I am Indy Neidell, welcome to a special episode about Przemyśl Fortress part of which you can actually see behind me. I have a special guest here who is going to
take us through a couple of the forts. Can you tell us who you are and what you do
just in general? My name is Tomasz Idzikowski and for, I think,
25 years I tried to search in archives, measure the forts, try to reconstruct the strategy
and I write books about the construction of the forts of Przemysl. Because Przemysl is my main topic and then
Austro-Hungarian fortifications in general. Okay, can you tell us how the forts of Przemysl
are constructed? Because I think a lot of people believe, when we say
"The Fortress of Przemysl", they think it's like a big castle that a 100,000 people were stuck in. Most tourists that come to Przemysl stand
in the market square and ask: "Where is the fortress?" But in the 19th century they started building
ring fortresses. Ring means that around the city, quite far
from the town, was a ring of fortifications. In case of Przemysl it was 45km long around
with 15 main forts like this one behind us, which is fort number one actually. But between these main forts were, what the
Austrians called "Zwischenwerk" so secondary forts between the main ones. These were often much more modern than the
main forts built earlier in the 1880s. When did they start building the whole thing? Actually, the first works, mainly infantry
and artillery earthworks were built during the Crimean War in 1854/55. Because there was a danger of war with Russia
at that moment. Then in 1856 all these earthworks were sold
into private hands because there was no threat of war anymore. Until 1878 there was not much work done in
Przemysl. It was over 20 years where just nothing happened
here. Then they built 9 earthworks again around
Przemysl in 1878, but that's it. And then they made the decision to built a
permanent fortress here in the 1880s. And this is number one, so the first one? Actually not. They didn't start with number one, because
they first created a plan for all the fortresses and then actually started in the case of Przemysl
with number eight. First eight, then twelve, then number five
and seven, and one. When did this one start being built? This one is from the first half of the 1880s,
started in 1883 and finished in 1886. It took a bit over three years to build this
one. But this one is quite huge. This one here, obviously it has been partially
destroyed and you were saying something about how they rebuild it. Can you explain it a bit if we walk through? During the first or second siege, this gate
was hit by a projectile as well as the middle of the fortress as you can see by traces of
projectiles on the walls. The right part fell down. You can see it on the photos from the retaking
of the fortress. If you look carefully at the structure of
the bricks, you can see where the poorly build structure begins. These are the repairs that were done during
the war. Each fort got 6-8 sappers in their crew who
were there just to fix what's broken in the fort. Like part of the gate. When there is a crater after an explosion,
they have to fill it up with dirt. It was their only job. Let's walk in and take a look. What is this here? What kind of room would this be? On the left side was the guard house together
with small arrest cells. Just for privates. Oh, like a cell here? Yeah, a small cell with two "Pritschen" (plank
beds) to sleep. Probably for soldiers who drank too much. And this here? The next one was a normal room for soldiers
for sleeping. Just a really small one for a few of them. But these barracks here were just for the
fort defence. You can see the hallway here turning to the
left. Unfortunately, the next two rooms here were
blown up. These rooms had embrasures pointing into the
middle of this "Hof" (yard), yes two directions on opposing sides, so it was flanking or cross
fire from both sides. If you got through the gate, you are still
not inside the fort. ...and you are getting hit by both sides. Okay. Let's see what's next. Should we go over there or should we go back? I think we can go to the back because this
fort is completely symmetrical. If you see the left or right half, you have
seen it all. Should we go straight or should we go here? We can go to the left because on the left
was the Kommandant room. Okay, the commandant's room. The first room on the right was just for the
commandant. Two on this side and two on the other? Yes, it's completely symmetrical. It's not a bad room if you get it by yourself
or maybe with two people. It looked completely different. You had wooden floors and heating and shelves. What about this? These four rooms are for the "Mannschaft"
in German, so for the privates in English. These were for 20-22 soldiers, it was not
"Pritschen" (bunk beds) just one level of them. That's not comfortable. No, you got quite a lot of space. Incredibly, the rooms were so high, it's strange
that you had one level of sleeping and still such high rooms. Because during artillery fire there was a
lot of smoke. And smoke goes up, so you still got some oxygen
below. If your rooms are smaller these guys inside
cannot breathe. These rooms were not open, weren't they? Of course, on the right side you can see remains
of the brick walls that were closing these rooms. Unfortunately most of the bricks were stolen
after the Second World War to build houses down there in the village. Makes sense. These were good military bricks. These are toilets, yes? Yes, these are toilets. The left part with three toilets is for officers,
here was a wall dividing it completely for the toilets for the Mannschaft. You can still see traces on the wall of the
wooden stalls. There is an opening here for another wooden
construction, so it was closed with wood and here is the pissoir. That makes sense. Where to next? Let's go in this direction and then to the
left in the centre. This was the main entrance to the barracks
and then to the munition magazines. And through this passage you can bring guns
here to this place and there was a gun lift. Guns and pieces go two stores up. You can still see remains of the mechanism. Up there, what's up there? Up there was just a normal room for privates
with a "Fenster" (window). But the Fenster was just decoration for the
fort. I think we can go left. If you take a look at the wall, there are
still traces of projectile hits. How many people were living in just this fort? I mean not when you are cramped in. Usually it was build for 300-400. The maximum was one company of infantry. An Infanterie-Kompanie at the beginning of
the war consisted of 250 people and then also artillerists depending on how many guns you
had in the fort. In the documents you can find out how many
crewmen were needed for each gun. So, the rest were artillerists and eight sappers
usually. Originally, there were supposed to have a doctor and when they built this fort in
the 1880s that was the plan but then the doctors were moved out. More toilets. Yeah, more toilets. And the right side yard. With stairs to the upper level and other rooms for privates, kitchen, food magazines
and the telephone central. Let's take a look at the telephone central. They blew it up during the capitulation. You can see how they made sure it was properly
destroyed. You see the brick wall. You can see the brick wall here, but here
you can see the traces of shrapnels on the walls, so they destroyed it completely. This is the only remaining wall here. These three rooms were ammunition magazines. Munition magazines. Not ammunition magazine, food magazine of
course. When you were saying that a bunch of the canons
were older blackpowder canons. Would they keep tons of blackpowder in the
forts or in the city, you know that's dangerous? They only kept supplies for 24 hours of intensive
fighting, usually it would last for longer periods. But the rest of the munition were kept in
the munition magazines quite far from the forts, so if the munition magazines blow up,
it wouldn't hurt the fort. They were also quite far from the city. So, the same explosion couldn't hurt the city. That makes sense. The standard munition magazine was holding
something like 60 tons of blackpowder. And there were several of them like 30-40. They were within the ring. What's this thing here on the floor? This is another "Poterne" (hallway) to a "Seitenkoffer"
(side bunker) but at the same time it was a bathroom. So, 20 people could wash themselves here. It's just next to the kitchen. In the kitchen you can see that there was
an oven for privates, the large one, on the wall there are traces of that oven. And here in the corner are traces of the small
oven for the officers. Officers always got it better. Do we go upstairs now? Yeah we can go there. All around here are gun positions. So, here is the right flank and it was used
for lighter guns to flank in direction of the next fort. 9cm guns would stand here. And then in front, you have the main artillery
of the fort and those were 12cm. The maximum range was 8km. So, you have to imagine the map of the area
and then see where this fort can shoot and operate actually. Where would the guns be placed? They were placed between these "Traversen"
(protective walls). So, these "Traversen" protect the gun from
frontal fire because if it's low trajectory fire, these will stop the incoming shells. Mortar fire could hit but this fort was designed
when there weren't many mortars at the time. Only low trajectory guns. The same on the front, you also had these
"Traversen" (protective walls) which protects a bit from side fire. Even if something explodes, the shrapnels
will not hit another segment. So, that's Ukraine over there? This is Ukraine. If you look carefully there, you can see the border. Oh yeah, you can see it. So, you could throw a stone to the border
from here. Actually, right now, yes. You can see how steep - don't fall down. Yes, from here you can see how steep the ditch
is. Look at that, imagine that, this has goota
be hard to attack - with no trees. There was another "Mauer" (wall), another
wall in the ditch which was 5 meters high. It has disappeared now but it was another
obstacle. So, you would need to bring ladders with you
to cross the "Mauer". And people did that! People would attack these things anyway! I guess you have to if you're Russian, you
know, you have to. I wouldn't like to do it. No, I wouldn't like to do it. Especially, when they could see you coming
from way afar. The guys which were attacking never saw fortifications
at all. You know they were like - Peasants! - yeah. They were training in cubic wars with obstacles
of barbed wire, trenches, ditches, couple of cannoneers. They couldn't define or name it. They just moved in some direction and then
bang, bang, bang. Fire from the side, fire from the front. They didn't know fortification systems, they
didn't know where to run or to hide. It was just, some where lucky and some where
not. It's so nice that you get a much better idea
of, you know we talked so much about Przemysl, but to actually see how tough a fortress it
can be. If you walk in these forests you can see the
trenches, strong points. You can really touch the history here, I mean
it. I believe you. In the archive papers, you can find out the
name of this particular commandant for this strong point of the trench and a lot of normal
people stories come out of the documents. And you wouldn't believe some of them. Anyone who is Polish out there who is watching
this, he has written books, so you should definitely should get his book. Unfortunately, they are not translated into
English. Learn Polish, haha. Lean Polish, because I would love to read
one of them, this is great stuff. So, where should we head now? We can go down here. This is the left flank. From this direction you could shoot in front
of the fort XV which we will visit, too. They were all connected in this way. There were no tunnels underneath. How thick was the thickest earth that they
would have on top of the construction? Actually, most earth is in front of the construction, so from the direction the most projecticles will come from. Especially, with lower trajectory. Because it was designed for low trajectory. For example, the "Rampe" (ramp) is 8 meters
thick. Because they checked that 8 meters could stop
let's say 15cm projectiles. This is the rear position which is also a
stand for rear canons that would protect the entrance to the fort.And the back-terrain, as i told you. In the 1880s, this fort was completely separated. So, we have seen pretty much this fort. This was one of the bigger ones? Yes, it's one of the biggest ones. No armors in this one, but all the big ones
with armoured turrets were blown up. During the Second World War the concrete was
taken for construction works too, so it was like a quarry. Very often only the earthworks are left of
the Przemysl forts. This one is really worth seeing. There is plenty to see here. How did they get their names?Who named them? Actually, they were usually named after the
nearest village. For example, there was fort Buszkowice because
the village Buszkowice was nearby. Only in three cases they were named after
officers which were in charge of the "Generaldirektion" (Directorate-General) which was the "Direktion"
(management) of enginnering here. Or in case of Daniel von Salis-Soglio who
was the inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian Army. When he retired in 1893, Franz Joseph I, the
emperor, allowed him to choose the fort which he wants his name on. Okay, and it's this one. Yes, it is this one. Because he was also the designer of this one. Which were the other two that were not named
after villages? There is Fort Brunner after Moritz Brunner
who wrote several books about fortifications to teach architects and officers how to design
forts. He was also general director of engineering
in Przemysl in the 1890s, so he had a large influence on Przemysl fortress. The other one was fort XII "Werner" after
Anton Werner who was also in charge of building fortifications here in Przemysl. Okay, so the engineers. Yes after the engineers in case of Przyemysl. The rest was just named after the villages
around. Imagine how hard it would be for an Austrian
to pronounce some of these names when you are on a telephone during a fight. "Please Fort Number I-VI, Duńkowiczki is
under attack, please fire. The next is Popovychi, and whatever. Of course you had so many languages in the
army. It was a real problem here with the communications. You had Poles, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians,
Austrians and so there were so many languages that they had problems with the communication. Very often the privates from local villages,
near to Przemysl or Lemberg didn't know the German commands, so they just... "We understand, we got you. Don't attack, we got you. Just stay here? We can stay here." But it was really this way. Should we head down? Okay, what am I looking at here? This looks like some sort of artillery emplacement,
yeah? Yes, you are looking at a flanking "Kasematte"
(protected room) at Fort XV "Borek" and this "Kasematte" looked completely different during
the war. Okay, how did it look? I mean now you only see the floor with these
metal pieces for the wheels of the cannons but you don't have the walls and the roof. So, this had walls and a roof, okay. It was a building the Germans called "granatsicher"
so it could withstand a grenade hit. This "Traditor" (gun emplacement aiming at
the flanks of the enemy) took part in the fight during the First Siege of Przemysl during
the storm on the next fort XIV. When the infantry was close to that fort,
these two guns could shoot five or six rounds per minute at these soldiers. And these were a bit hidden? Yes, these were completely hidden from the
outside. The Russians couldn't move their guns to hit
the embrasure. You can still see the wall which covered the
embrasure. These guns only shoot towards the flanks of
the fort. From the front you cannot hit it. The Russian infantry would be marching towards
the next fort and then would be surprised by these guns. Yes, surprised and the next is another double
battery also with 8cm guns. This one also hit the Russians pretty well. What kind of guns were used here? These were quite modern guns in case of Przemysl. Because most of the guns in Przemysl were
quite old like pieces from 1861. One third of them were models 1861. So, they were blackpowder? Blackpowder canons, mostly in this case 12
and 15 centimetres. Then they got model 75, so 1875, most of the
field cannons were 9 centimetres in this case and also blackpowder cannons. These here were much more modern, the Germans
called it "Schnellfeuerkanone". So, rapid fire gun. Were these reliable and accurate? How good were these guns, the modern ones? These guns were really new in the 1890s. Actually, they are a little bit similar to
modern constructions. Not much changed since these cannons. It's a really new design. Especially, the "Lafette" (gun carriage) were
kind of complicated. It was called "Minimalschartenlaffette" (minimal
embrasure gun carriage). It was designed, so that the tip of the barrel
doesn't move in the "Scharte" (Embrasure) only the back of the barrel moves. So that the "Scharte" (Embrasure) can be small. In other canons, if you turn the canon. Yes, if you go in the middle you go like this. But this you would bring the lot up. So, was this difficult to operate then or
difficult to move accurately? Actually about four or five men operated this
gun together with guys who bring new ammunition. In the years when they built these forts,
not many artillerists operated these canons because they had something called "Hilfsinfanterie"
(helping infantry), so guys who normally joined the infantry but helped with small tasks in
the artillery like bringing boxes of ammunition. And in case of this flanking "Kasematte" (protected
gun emplacement) there was not much room inside. The older models, the ones from the 1860s
and 1870s, the blackpowder artillery, were they still reliable? Or did they have problems with operation and
mechanics? A lot of parts would break down when you used
these cannons. And there were reports pointing out the troubles
with these cannons. They protected the fortress actually, so they
were enough to fight the Russians especially since the Russians didn't have siege artillery
here during the first siege. They only had their normal armoured artillery,
so the largest calibre was 18 centimetres and the rest mostly field cannons of three
inches. Another thing about the preparations that
you said, that was interesting. I read in Max Hastings "Catastrophe" that
one of the Austrian problems was that before the first siege they hadn't taken down the
trees and they should have. But you said that's now quite true. They took down the trees until about 1 kilometre
in front of the forts. So, that's what they planned to take down? They actually did that. But in many cases they were not able to remove
the logs. So, these logs made a good protection for
the Russians. They even tried to burn parts of the forests
but it was rainy weather, so they couldn't start a fire to burn them. Even in case of this fort, there was a forrest
left about a little bit over 1 kilometre to the left and the front of the fort. The Russians really started to attack the
next fort from this forrest. They moved long distances in small groups
which are not a good target for the artillery. If 15 guys run, you don't have the time to
aim the gun, so they just hide and run. It was a method used by the Russians during
that attack. That's pretty clever. So, they, let's say infiltrate this forest
and gathered a larger group there and from there they were able to attack the next fort. And then the "Traditor" (guns aiming at the
flanks of the fort) and the flanking "Kasematte" (guns in emplacements) started to shoot them
from here. Okay, now what about this armour that's obviously
been laying around here for a long time. Actually, these pieces of armour were found
during excavations on various forts of Przemysl. During the capitulation when the forts were
blown to pieces, the armoured pieces would fly all over the place. And it's still staying here. It was dig up and then brought here. All these armours are from the 1890s. Because in the 1880s when they built artillery
forts here there were no single armour mount in Przemysl because at this time Austrian
factories were not able to produce armour. They had to order armour from German factories
like Thyssen or Krupp which were quite expensive. But then at the end of the 1880s some Austrian
factories start to learn how to make armour by themselves. Most famously the Skoda factory. All these armour pieces here are from Skoda
factories and you can see 15 centimetre mortar, actually this ring is from this mortar. Then there is a "Beobachtungsstand" (observation
post)and part of the mortar that was inside the ring, that one with the rounded edge. Was there only just one kind of armour that
was standard armour? No, they had a lot of different armours. Standard were only the rotating turrets in
case of Przemysl because there were three types of them:15cm mortar, 15cm howitzer and
8cm rapid fire gun. And then there was the "Beobachtungsstand"
which means observation copular. But then for Traditors, the flanking "Kasematte"
they produced various numbers of armours very often only designed for a single fort. So, they made like four pieces in a row and
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