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On the eastern front, in accordance with the plans of the Allies, the Russians assumed the offensive at the very beginning of the war. In August 1914 two Russian armies advanced into East Prussia, and four Russian armies invaded the Austrian province of Galicia. In East Prussia a series of Russian victories against numerically inferior German forces had made the evacuation of that region by the Germans imminent, when a reinforced German army commanded by General Paul von Hindenburg decisively defeated the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg, fought on August 26-30, 1914. The four Russian armies invading Austria advanced steadily through Galicia; they took Przemysl and Bukovina, and by the end of March 1915 were in a position to move into Hungary. In April, however, a combined German and Austrian army drove the Russians back from the Carpathians. In May the Austro-German armies began a great offensive in central Poland, and by September 1915 had driven the Russians out of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, and had also taken possession of all the frontier fortresses of Russia. To meet this offensive the Russians withdrew their forces from Galicia. The Russian lines, when the German drive had ceased, lay behind the Dvina River between Riga and Dvinsk (Daugavpils), and then ran south to the Dniester River. Although the Central Powers did not force a decision on the eastern front in 1914-15, the Russians lost so many men and such large quantities of supplies that they were subsequently unable to play any decisive role in the war. In addition to the Battle of Tannenberg, notable battles on this front during 1914-15 were the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 7-14, 1914), and the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (February 7-21, 1915), both German victories