Who won the Battle of the Bzura?
Germany won the Battle of the Bzura. The Museum of Polish History dates its start to 9 September 1939, when the Polish attack began, while the IPN historian Bartosz Janczak counts it from 8 September, when the attack was approved, to 18 or 22 September. It was the largest battle of the German invasion of Poland. General Tadeusz Kutrzeba's Poznań Army, with General Władysław Bortnowski's Pomorze Army, struck the flank of the German 8th Army and at first drove it back about 20 km. Germany then turned much of its strength against them, and most of the Polish force was destroyed or captured, though tens of thousands fought through to Warsaw. It was the only large Polish counteroffensive of the campaign.4
On 9 September 1939 the leading German panzers were already at the gates of Warsaw. Behind them, along the Bzura river west of the capital, the German 8th Army was marching east with its flank open, certain that the Polish armies of the west had fled beyond the Vistula. They had not. That afternoon three Polish infantry divisions and two cavalry brigades burst across the Bzura into the German flank, and for a few days the whole German plan for Poland was thrown into doubt.5
Two armies left behind
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September from three directions. Army Group South under Gerd von Rundstedt, with Johannes Blaskowitz's 8th Army and Walter von Reichenau's 10th Army, drove from Silesia toward Łódź and Warsaw, while Army Group North cut across Pomerania. Poland's plan was to fight close to its borders and hold on until France and Britain struck in the west.6
The Poznań Army of General Tadeusz Kutrzeba stood in Greater Poland, between the German pincers. It was barely touched in the first days. On 2 September its Wielkopolska Cavalry Brigade even raided across the border and attacked Wschowa. But as the armies on either side gave way, the Poznań Army fell back east in good order, and on its way it met the divisions of General Władysław Bortnowski's Pomorze Army, mauled in the frontier battles but still able to fight. The Germans, the Museum of Polish History notes, ignored the Poznań Army, convinced it had already withdrawn beyond the Vistula.7
Armies and commanders
Together the two armies counted about 200,000 men, or about 220,000 by the Polish Army Museum's count, with few tanks and aircraft. Whether Bortnowski was formally under his orders remains unclear; no document confirming it has been found.8
Facing them were the German 8th Army and, as the battle grew, most of the 10th Army. The Polish Army Museum puts the German troops who fought in the battle itself at about 440,000.9
Phase one: the blow at Stryków
According to Janczak, Kutrzeba received approval for the attack on 8 September from General Wacław Stachiewicz, the Commander-in-Chief's chief of staff; on the afternoon of 9 September General Edmund Knoll-Kownacki's operational group, the 14th, 17th and 25th Infantry Divisions, struck south across the Bzura between Łęczyca and Piątek toward Stryków. The Wielkopolska Cavalry Brigade under General Roman Abraham and the Podolska Cavalry Brigade covered its wings. The blow fell on the German 30th Infantry Division, whose commander, General Kurt von Briesen, was wounded. German air reconnaissance had missed the Polish concentration completely.10
The Poles advanced about 20 km.11
The Germans turn
The attack forced the German command to change its plans. Divisions were rushed back from the Warsaw front and from reserve: corps of the 8th Army and the main body of the 10th Army, including the armored XVI Corps from outside Warsaw. Hitler himself came to this sector of the front, worried that the Poles might also fall on the rear of the 10th Army. In the end the Wehrmacht committed about a third of the forces it used in Poland to the Bzura.12
From 13 September the Luftwaffe was over the battlefield in mass. Polish fighters had ceased to exist days before. Kutrzeba wrote later that he still believed in a promised air relief, not knowing how close to catastrophe Poland's general situation already was.13
Phase two: Łowicz and Sochaczew
Facing growing odds, Kutrzeba halted the drive south on 12 September and planned to break through toward Warsaw instead, first via Łowicz and Skierniewice, while the Poznań Army regrouped toward the crossings at Sochaczew. On 14 September the Pomorze Army's 4th, 16th and 26th Infantry Divisions attacked and made progress, but on news that German armor was coming from Warsaw, Bortnowski broke off the attack and pulled his divisions back behind the Bzura. The order remains controversial. Bołtuć recalled that the forward troops crossed the river, were not supported and fell back in chaos.14
Part of the Poznań Army forced its way over the Bzura against German armor; the rest was cut off.15
Phase three: the pocket
By 16 September the Germans had massed about 800 tanks and 300 aircraft and went over to the counterattack. The Polish divisions were squeezed into a narrowing pocket between the Bzura and the Vistula. On the night of 17 to 18 September the main body of the Poznań Army tried once more to break through, but the German counterstroke crushed the Polish troops into a small area, and bombers and artillery pounded them all day. After two more days, with ammunition, medicine and food gone, the units surrendered.16
Three Polish generals were killed: Franciszek Wład, Stanisław Grzmot-Skotnicki and Mikołaj Bołtuć. Bortnowski and over 100,000 soldiers were taken prisoner.17
Through the Kampinos Forest
Not everyone was trapped. Kutrzeba and his staff got through to Warsaw, the Museum of Polish History records, with Generals Knoll-Kownacki and Tokarzewski, General Abraham's cavalry and the remnants of the 15th and 25th Infantry Divisions.18
Estimates of how many reached the capital range from about 30,000, according to Polish Radio, to about 50,000, according to the Museum of Polish History. They joined the defense of Warsaw. On 28 September Kutrzeba, now deputy commander of the Warsaw Army, signed the city's capitulation with Blaskowitz, and he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.19
Why the Bzura mattered
The Bzura was lost, and both Polish armies were destroyed. But until the end of 1941 it remained the only offensive anyone had launched against the Wehrmacht on this scale. It disrupted the German drive to the Vistula, delayed the attack on Warsaw and lengthened the capital's defense, and for a time it kept German armored and motorized divisions from supporting the southern wing of Army Group South. Polish Radio quotes Erich von Manstein calling it the largest close-combat battle of the Polish campaign.20
Kutrzeba himself, in his historical sketch of the battle, asked future officers walking past the soldiers' graves along the Bzura to remember that there is no victory without battle, and that the men lying there had tried to carry out the impossible duty of defending Poland in 1939.21
Any hope of holding out in the southeast died on 17 September, when the Soviet Union invaded from the east with over 450,000 troops, and Warsaw gave up ten days later: on 27 September the fighting in the city stopped and Kutrzeba agreed the terms of capitulation with Blaskowitz, and on 28 September the two generals signed it. The campaign's last battle was still to come, at Kock; one of its rare victories had been won east of the capital, at Kałuszyn.22› Soviet invasion of Poland, 1939
Memory and museums
The battle is also known as the Battle of Kutno. In Kutno the Museum of the Battle of the Bzura, run by the town's Regional Museum, shows mementos, photographs, weapons and uniforms of the soldiers who fought there. In Poznań, the Poznań Army Museum, a branch of the Wielkopolska Museum of Independence in the Citadel Park, tells the army's story and Kutrzeba's, with many exhibits from the Bzura. Soldiers of the two armies lie in war cemeteries along the river and in the Kampinos Forest.23
For the wider picture, see the greatest battles in Polish history and the greatest battles of World War II.
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