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Unread 05-23-2008, 12:53 AM
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Default Summer of 1914 on the Eastern Front

From Frag, the Shrapnel Games May newsletter:

"Mention World War One to most folks and immediately images of mud, trenches, mustard gas, and suicidal charges into the face of withering machine gun fire are conjured. Battles fought for control of not even miles of territory but yards of territory. Battles that seesawed back and forth over No Man's Land at the cost of thousands of lives. One normally doesn't think of WWI as resembling anything like WWII, with its campaigns of mobility.

Yet during the Great War the battles in the East were far more different than the ones in the West. While the West quickly bogged down into an attritional conflict with front lines that barely moved during the entire war, the Eastern Front was a fluid, dynamic front that did see sweeping operational movement and was witness to some of the most exciting battles of the war. One such battles was the Battle of Tannenberg.
Much like in the Second World War the true danger to Germany was never the Western Allies but the Russians. Able to heavily outnumber the Germans a successful campaign by the Russians would prove disastrous. At the opening of World War One the allies hoped to contain Germany and allow the Russians to build up their forces and open up a second front. Germany would then be caught in the middle with not enough forces to defend both fronts, much less truly make any gains in either. With this in mind the Russians organized two armies, the First and Second, to penetrate into East Prussia. The First was commanded by General Rennenkampf, who attacked into the north-east corner of East Prussia while the Second was led by General Samsonov and moved in from south west. Both Russian commanders hated each other, an issue the Germans hoped to exploit. Of course, the Germans had their own command issues.

The German army defending East Prussia was the Eighth Army under General Prittwitz, along with the I Corps under von Francois, a hot headed commander who tended to ignore his superiors and launch attacks when he felt like it rather than when ordered to do so. In late August the Russians began their campaign, with an initial defeat of German forces near Gumbinnen. Prittwitz panicked and ordered a retreat of the Eighth Army to the River Vistula line, far to the west. This in turn led to his sacking, being replaced by Paul von Hindenburg (brought out of retirement) and Erich Lundendorff as his Chief of Staff. The combination of von Hindenburg and Lundendorff, both aggressive commanders with an excellent strategic knack, would make the difference and turn the tide for the Germans.

With the retreat halted the Germans moved to meet the Russian Second Army by moving I Corps by rail, while other elements of the Eighth Army moved into position to allow an encirclement of the coming Second Army. The Second Army believed that the First Army was proceeding as planned although in reality the First had halted their movement after the battle of Gumbinnen. Instead of both Russian armies meeting the Second Army was on its own.

On August 22, 1914 fighting began between the Russian Second Army and the German defenders. Three days later I Corps was ordered to attack the Russians but failed to do so until August 27th, and only when Chief of Staff Lundendorff personally went to see I Corps' commander, von Francois.
At the same time the German commanders were handed wireless radio intercepts between the Russian armies. Plans were detailed plainly, with no attempt to conceal their messages. From these intercepts the Germans realized that there would be no help coming for the Second Army, as the plans for the First Army as detailed in the intercepted communication placed them no where near the Second. Armed with perfect knowledge of the current and future plans of the Russian forces the Germans launched an all out attack on the Russian Second Army.

Surrounded, short of supplies, and with no help coming from the First Army (part of that being the animosity the two commanders felt towards each other) the decisive blow came quickly. By August 30th the Second Army was decimated. Of 150,000 troops that marched into East Prussia 95,000 were captured, 30,000 were killed, and the small remainder managed to escape. In contrast the Germans lost 20,000 men.

With the Second Army completely annihilated the First Army continued to fight, although its time was dwindling. The First Army was bled dry over the next two weeks in a series of actions, finally retreating back East. What could have been one of the greatest opening victories of the war for the Allies turned into a great disaster. For the Germans there would be no other victories quite as decisive as the defeat of the Second Army during the rest of the war.

After the victory von Hindenburg named the victory the Battle of Tannenberg to make up for the original defeat of Teutonic Knights in 1410 against Slavic forces in the same area (known as both the Battle of Tannenberg and Battle of Grunwald). In his after-action report he wrote:
"Tannenberg! A word pregnant with painful recollections for German chivalry, a Slav cry of triumph, a name that is fresh in our memories after more than five hundred years of history.

Before this day I had never seen the battlefield which proved so fateful to German culture in the East. A simple monument there bore silent witness to the deeds and deaths of heroes. On one of the following days we stood near this monument while Samsonof's Russian Army was going to its doom of sheer annihilation."
And..."The troops and their leaders had accomplished extraordinary feats. The divisions were now in bivouacs and the hymn of thanks of the Battle of Leuthen rose from them.

In our new Headquarters at Allenstein I entered the church, close by the old castle of the Teutonic Knights, while divine service was being held. As the clergyman uttered his closing words all those present, young soldiers as well as elderly Landsturm, sank to their knees under the overwhelming impression of their experiences. It was a worthy curtain to their heroic achievements."

The Germans erected a monument in 1927 of their achievement but it was destroyed by the Russians after World War II."
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Unread 05-23-2008, 02:25 AM
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The real hero of Tannenberg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hoffmann

For those of you who have yet to read Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, the chapter on Tannenberg is fantastic. The rest of the book is even better.

It's very cheap too: http://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Ba..._sim_b_title_1
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