fled once again. Hindenburg's Ninth Army, under General August von Mackensen, was on the border between Poland and Silesia. Intercepted, decoded Russian wireless messages revealed that Silesia would be invaded on 14 November. Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided not to meet the attack head-on, but to seize the initiative by shifting their Ninth Army north by railway to the border south of the German fortress at Thorn, where they would be reinforced with two corps transferred from Eighth Army. The enlarged Ninth Army would then attack the Russian right flank. In ten days Ninth Army was moved north by running 80 trains every day.Conrad von Hotzendorf, the Austrian commander, transferred the Austrian Second Army from the Carpathians to take over the German Ninth Army's former position.

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