Germans Capture Lodz

The Battle of Łódź was fought on the Eastern Front from November into early December 1914, as German forces moved to block a planned Russian offensive into the industrial region of Silesia. The German Ninth Army, under August von Mackensen, struck at the Russian armies advancing through Poland near the manufacturing city of Łódź. The fighting was confused and brutal, swinging back and forth in bitter winter cold; at one point German units that had nearly encircled the Russians were themselves almost cut off and trapped.

Though tactically inconclusive and enormously costly to both sides, the battle ended the Russian threat to German Silesia. The Russians abandoned their planned invasion and pulled back to shorter defensive lines, and German troops occupied Łódź on December 6, 1914. The battle confirmed that the Eastern Front, like the Western, would settle into a grinding war of attrition rather than the swift victory both sides had expected.