Battle of Warsaw (1920)
Soviet Assault Captures Radzymin Outside Warsaw
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The day listed as the Red Army's defeat was a day of Soviet success: Radzymin fell, and Warsaw's first defensive line was broken.
13 August 1920, east of the capital
Soviet forces attacked Warsaw's eastern defences on 13 August 1920, broke through the first Polish defensive line and captured Radzymin during the afternoon.
Radzymin lay only two kilometres behind that first line, making its loss an immediate threat to the capital rather than a Soviet setback.
The Radzymin–Ossów–Wołomin fortifications stood about twenty kilometres east of central Warsaw.
Undecided for three more days
Polish and Soviet forces entered several days of desperate, shifting combat along that line. The Poles recovered Radzymin on 15 August.
Józef Piłsudski was holding a strike force south-east of Warsaw on the Wieprz; his counteroffensive began on 16 August and advanced 45 kilometres on its first day, forcing Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces into retreat.
Where the battle begins depends who you ask
Norman Davies begins the battle at dawn on 12 August, while Polish official commemorations commonly use the 13 August assault and capture of Radzymin as the start.
The broader Battle of Warsaw extended past 16 August; that date marks the opening of the decisive counteroffensive, not an agreed end.
The 13 August date is securely documented for the fall of Radzymin, but it will not support the claim that the Red Army was defeated that day.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.
What the sources leave uncertain
- Historians and commemorative institutions define the battle's opening differently. Norman Davies begins it at dawn on August 12, while Polish official commemorations commonly use the August 13 assault and capture of Radzymin as the start.
- The broader Battle of Warsaw extended beyond August 16; that date marks the opening of the decisive Polish counteroffensive, not an agreed end date.
- August 13 is securely documented for the fall of Radzymin, but it is not a defensible date for saying that the Red Army was defeated.