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Updated: May 15, 2025
Factories were stripped of their machinery and the railways of their engines and wagons. When Mackensen left there remained in Rumania only fifty locomotives out of the twelve hundred which she possessed before the war.
The Germans rode roughshod enough over Austrian susceptibilities when efficiency required it; but they atoned for the brusqueness by conceding a large share in the spectacular aspects of triumph; and just as the Austrians entered Lemberg first and not its real conqueror Mackensen, so Prince Leopold was cast for the part of the victor of Warsaw.
On July 19, 1915, came the announcement that the troops under Field Marshal von Mackensen, which had pierced the Russian line in the region of Pilaskowice and Krasnostav, had increased their successes, and that the Russians were making the most desperate effort to prevent complete defeat. All day the battle had swayed in a fierce struggle for mastery.
Further Russian contingents had also arrived, and on the following day, the 17th, Averescu turned suddenly on Mackensen and gave him determined battle. This was the heaviest fighting which had so far taken place in this section. Again and again Mackensen hurled his Bulgarians and Turks against the Russo-Rumanian lines, first battering them with his huge cannon.
A critical moment seemed imminent. Averescu, who had defeated Mackensen, was now recalled from the Dobrudja and sent to take command of the Rumanian forces defending the passes behind Brasso. By the middle of the second week of October, 1916, the Rumanians had lost all the territory they had taken, except a little in the northeast.
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.
The Russian front now followed the west bank of the Bzura for a few miles, changed to the eastern bank following the river until it met with the Rawka, from there a line of trenches passed south and east, of Balinov and from there to Skiernievice. Von Mackensen concentrated a considerable army at Balinov and had on the 1st of February about a hundred and forty thousand men there.
Smoothly and silently men and machines dropped into their respective places: All was ready; not a detail had been overlooked; German organization had done its part. The commander was Von Mackensen, nominally Commander of the Eleventh German Army, but in reality supreme director of the whole campaign.
That line had originally been fortified against the Russians, and it faced in the wrong direction; but the position was strong, and when on the 19th Mackensen sought to force it he was repulsed in a costly encounter.
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.
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