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HistoryExtra podcast

The Fortress: An epic battle of World War I

HistoryExtra podcast

HistoryExtra

History

4.34.7K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2019

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Professor Alexander Watson describes the dramatic battle for the fortress city of Przemysl, which pitted a multi-ethnic Habsburg force against the might of the Russian army in the early months of World War I. Historyextra.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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excludes plug-in hybrids, Delantis Financial Services. Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine.

1:00.9

I'm Ellie Gawthorne. On today's podcast, you'll hear an interview with the historian Alexander Watson about a crucial battle of the First World War. Alexander's latest book, The Fortress,

1:07.0

tells the story of how a siege at an Austro-Hungarian fortress in Poland in 1914

1:12.1

delayed a Russian advance against all the odds.

1:16.1

Our editor, Rob Atar, spoke to him to find out more.

1:19.4

First of all, Alexander, just to get some of the basics out the way,

1:23.1

where exactly is the fortress and where was it then in terms of country or territory it was in?

1:28.9

So the fortress, the place where the fortress was, is a city called Shemischl, which is in

1:35.0

south-eastern Poland, right on the border with Ukraine. Where the fortress was in 1914 was

1:41.9

in a province called Galicia, which stretched across what today is southern Poland

1:46.0

and into modern Western Ukraine. And it was slap bang in the middle of that province, in the last

1:52.0

high ground before the Russian border. And that was at that point then within the Austro-Hungarian

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