31 August in military history: the Battle of Komarów, 1920

The Poles. The 1st Cavalry Division of Colonel Juliusz Rómmel, part of General Stanisław Haller's Pursuit Group, beat Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, which escaped east across the Huczwa at Werbkowice. The General Staff's communiqué credited Haller's pursuit group, and the historian Daniel Koreś credits the victory chiefly to Colonel Henryk Brzezowski and Captain Aleksander Pragłowski.

As chief of staff of the 1st Cavalry Division he wrote Rómmel's order sending the VII Brigade away but, by his own account of 1962, kept it in his pocket until the evening. Koreś writes that this saved the division from defeat.

Marek Kozubel and the Ośrodek KARTA anthology call it the last great cavalry battle of the 20th century.

Marek Kozubel gives the 1st Cavalry Division's losses as several hundred killed and wounded and about 700 horses, and says the Soviet losses at Komarów are hard to establish. Waldemar Kowalski puts the Bolshevik dead at about 1,500.

On the evening of 31 August, a team led by the SD officer Alfred Naujocks, on Reinhard Heydrich's orders, staged a "Polish attack" on the German radio station at Gleiwitz.