Battle of Warsaw (1920)
바르샤바 전투 (1920)
The battle of August 1920 in the Polish–Soviet War in which Tukhachevsky's Western Front attacked Warsaw and was broken by Piłsudski's counteroffensive. While Polish troops held the attack begun on 12 August at the Warsaw bridgehead and Modlin, Piłsudski's assault group struck north from the Wieprz River on the 16th and split the Soviet front. By about 25 August three Red armies and a cavalry corps had disintegrated or crossed into East Prussia to be interned. In Poland it is called the "Miracle on the Vistula".
In depth
In July the Red Army took Grodno, Brest and Białystok and closed on Warsaw, and Lenin hoped to reach the German revolution through it. On the night of 5 to 6 August Piłsudski, with the chief of staff Rozwadowski, settled on a plan to fall back behind the Vistula, hold Warsaw and gather picked divisions on the Wieprz to the south for a counterstroke. On 13 and 14 August Radzymin changed hands several times, and Sikorski's 5th Army counterattacked on the Wkra. The 1st Cavalry Army of the Soviet Southwestern Front stayed tied to the attack on Lviv, and the blame for this, Yegorov's and Stalin's, was argued over for years.
When the counteroffensive opened on the 16th the weak Mozyr Group collapsed on the first day and the Poles covered about 70 kilometres in 36 hours. The 4th, 15th and 16th Armies and Bzhishkyan's 3rd Cavalry Corps all but disintegrated, and 25,000 to 30,000 men crossed into East Prussia and were interned. Red Army losses are estimated at about 15,000 killed and 65,000 captured. The phrase "Miracle on the Vistula" was coined by Stroński, a National Democrat deputy hostile to Piłsudski, and a myth crediting the French general Weygand with the plan persisted, though Weygand himself conceded that the victory and the plan were Polish. The defeat turned Soviet Russia towards peace, concluded at Riga in March 1921.