Tannenberg - Lost Chance
The Russian Army Lost its Chance to Remove Germany from the War
Apr 29, 2006
The opening battle of world war one in 1914 on the eastern front and its crippling victory by the German Army resulted in lost opportunity for the Allies to end the war in its first few months.
The battle resulted from the Russian two-pronged invasion of Eastern Prussia, the land of the Junkers and long considered the soul of old Prussian aristocracy. The first prong of the Russian invasion was carried out by General Pavel Rennenkampf's 200,000 man First Army from what is now Lithuania in the northwest, and the second by that of General Samsanov's 150,000 man Second Army from the south in Russian Poland. The plan was to encircle the single German army in a pincer movement and therefore clear the route to Berlin and end the war.
On paper it was a good plan, however it was dependent on both Russian armies operating in unison so as to overwhelm the better trained 140,000 man German eighth army. This plan was defeated by Rennenkampf himself when he paused after a brief albeit successful skirmish near the town of Gumbinnen on August 20th, believing his forces to need resupply before he marched to Berlin.
The results of that first skirmish were far reaching on the German side as well, with the commander of the German army in East Prussia being sacked by the General Staff and replaced with an elderly retired Prussian officer, Paul von Hindenburg who appeared at his new headquarters wearing his old blue uniform that was considered an antique. As his deputy Hindenburg was given Eric Ludendorf, a young ambitious staff officer who distinguished himself on the western front only a week earlier.
Leaving a thin screen of local landstrum (militia quality troops) and cavalry to keep Rennenkampf's First Army grazing its horses at Gumbinnen, the new staff of the German army began to transfer its troops via the excellent Prussian railway system far to the southwest to attack the Russian Second Army.
General Samsonov was wholly out of his element in command of his Second Army, being given the assignment only three weeks before with an unfamiliar staff and a mixed bag of units he had never worked with before. He believed he was chasing the supposedly already defeated and retreating Eighth Army when in fact his soldiers were marching day by day deeper into a nightmarish trap of Hindenburg's design. This Russian force was stumbling around the deserted villages in terrible terrain bisected by deep woods and winding lakes. Russian lines of communication were in terrible shape, with orders being carried generally by older Cossacks fresh from the farm on tired horses taking days to go back and forth whereas the Germans utilized automobile and wireless as much as possible. Stavka, the overall Russian headquarters had even less control or understanding of the situation than the men on the ground and frequently issued counterproductive orders to its field armies.
Russian communications were is such a bad state of affairs that Samsonov and Rennenkampf sent uncoded wireless communications back and forth between each other in their attempt to coordinate the invasion. These were promptly intercepted by the German signal station in Königsberg and relayed to Hindenburg in real time. The intercepts detailed the plans down to the marching orders for individual units, exposed the exact location of both armies, and the subsequent plans of each. The intelligence was so good in fact that debate raged as to whether it had been leaked on purpose as some sort of disinformation by the Russians.
The opening of the battle started when the lead elements of Samsanov's forces came up against heavily entrenched defenders in the area of Orlau-Frankenau on August 24th and stopped their forward movement. Over the next three days the two most advanced corps of the Second Army, cut off from resupply and exhausted from days of road marching were pummeled by massed artillery and encircled by German troops often fighting near their hometowns. Samsonov, with half of his army mauled, finally ordered a withdrawal back to Poland on the night of August 28th. This withdrawal turned into a rout as units falling back now found themselves encircled by the closing noose of German machine guns. Unit cohesion fell apart and several Russian regiments simply threw away their rifles and surrendered while others, such as the 85th Vyborg Infantry Regiment, melted away to non-existence in hopeless rear guard actions.
The butcher's bill was incredible. Only ten thousand shell-shocked survivors of the Russian Second army escaped while an estimated 95,000 were captured and the balance perished in the postage stamp sized villages and deep forests that made up the battleground. Photographs of captured Russian troops and equipment which included nearly 500 desperately needed cannon and machineguns were published around the world. Samsonov himself met his own end from the point of his service revolver when he found his staff hopelessly lost and isolated behind German lines. His body, stripped by his aides of his shoulder boards and decorations, was later found by German troops and buried with full military honors. He was the highest ranking Russian officer killed in the war.
German losses were less than 20,000 casualties and their now victorious and re-energized army turned to face Rennenkampf and chased him from Prussia in the subsequent Battle of The Masurian Lakes.
The scale of this victory would not be repeated in the course of the Great War. The significance of the result would touch us even today. It can be argued that if the Russian offensive in East Prussia would have ended with a victory for the Allies, the road would have been open to Berlin with no other German forces available to stop them. The Battle of Berlin would have happened in 1914 instead of 1945 and world history would have been forever changed. Instead, the German victory enabled it to keep both its eastern and western fronts in stable and stalemated conditions for the remainder of the war resulting in a lost generation.
Sources =
Banks, Author " A Military Atlas of The First World War" 1999 Pen and Sword Books
Showalter, Dennis " Tannenberg 1914: Clash Of Empires" 2002 Potomic Books
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