Destruction of Kalisz 1914

[marsyao]

My opinion is that one of the possibilities was that Germans were attacked, whether by Russian regular, militia or Cossacks we do not sure, after the combat, Germans were upset and angry about their losses, and decided to retaliated against the local population, whether those locals had anything to do with those attack really did not matter to Germans, somebody need to pay, it was simple like that.

[egbert]

I like the Polish (Prawda) Wikipedia page: quote "....on 7 August on Main Market Square, a lone horse started to run free, and German soldiers as a result started shooting in disorganised way, which led to death of some soldiers" end of quote.

How on earth could the German army even beat the Russians around Kalisch when they cannot even handle horses .

There is a similar very interesting thread on this subject on the axis forum.

Another Link

[egbert]

Modern day historians from RUSSIA! seem to be interested in this subject also

as written in page 3 here, see article "Curti Lectures to feature

Russian historian in March" about a lecture from Laura Engelstein, University of Wisconsin

[Ladislav]

Bob its sure mistake and yes Ladislav is in origin polish name but its ok. Yes you right 305 mm Moto Morsers was modern from year 1912 if I goo remember and very good in west again begian fotressses but again russian and Přemyšl too in year 1915. When I know this morser are in Arsenal in Vienna. There I saw this monsters guns

Marsyaayo!

With policy of destroying infrastructure beginn gernans in time her first movetment back to Wartha in 1914. In this time was destroying so precise that raiways, routes, bridges by german pioneers so good that every destroy building musted be repare 4 weeks, So Nikolaj Nikolajech with his armies go ahead very very slowly

With regard Ladislav

[bob lembke]

Bob its sure mistake and yes Ladislav is in origin polish name but its ok. Yes you right 305 mm Moto Morsers was modern from year 1912 if I goo remember and very good in west again begian fotressses but again russian and Přemyšl too in year 1915. When I know this morser are in Arsenal in Vienna. There I saw this monsters guns

With regard Ladislav

Yes, I heard of the Motor=Moerser at the Arsenal in Vienna. I may be there again soon and I should visit and photograph it. There also is on display (or at least was in the 1970s) a 305 mm Motor=Moerser at the Fortress Kalamagden (quite interesting, the first fortifications were 700 years old when the Romans got there) at Beograd (Belgrade): I have Kodachrome slides of it that I took, probably in the 1970's, but finding them might be a challenge. So there is no trace of the old Skoda works at Brno, or the old archives? The technology was very advanced, especially the remarkable motor transport system designed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, of VW fame. The Austrians also made 42 cm howitzers which they had already deployed at Novo Georgievsk in August 1915, but I know litle of them, not even if they were made by Skoda, although I would think so. My father saw the battery of A-H 24 cm Motor=Morsern in action at Gallipoli, on the ANZAC front, and was very impressed. Do you know of any of these big guns at Zlata Praha (Golden Prague)? I may be there soon. My writing partner has obtained a great quantity of photos of these interesting guns, I am not pulling my weight in this respect.

Bob

[bob lembke]

I like the Polish (Prawda) Wikipedia page: quote "....on 7 August on Main Market Square, a lone horse started to run free, and German soldiers as a result started shooting in disorganised way, which led to death of some soldiers" end of quote.

How on earth could the German army even beat the Russians around Kalisch when they cannot even handle horses .

Egbert;

I like it!! A varient on the stories frequently proposed for heavy German casualties on the streets of Belgian cities; drunken groups of German soldiers from first-rate units marching at night thru the streets of Belgian towns, encountering each other and then shooting each other down, in large numbers, and then in mistaken retaliation, shooting down the innocent civilians. In one famous case the drunken soldiers even managed to shoot and kill their commander, a colonel or general, who was seated at the dinner table in the house of the mayor of the town. Was it a drunken horse? My wife was a bit of a horse-woman, and she always shot her horse when it broke loose. I saw in the Wikipedia article that Peter cited that the "drunken soldiers" explaination was also proposed for Kalisz. If, at the outbreak of war, one or two companies of a first-rate regiment penetrate into an enemy town of (???) 20-40,000 people, known to be garrisoned by a Russian Dragoon regiment, and with Cossacks sighted, in the middle of the night, that small formation of course consolidates its position by splitting into ethnic Polish and ethnic German components, and then go drinking with the locals and getting drunk, and then, again, fire on each other.

To try to sort out the reality of this incident, almost 100 years after it occurred, we will have to, at least at first, set aside the highly improbable stories, and assemble the descriptions that at least seem to be consistent with other possibly accurate accounts and sensible military logic. I regret that I do not have Polish, or I might attempt to access the sources cited in the Wikipedia article, which may or may not be consistent with the text of the article. It the account in the unit history that the Russians based a major propaganda campaign (which of course be true material, false material, or, cleverly, a mix of the two, always the most effective propaganda - I consider the term "propaganda" as neutral, and certainly not equivilant with false information), one will of course have to be more careful with the sources.

Bob

[bob lembke]

My opinion is that one of the possibilities was that Germans were attacked, whether by Russian regular, militia or Cossacks we do not sure, after the combat, Germans were upset and angry about their losses, and decided to retaliated against the local population, whether those locals had anything to do with those attack really did not matter to Germans, somebody need to pay, it was simple like that.

One thing that I do not have a handle on was the extent of civilian casualties. The German accounts seem to mention them shooting perhaps 20-40 civilians captured while possessing arms. Of course if they did shoot numbers of innocent civilians they would not be likely to mention that. One also has to consider that the German units on the scene were drawn from the population only say 30 km away, and were in considerable part ethnic Poles themselves from the area (I could go back to the death roll of IR 155 and count the relative mix of German and Polish names and get an accurate estimate of the mix; I have found that the one soldier of 5. Kompagnie, IR 155 killed in the fighting in Kalisz on August 3rd was an ethnic Pole, with an extremely Polish first and last name.); I have read a number of mentions of historic friendly ties between Germans, Poles, and Russians in the area. I will not accept the conclusion that an elite German-Polish unit drawn from a local population simply shot significant numbers of the local population, which probably had a small ethnic German component (at this time there were millions of ethnic German "Volkdeutsche" living in eastern countries; in Russia mostly arriving about 1750; in Romania arriving perhaps 600 or 800 years before), some Russians, but largely ethnic Poles, without convincing proof.

It seems that the bulk of the destruction was performed some days after the fighting by "incinderary commands" after a high-level command decision based on at least three seperate perceived attacks on German forces, supposedly by mixed military-civilian irregular formations and individuals. So presumably no loss of life occurred during those reprisals against property. During the fighting there was shelling by some batteries of the field artillery regiment, which would have been armed two-thirds with 77 mm field guns and one-third with 105 mm light field howitzers. We can presume that some innocent civilians were killed in that shelling.

Bob

[Ladislav]

Bob and here is essential question. Why destroy germans town by guns? I think it was in every case to hard. And Bob Skoda works was in Pilsen no in Brno, but I see what was with old archives

With regard Ladislav

[marsyao]

Egbert;

I like it!! A varient on the stories frequently proposed for heavy German casualties on the streets of Belgian cities; drunken groups of German soldiers from first-rate units marching at night thru the streets of Belgian towns, encountering each other and then shooting each other down, in large numbers, and then in mistaken retaliation, shooting down the innocent civilians. In one famous case the drunken soldiers even managed to shoot and kill their commander, a colonel or general, who was seated at the dinner table in the house of the mayor of the town. Was it a drunken horse? My wife was a bit of a horse-woman, and she always shot her horse when it broke loose. I saw in the Wikipedia article that Peter cited that the "drunken soldiers" explaination was also proposed for Kalisz. If, at the outbreak of war, one or two companies of a first-rate regiment penetrate into an enemy town of (???) 20-40,000 people, known to be garrisoned by a Russian Dragoon regiment, and with Cossacks sighted, in the middle of the night, that small formation of course consolidates its position by splitting into ethnic Polish and ethnic German components, and then go drinking with the locals and getting drunk, and then, again, fire on each other.

To try to sort out the reality of this incident, almost 100 years after it occurred, we will have to, at least at first, set aside the highly improbable stories, and assemble the descriptions that at least seem to be consistent with other possibly accurate accounts and sensible military logic. I regret that I do not have Polish, or I might attempt to access the sources cited in the Wikipedia article, which may or may not be consistent with the text of the article. It the account in the unit history that the Russians based a major propaganda campaign (which of course be true material, false material, or, cleverly, a mix of the two, always the most effective propaganda - I consider the term "propaganda" as neutral, and certainly not equivilant with false information), one will of course have to be more careful with the sources.

Bob

Of course Russian would launch a major propaganda campaign for this incident, this was like a gift handed over to them, of course Russian would use it to the full intent, and it would not surprise me that they would even exaggerate this incident to a much worse atrocity than what actually happened. And I bet if the roll reversed, German would do exactly the same thing.

From the war story told by veterans from all the nations, many mentioned they were attacked by “drunk” or sometimes “drugged” enemy soldiers, we should be cautious about that, when soldiers were in the fight, their adrenaline was running high, they would yell and scream, because they were nervous, frighten or simply have to scream so that their comrades could hear them, they made sudden rush, fall down to take cover time and time, faces were twist. From an outsider, they would well appeared to “be drunk”

[egbert]

...Why destroy germans town by guns? I think it was in every case to hard.....

With regard Ladislav

Yes indeed. Why did the Germans shelled the Russian controlled town which was so vital for them (Germans)obtaining intact as a railway netpoint and with artillery ammunition in short supply? Most probably the Russian army was of minor matter and the real tgt was to get the lonely horse finally

[trajan]

Yes indeed. Why did the Germans shelled the Russian controlled town which was so vital for them (Germans)obtaining intact as a railway netpoint and with artillery ammunition in short supply? Most probably the Russian army was of minor matter and the real tgt was to get the lonely horse finally

The horse... I am reminded of that wonderful Communist-era Polish film about the man the fired the shot the started the (Second) War!

Trajan

[marsyao]

Here is an example: in Vietnam, an US soldier received a medal for “when his squad was ordered to retrieve the casualties, they were attacked by enemy, without regard to his own safety, he laid down a heavy fire to cover his fellow soldiers to retreat, even when enemy bullets hit all around him, he never move and never stop firing, and he retreated only after others reached the safety”, later this GI told his friends, he actually never aware that “enemy bullets hit all around him”, he was too concentrated to firing his weapon, and “If I know, I would at least change the fire position”. Now from an outsider, this GI, under the heavy enemy fire, stayed in the same position, firing his guns, did not take cover, and very possible, yelling and screaming at the same time, he could well be consider to be drunk. Actually it was simply what we call “tunnel vision”

[bob lembke]

Yes indeed. Why did the Germans shelled the Russian controlled town which was so vital for them (Germans)obtaining intact as a railway netpoint and with artillery ammunition in short supply? Most probably the Russian army was of minor matter and the real tgt was to get the lonely horse finally

Certainly! The undisciplined horse was a disgrace to the entire German Army, it displayed keines gutes deutsches Ordnung, and had to be severely punished (schwer bestrafft), even if the rail hub was blown up in the process. Without a display of Kadaverdiziplin, who knows how many other horses would become insolent. More work for horse columns, a side benefit!

More seriously, the Germans were planning to push forward to Lotz from Kalisch, and, morality aside, it made no military sense to block roads and possibly rail lines with a shelling of the city center in the vicinity of the bridges; they must have felt that there was a serious military situation at hand. With hind-sight, a more cautious response and perhaps a limited retreat might have been a better course of action. But possibly the troops had strict orders to hold a bridgehead in the city center to protect the bridges or the reminants of bridges and felt that they had to stand and fight. I know that at least one bridge in Kalisz was blown; the German author described the repaired bridge; in Belgium the Belgians usually only blew an arch or two, repairable to a usable state in days, if they blew the piers it would take months to rebuild the bridge. In the center of Kalisz there were three water crossings; first the river I cited, then on the other side of the city center a smaller branch of the river, and then further to the east a major canal. And there may have been several crossings per water obstacle.

The Germans occupied hundreds of cities and towns in Russia/Poland, and I never heard of this happening elsewhere, and it seems, from a lot of reading but also from my grand-father's letters and oral history, that the remaining population generally had decent relations with the Germans, especially the Jews, who often bribed the Cossacks pushing the population east to allow them to stay and hopefully not have their houses burned down about their ears. The Germans found them useful, additionally as the Germans could understand Yiddish. Of course the remaining civil poipulation was self-selecting, people fearing or hating the Germans would tend to flee, people more comfortable with the prospect of occupation might tend to stay, if they could, and perhaps protect their property. My grand-father's rich Russian/Polish friend that he made in the invasion, who I mentioned previously, perhaps was doing that. His remaining behind would suggest that he might have been Polish.

Bob

Bob

[Ladislav]

Bob essential question. Was in monent german gunery Russian in town or no. We know it sure? When yes we in fact havent problem, when no its very great crime again habitants.

With regard Ladislav

[bob lembke]

Bob essential question. Was in monent german gunery Russian in town or no. We know it sure? When yes we in fact havent problem, when no its very great crime again habitants.

With regard Ladislav

From the detailed unit history, in the morning after the night-time arrival of one squad and then one company of German infantry, about 1030 hours fighting started, and they thought that they had several companies of infantry and one MG company fighting about 1500 men of all sorts, reservists, private citizens, and two squadrons of Cossacks. The nearby field artillery regiment sent a few batteries to a hill about 2 km from the town and opened fire during the fighting. A couple of batteries of 77 mm or 105 mm firing on an urban area for a short while would probably kill some civilians, if they were there, which they probably were, but probably not that many, as cellars, etc. would provide fair cover unless you were lucky. If that narrative is accurate, I would think that it falls under the rules of war. Of course the actual story could have been different, but shelling a non-resistant occupied transportation hub needed for an advance (and with German troops certainly in the city center) would make no military sense at all, morality aside. The Germans seemed to have lost about 100 killed and wounded in this mess at this time.

But at this remove one can only figure out what seems reasonable or likely.

Bob

[Ladislav]

Bob when I good remember there was german chilvalry too. I think 6.Ulans. You know from Cassimir Hermann Baer: Der Völkerkrieg? Its 28 volumes. You saw there?

With regard Ladislav

[egbert]

I have a very very good friend and fellow Polish officer whom i know from various out-of-country businesses. He currently serves again in the line of fire in AFG, province Helmand. We write frequently each other and it happens that he was born and went to school in Kalisch. About the Kalisch thread we are of course in contact and this night he quickly wrote me his Polish point of view on his hometown event from Helmand. For a fair discussion I do not want to withhold his point of view. So here it is and he is sorry of the English language mistakes but he was in a hurry:

OK

Egbert - the russian army abandoned kalisch without any fight. When

German 155 Infantry Regiment (from Ostrów Wielkopolski) came to the

town there was no fight. The soldiers started socialized with kalisch

citizens (soldiers of 155 IR. were mostly polish). But commander of II

Infantry battalion maj. Hermanna Preuskera was not agree with that. In

night from 2/3.08.1914, propably drunk soldiers starting shot to

another german soldiers (maybe polish and german soldiers from the

same regiment - you understood?). In next day the maj. Hermanna

Preuskera gawe the order to executed some polish civilians. By next

days, the german soldiers were going outside the town, and artillery

was destroing parts of kalisch.

In 07.08.1914 we had a new accident - the germans soldiers in the

market place were starting shooting to civilians (I have no idea what

happends?). After this the german army starting the sistematic

destroyed the city. Since 22.08.1914 the most part of city was

destroyed and burned.

Germans officially said that polish guerillas attacked german army, it

is nonsens becouse polish hated russians and they were waiting for

germans. In Poland we have a some point of view about this. Some ideas

why german army starting shooting in night 3/4.08, because destroying

of the city was connected with this (punishment):

- drunk soldiers were started shooting;

- the german border police column, witch were going to kalisch at

night was recognized as russian army;

- teh another german column from OPATÓWEK direction was recognized as russians;

- the polish citizen shot german/polish soldier (during alcohol party);

- drunk german officer who was riding horse was starting shooting to civilians.

For shure the shootings created panic - it was the reason of night

"battle" with... we didin't know with who

P.S. The AFG picture from my friend reminds me of how easy you get involved in an obscure situation. Now friends in another second a fierce battle and nobody knows from where, which direction and then the full range of weapon application....similarities? Yes!

[Ladislav]

Egbert yes I have information too that russian abandoned Kalisch without fight. When its fact we have here heavy crime problem because it was guilty of comander.

Wit regard Ladislav

[egbert]

Ladislaw, you are judging premature from your today's point of view and internet knowledge. Reconnaissance then was rudimentary and did the German commander actually had a clear and concise picture of his situational awareness? Also -Kalisch was not left by all Russians. The Russian army left, but Kalisch was a "Russianized" town and was run by Russian officials, police, town officials, postal system, railways etc. They did not leave all! And who knows what went on. Fact is that the Polish population and the Jews were waiting for the Germans in friendship because they had enough of Russian reprisals- it was no hostile population. So there were definitely "incidents" that pushed the whole atmosphere up until eruption. Please reread my "P.S. in the previous post.

[Ladislav]

Egbert I read your post, but again one is russian army and she in fact abadoned Kalisch and second russians like habitants which make for russian goverment. Sure comander must make decision quickly but so hard? And level of rusification of town is duscutable because Kalisch was by Russia in this time say we 100 years. Mosly habitants was Polish and Jews this is fact. How great was power of Russia in this area is on discussion. I agree Polish and Jews waited on Germans.

With regard Ladislav

[trajan]

A minor comment on this, if I may. Whether of the Catholic or Jewish faith is immaterial. The population was of Polish ethnic background (in the sense that the majority language was Polish) and they were in Russian territory (and so Russian subjects). Be objective, please!

Thanks!

Trajan

[bob lembke]

Egbert;

Thanks to you and your Polish officer friend for bringing another point of view, which seems to be broadly consistant with the Wikipedia article that Peter, starting the thread, posted, which is largely based on Polish sources (which we need here), and which for linguistic reasons alone was almost certainly written by a Pole. So now we have a confirmed statement of what might be considered the Polish point of view.

With all respect, there are several apparent flaws in this view of things. I will want to review the various sources before I make a broad statement, but again I will state a basic objection. The general statements in the IR 155 unit history, as to locations of its units, activities, should be broadly accurate. Let's look at the tactical situation. Two battalions of IR 155 move from the training grounds into barracks to fit out for war and to await the manpower reenforcement traveling there from Dortmund. The II. Battalion, however, is sent piecemeal toward Kalisz, overnight, later followed by some Landwehr and some field artillery; the latter would only have attemped to travel the next morning. A patrol of 12 men reaches the town about mid-night, having followed the rail tracks in the dark, then one company of infantry, then a second company of infantry and a MG company from the regiment.

What do we know, and what did the German forces know, of the local Russian forces? Aside from local Gendarmes, border and customs personnel, local police, etc., which should have amounted to several hundred lightly armed and trained men (I am just now researching German forces pushing over the border in France in August 1914, encountering at a rail hub near the border a unit formed of 300 French customs officers.); then there was the Russian Dragoon regiment, which had left its caserne in Kalisz, as it might do at the outbreak of war, but could have been anywhere, and then the Russian 14th Cavalry Division, HQed to the south, whose units could have been anywhere (anyone know the Kalisz Dragoon Regiment's unit designation, and if it was a component of the 14th Cavalry Division?) In addition, there could have been Cossacks anywhere; two squadrons were reported near the train station in town, as they supposedly drove the German unit posted at the rail station away, this probably was not just a rumor.

The IR 155 was a good, first-rate unit. What are we supposed to believe that they did, once they arrived, mostly about 3 AM, in a strange enemy town, without any intel, but clearly every man knowing that there was a Dragoon regiment based in the town, and a cavalry division off somwewhere on the right flank? Reform their ranks from their infantry organization, into improvised ethnic Polish and ethnic German groups, and go out, at 3 AM or 6 AM, for entertainment; the Poles drinking with the local Poles, the Germans trying to chat up the locals with broken Polish? Getting so drunk that they started shooting each other? A drunken officer galloping about the town shooting civilians? (He surely would have been, in short order, sitting before the regimental court of honor, perhaps not for shooting civilians, but for being in a command position at the very tip of a planned advance on Lotz, and getting badly drunk and galloping about on horseback. The idea is rediculous.) If they had behaved that way, the German Army would not have reached September 1914 without being defeated.

I have been studying WW I intensely for 11 years, usually 4 or 5 or 6 hours a day, mostly in German and French, (but I recently counted, and I have read material in 11 languages, and I anticipate that in a few days a friend is going to send me contemporary newspaper articles from a neutral country in a 12th language, which I know I can half-read without a dictionary. In a year's time I read 286 French unit histories {I keep careful track with a spreadsheet so that I do not read the same history three times; thank God most are very short.) I almost exclusively read only primary and documentary sources, and official histories with great caution, have many family letters from the front, an extensive family oral history, have bought and read manuscript letters and a diary from the front. With all of that, I ave never heard of an organized German unit behaving like that, except in Belgian sources trying to explain numerous German casualties occurring at nighttime on the streets of Belgian cities, and now the same proposition for Kalisz, to explain the seemingly approximately 100 German casualties incurred in about a day. (If we look at this seriously, perhaps someone has to dive into the newly available Verlustenliste, ironically put on the Internet by a wonderful Polish library. That would be a lot of work, minimum 100-200 hours, but would almost absoliutely verify (or not) the German losses. The idea that weak German forces, perhaps 1000 or 1500, in the face of unknown forces, which could have amounted to 1000 to as many 10,000 men in organized Russian units, mostly cavalry, would have gotten so drunk that they woud shoot each other to the tune of up to 100 casualties, in a day, is absurd. My father told me that, at the front (not in the trenches), they had strong drink for sale, at the barracks, at cheap prices, but if a man got drunk he was the object of severe ridicule.

My father's company commander, at the front but behind the lines and not in action, got drunk with money that he stole from the men, and was a coward, and finally my father and several others shot him off his white horse while he was drunkenly waiving his sword at the men. The company was marched back to barracks and surrounded by infantry, and there were several days of investigation, officers entering the barracks and interviewing the men and NCOs, taking depositions, and finally a decision was made, and the infantry posts were withdrawn, and the officers sent large barrels of beer to the barracks for the men. The officer disappeared from the rolls of the regiment and the death roll, presumably by the regiment's court of honor. This should give some insight into attitudes to responsible and irresponsible drinking in the German Army and society of the period. When my father was so small that he had to sit on the Berlin telephone book (over 3500 pages!) when sitting in a restaurant with his father, he had a small mug of beer. At 15 at work (he was working in construction as well as studying at an academic high school, to prepare to become a fortifications officer), he was expected to drink beer at work, but to get drunk was inconceivible.

We need a better reason for almost a hundred casualties in a force of about 1000 to 1500 in one day, or we have to prove that those casualties are bogus. In a famous Belgian incident a German colonel or general was shot dead at the dinner table of the mayor of the town; two explainations are put forward to explain this; one is the "drunken German units walking about the streets firing volleys of rifle fire into each other" story was expanded to claiming that a stray bullet killed their commander at dinner; an alternative story is that, over dessert and cigars at the conclusion of the dinner, the colonel or general (I can supply his name if required, and sources from both sides) announced that he required a second dessert, he was going to rape the young daughter of the mayor after dinner, and the 15 year old son of the mayor appeared, with a pistol, and shot the German officer dead at the dinner table, to defend his sister's honor. To suggest that a senior officer would behave like this, presumably in front of his staff, and during a very precarious and time-dependent military situation (the race to the west thru Belgium, to outflank the French and hopefully take Paris), take the time to rape little girls of influential people, is most improbable.

My grand-father committed a (small) war crime in Belgium, I think no one got killed. I am going to approach a Belgian student of WW I who I work with to get to the bottom of that matter, and when we do I will make the findings known, and intend to publish the findings in a military biography of my father and grand-father. My Belgian friend has quite different views of some of these matters, but we cooperate a good deal on these questions, and we have a warm personal (Internet) relationship. We can cooperate on these questions, despite our personal predjudices.

Bob

[bob lembke]

Egbert I read your post, but again one is russian army and she in fact abadoned Kalisch and second russians like habitants which make for russian goverment. Sure comander must make decision quickly but so hard? And level of rusification of town is duscutable because Kalisch was by Russia in this time say we 100 years. Mosly habitants was Polish and Jews this is fact. How great was power of Russia in this area is on discussion. I agree Polish and Jews waited on Germans.

With regard Ladislav

Dear Ladislav;

Please read my brief comments above. The Dragoon regiment had left the caserne (when the MG company of IR 155 arrived it moved into the caserne, which probably was fort-like), but the small German forces in Kalisz had no idea where they were; the Germans either had only a few Ulans, or no cavalry at all, and if there was a regiment of dragoons might be outside of town reconnaissance would be very risky and possibly suicidal. Additionally the two squadrons of Cossacks which supposedly drove the Germans from the rail station were about, or believed to be about. (The major assignment of the German movement was reported to be the preservation of rail infrastructure, stated in the detailed unit history; they planned to move to and halt at Lotz, another say 50 miles down the rail line. Morality aside, shooting civilians {possibly rail workers} and shelling the town was militarily counter-productive.)

I think that the Polish officer's narrative was that the actual destruction, aside from some shelling by the lightest artillery, began on August 22, 18 days after the major fighting, after deliberation as to the appropriate reprisal. This is consistant with the German narratives that I have read, but they gave no specific date for the organized burning of a district of the town. I certainly agree that the punishment was harsh, but it consisted of burning evacuated structures. If we were not asked to not mention "current events", I could mention recent reprisals by western democracies based on irregular resistance that have killed, cumulatively, many thousands of civilians in the last few years, something that I have opposed bitterly, annoying many old friends.

Bob

[egbert]

Bob I fully endorse your statements concerning the situational awareness and the state of a regular German army formation and its devotion to discipline. I believe from what I read in German language (and this is as valid as any other foreign source)that the reconnaissance situation was obscure, that there was a trigger incident, that there were Russian officials (in uniform i.e. RR officials, police, customs)in town, maybe even cossacks who are known to have roamed around Kalisch up to Lodsch. Also consider that the departing Russian army has set fire around the railroad station and adjacent streets (fact!). The situation was totally sucks - isn't sucks the norm in any war?

[Ladislav]

Dear Bob!

I agree that shelling of town wasmilitary conterproductive.

With regard Ladislav