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The Empires Clash

The first events were the capture of Kalish and Chenhostov by the Germans without fighting, and the first real clash was clashes at Wierzbołów. The first full-scale operation was invasion of East Prussia on 17 August 1914 and the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. The Russian offensive in the Battle of Stallupönen, which was the opening battle of the Eastern Front, quickly turned to a disastrous defeat following the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914; even though the Russians were successfully defending at Gumbinnen a while before Tannenberg. After the Russian disaster, German troops under the command of Hindenburg inflicted another crushing defeat on the numerically superior Russian army in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. A second Russian incursion into Galicia was more successful, with the Russians controlling almost all of that region by the end of 1914, routing four Austrian armies in the process. Under the command of Nikolai Ivanov, Nikolai Ruzsky and Aleksei Brusilov, the Russians won the Battle of Galicia in September and began the Siege of Przemyśl, the next fortress on the road towards Kraków.

This early Russian success in 1914 on the Austro-Russian border was a reason for concern to the Central Powers and caused considerable German forces to be transferred to the East to take pressure off the Austrians, leading to the creation of the new German Ninth Army. The Austro-Hungarian government accepted the Polish proposal of establishing the Supreme National Committee as the Polish central authority within the Empire, responsible for the formation of the Polish Legions, an auxiliary military formation within the Austro-Hungarian army. At the end of 1914, the main focus of the fighting shifted to central part of Russian Poland, west of the river Vistula. The October Battle of the Vistula River, Augustow operation, and the November Battle of Łódź they brought the Germans only huge losses, and the strengthening of the Russians in the region. Germans' initial plans to destroy the Russians in Poland ended in desperate attempts to prevent their invasion of Silesia

The Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies continued to clash along the Carpathian Front throughout the winter of 1914–1915. Przemysl fortress managed to hold out deep behind enemy lines throughout this period, with the Russians bypassing it in order to attack the Austro-Hungarian troops further to the west. They made some progress, crossing the Carpathian Mountains in February and March 1915, but then the German relief helped the Austrians stop further Russian advances. In the meantime, Przemysl was almost entirely destroyed and the Siege of Przemysl ended in a defeat for the Austrians.