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Updated: May 8, 2025
Still farther north, almost at the right flank of Dmitrieff's line, the Austrians effected a crossing of the Dunajec opposite Otfinow, thus breaking the connection between the West Galician Army of Dmitrieff, and the neighboring Russian Army on the Nida the left wing of the northern groups commanded by Alexeieff.
The French trenches were abolished, the French line was threatened, and the German army overflowed south in great force. The possibility of a repetition of the Dunajec success was at this time plain. Worst of all, from the allied point of view, there now came a difference in opinion between the French General Staff and the French Civil Government.
It is true that the Russians could have produced an equal or even greater number of men, but they had not the arms and accouterments. Speaking from safe knowledge after the event, it is possible to indicate with moderate accuracy at least one of the ingenious stratagems adopted by the Germans to disguise their tremendous preparations against the Dunajec line.
The two reasons subsequently given for the dismissal of the Grand Duke Nicholas from the supreme command were, firstly, that he had in the autumn advanced too precipitately into Silesia, and secondly, that in the spring he exhausted his strength in trying to pierce the Carpathians and thus left his front on the Dunajec too weak to resist Mackensen's furious onslaught.
Facing Dmitrieff on the Dunajec front stood now the Fourth Austro-Hungarian Army under the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, about five army corps, including a German cavalry division under General von Besser; then the Ninth and Fourteenth Austrian Army Corps; to their right, several Tyrolese regiments; the Sixth Austro-Hungarian Army Corps of General Arz von Straussenburg, with the Prussian Guards on his left and Bavarian troops under Von Emmich on his right; the Eleventh German Army Corps under Von Mackensen; the Third Austro-Hungarian Army under General Boroyevitch von Bojna; the Tenth Army Corps under General Martiny.
With the center literally cut away, the keystone of the Russian line had been pulled out, and nothing remained but to retire. Ten miles north of Ciezkovice lies the triangle formed by the confluence of the Dunajec and Biala rivers and the Zakliczyn-Gromnik road.
That time was now rapidly approaching, and Von Bojna was gradually squeezing Brussilov from the west, while Boehm-Ermolli was following from the east and south. It appears that the commanders of the Twelfth Russian Army Corps and the Third Russian Army, which stood on Hungarian soil from Zboro to Nagy Polena, did not grasp the full significance to them of the Dunajec catastrophe.
Never was a greater concentration of men and machinery more silently and more speedily accomplished. All along the south of the range, on the great Hungarian plains, there assembled a gigantic host of numerous nationalities. But it was away to the west, in that narrow bottle neck where the Dunajec flows from the Polish frontier down to the Tarnow Pass, that the mighty thunderbolt had been forged.
The failure at Gettysburg was promptly followed by the loss of the initiative, the North passed to the attack, and the rest of the war consisted in the steady wearing out of the Confederacy. A victory at Gettysburg would probably have won the Civil War for the South. A victory of the Dunajec style might have won the Great War for the Germans.
Furthermore, the Germans at the same time had directed artillery fire and bayonet attacks against various points on the Rava, Pilica, Nida, and the Dunajec. These, however, were merely movements aiming at diversion, meant to mask the intentions of the main attack and to mislead the Russians. On the evening of May 1, 1915, the German batteries began experimenting against the Russian positions.
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