Battle of Tannenberg
A German army destroyed a Russian one in East Prussia in the last week of August 1914, and the victory shaped German politics for the next thirty years. Russia had invaded far sooner than the German plan assumed, to relieve pressure on France, sending two armies into East Prussia on either side of the Masurian Lakes — Rennenkampf's First from the east and Samsonov's Second from the south — with a gap of some fifty miles between them. The German commander lost his nerve after an inconclusive action at Gumbinnen and proposed retreating behind the Vistula. He was replaced by Hindenburg, brought out of retirement, with Ludendorff as his chief of staff, and the plan they executed had already been drafted by a staff officer, Max Hoffmann. It was to leave a screen in front of Rennenkampf, move nearly the whole German force south by rail, and fall on Samsonov's flanks. The Russians helped considerably by sending orders by uncoded wireless, which the Germans read. Samsonov's centre pushed forward into a bag while both wings were enveloped, and the army disintegrated in forests and marshes over three days. Some 92,000 prisoners were taken and perhaps 30,000 killed. Samsonov walked into the woods and shot himself. The battle was fought around Allenstein and named for Tannenberg deliberately, to answer a defeat of the Teutonic Knights by Poles and Lithuanians on the same ground in 1410. Hindenburg and Ludendorff became national figures and effectively ran Germany from 1916. The strategic effect was the opposite of the tactical one. Two German corps had already been pulled from the western front and were in transit while the battle was won without them, and they were not on the Marne a week later when the German advance on Paris was stopped.
- Year: 1914 CE
- Category: Military
