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Updated: May 5, 2025
Between Tuchow and Olpiny, the Mountain Dobrotyn formed one of the chief defensive positions, being 1,800 feet high and thickly covered with woods. Southward, the Lipie Mountain, about 1,400 feet, formed another strong point. Just below Biecz, close to the road and railroad leading to Gorlice, a mountain of 1,225 feet, called Wilszak, is the strategical key to the valley of the lower Ropa.
By pushing on to Dembica and Rzeszow, along which route assistance could otherwise have been sent to the Russians, Von Mackensen opened a wide triangle into Western Galicia, by drawing an almost horizontal line from Gorlice to Radymno, between Jaroslav and Przemysl, and from there perpendicular down to the Uzsok Pass.
This victory was won at the Battle of the Dunajec named Gorlice by the Germans which may well rank with the Marne as the second great struggle of the war, since it saved Austria, brought Russia to the edge of ruin and wholly transformed the horizons of the conflict.
Under cover of this fire, to which the Russians could make little reply, the Biala was crossed, Ciezkowice and Gorlice were captured, and Dmitrieff's line was broken; on the 2nd his army was in full retreat to the Wisloka, twenty miles back in his rear, where no trenches had been dug, and there was little hope of checking the Germans.
The Thirty-ninth Hungarian Division, now incorporated in the Eleventh German Army under the direct command of Von Mackensen himself, had advanced from Grybow via Gorlice on the Biecz railway line, and were making a strong attack on the Russian positions on Wilczak Mountain with a tremendous concentration of artillery.
The front extended across the frontier into western Galicia and joined on to the right wing of Dmitrieff's Dunajec-Biala front, which was shattered between Otfinow and Gorlice.
The right wing of Von Mackensen's army, which had smashed the Russian front around Gorlice, rapidly moved east in an almost straight line to reach the Dukla Pass and cut off the retreat of the Russian troops stationed south of the range between Zboro and Nagy Polena, in northwest Hungary.
Whatever had remained of the town of Gorlice in the shape of buildings or human beings was meanwhile being wiped out by a merciless spray of shells. Being the center or an important oil district, Gorlice possessed oil wells, great refineries, and a sulphuric-acid factory.
On Sunday, May 2, 1915, the Austro-German armies pierced the Dunajec-Biala line in several places, and by nightfall the Russians were retreating to their last hope the line of the Wisloka. The operations round Gorlice on that day resulted in breaking the Russian defenses to a depth of over two miles on a front of ten or eleven miles. Mr.
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