Who won the Battle of Mława?
The Germans, but only by going around it. From 1 to 3 September 1939, in the first days of the German invasion of Poland, the Polish 20th Infantry Division under Colonel Wilhelm Liszka-Lawicz, part of General Emil Krukowicz-Przedrzymirski's Modlin Army, held a line of concrete bunkers and anti-tank obstacles north of Mława against the German 3rd Army, with about a threefold advantage. It threw back repeated attacks, including the Kempf Panzer Division's assault at Uniszki Zawadzkie, but when German forces outflanked the position to the east, the defenders were ordered to withdraw on the night of 3 to 4 September.3
On the morning of 1 September 1939 the German 3rd Army struck south from East Prussia toward Warsaw. Across its path, in fields north of the small town of Mława, Polish soldiers waited in bunkers that had been poured only weeks before. At about four o'clock a battalion commander was told that German infantry and horsemen had crossed the border, and the answer that came back was one word: “Fire.”4
The road to Warsaw
The border with East Prussia lay little more than 100 kilometers north of Warsaw, and the shortest German road to the capital ran through Mława. Defending it was the task of the Modlin Army of General Emil Krukowicz-Przedrzymirski, which faced the German 3rd Army of General Georg von Küchler. Küchler's main thrust was to drive along the axis Mława, Ciechanów and Wyszków, cross the Narew and the Bug, and close on Warsaw together with the armies coming from the southwest.5
Bunkers built in haste
The 20th Infantry Division, sometimes called the Belarusian division because its garrisons lay far beyond the Bug at Baranowicze, Słonim and Prużana, was mobilized on 22 and 23 March 1939 and quietly moved north toward East Prussia. Its soldiers dug and poured concrete day and night, in three shifts. Work on the Mława line began on 16 July 1939 and on the Rzęgnowo line on 12 August.6
The division's position ran for 31 kilometers, from Turza Mała to Rudno Jeziorowe, in two main sectors: Mława, 12 kilometers long, and Rzęgnowo, 13 kilometers long, with the Niemyje marshes between them. That summer was dry, so a 500-meter anti-tank ditch was dug across the bog. By the outbreak of war only 45 of the 93 concrete shelters planned for the Mława sector were finished, and 5 of 30 at Rzęgnowo; today 48 bunkers survive on the Mława line and 6 at Rzęgnowo. In front of them ran rifle trenches, wire and anti-tank obstacles. On the eastern flank the Mazovian Cavalry Brigade covered the approaches toward Przasnysz, and to the west stood the Nowogródek Cavalry Brigade of General Władysław Anders.7
The armies
By Ryszard Juszkiewicz's count, the reinforced 20th Division numbered 21,012 men and the Mazovian Cavalry Brigade 6,042. Against them came 80,392 German soldiers: the I Corps and General Albert Wodrig's corps with four infantry divisions, the improvised Kempf Panzer Division with about 160 light tanks, and a cavalry brigade. Polish accounts sum it up as a threefold German advantage in men and firepower; the Poles had the marshy ground and their concrete on their side.8
1 September: panzers at Uniszki Zawadzkie
The battle opened at dawn, at about 4:30, along the border of the Mława and Przasnysz districts. Units of the Kempf Panzer Division first attacked the Białuty forest and then went for Uniszki Zawadzkie, the center of the Mława position. The Poles had a carefully prepared fire plan, and accurate machine-gun and artillery fire beat off this attack and the ones that followed.9
When the fighting died down at about six in the evening, the Polish line was intact. The division had lost about 150 men killed and some dozens wounded and missing, far less than the attackers. That night the field kitchens finally reached the trenches, the men repaired the telephone lines and buried their dead, and for the first time the evening bulletin of German radio admitted: “Festung Mława kämpft weiter”, the fortress of Mława fights on.10
2 September: Rzęgnowo
The trouble came from Polish orders rather than German attacks. On the evening of 1 September the 1st Battalion was pulled out of the key Żaboklik position and sent to a quiet sector, and the Mazovian Cavalry Brigade fell back too quickly from its main line. Juszkiewicz calls these errors the enemy's biggest successes, won without the Germans even knowing it. On 2 September renewed assaults were held around Mława, but on the eastern wing the 79th Infantry Regiment, which suffered especially heavy losses, was driven off its fortified position at Rzęgnowo.11
3 September: outflanked
Unable to break through head on, the Germans went around the eastern end of the line, where the cavalry and weaker forces could not stop them. Near Rostkowo they got past the 11th Uhlan Regiment and sent an armored reconnaissance unit down the road from Przasnysz to Ciechanów, into the rear of the 8th Infantry Division, the army's reserve. Its counterattack collapsed in confusion. With the position threatened from the flank and rear, the 20th Division was ordered to withdraw on the night of 3 to 4 September.12
Amid a tangle of changing orders, the retreat order did not reach every outpost. Some crews refused to leave, calling it a disgrace, and when the Germans attacked again on the morning of 4 September they opened fire and fought to the end; their bunkers were taken with grenades and flamethrowers. The German high command's communiqué announced that East Prussian troops had taken the town and its fortifications at Mława “in heavy hand-to-hand fighting”.13
A retreat in daylight
The retreat cost more than the battle. The order reached the division commander at 1:10 on 4 September, but the units began to move only hours later and marched by day, under German aircraft. A withdrawal of 80 to 90 kilometers to the Narew, the Bug and the Vistula, Juszkiewicz concludes, destroyed the core of the Modlin Army more thoroughly than the fighting at Mława, Rzęgnowo and Grudusk. The 20th Division nonetheless reached Warsaw and fought in its defense until the capital surrendered, and German newspapers called it the “iron division”.14› Battle of Mokra, 1939
Losses and memory
About 1,200 Polish and 1,800 German soldiers were killed in the battle, with some 1,500 Poles wounded and about 4,000 Germans wounded or missing, according to the town of Mława; German bombing destroyed about 70 percent of the town itself. Mława showed that well-prepared Polish troops in fortified positions could stop German infantry and armor in the opening days of the war, and with Westerplatte, Mokra and Wizna it is remembered as one of the stubborn first battles of September 1939.15› Battle of Wizna, 1939
The battlefield is still marked by its concrete. In 1964, at the third reunion of veterans, a Mausoleum of the Soldiers of September was opened in a bunker on the edge of Mława where the 4th Company of the 80th Infantry Regiment had fought; in 1985 the Monument to the Polish Infantryman followed at Uniszki Zawadzkie, the heart of the fighting. A tourist trail of about 51 kilometers now follows the 1939 front line past the surviving bunkers, and reenactors have restaged the battle at Uniszki Zawadzkie in late summer.16
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