The Battle of Ilzha (1939)

The place of battle

According to the pre-war administrative division, Ilzha was part of the Kielce voivodeship. Vezhbnik was the residence of the Ilzhinsky district. According to the "Small Statistical Yearbook" for 1939, the Ilzhetsky district had an area of 1,835 km2, on which 162.4 thousand people lived. By the beginning of the war, municipal rights were restored in Ilzha in 1925, and 5200 people lived in Ilzha itself. Jews made up 37% of the population. Ilzha at that time was a developed cultural and commercial center. Most of the residents were engaged in agriculture.

In the Battle of Ilzha on the Polish side, the southern army group "Prussia" under the command of Brigadier General A. Stanislav Skvarchinsky, which included three great units:

3rd Infantry Division.
12th Infantry Division.
36th Reserve Infantry Division.

The Army of "Prussia" was created as a reserve of the commander-in-chief and was the only reserve army that was provided for by the defense plan codenamed "Z". The command of this tactical unit, which is important for the Polish defense plan, was entrusted to Major General A. Stefan Dom -Birnatsky.

Initially, the commander-in-chief was called the "Warsaw" army. In the book "The Prussi Army 1939", Jan Vrublewski points out two possibilities from which the name of the army "Prussi" originated: from the code name "Prussi", which was used to describe the reserve army in a wired communication system, or the Prussian farm, where it was supposed to expand the command post of General Demba-Bernatsky.

The Prussian army was to intervene at the junction between the Lodz army and the Krakow army, where the main German forces were to strike. The counterattack of the "Warsaw" army (as the retreat of the Supreme Commander was originally called) was supposed to slow down the enemy's advance in this direction and make it possible to withdraw its own forces operating in the north. After the end of the offensive, the main Polish reserve was to retreat across the Vistula River in the area between the mouth of Pilica and Sandomir. The possibility of temporary protection in the area of the Sventokshi Mountains was also considered.

The army of "Prussia" was finally concentrated in two groups operating independently of each other. The task of the Northern Group was to support the Lodz army in the main defensive direction in the area of Lodz and Sieradza, while the Southern Group, consisting of 3 DPLeg, 12 DP, 36 DPrez, was to make up the reserve of the Krakow army and prepare the defense of the central Vistula line. https://mostbets-hu.com/