Ring of Steel

by Alexander Watson

  9.Examples of the atrocity stories spread by refugees early in the war can be found in P. Kuhr, There We’ll Meet Again: The First World War Diary of a Young German Girl, trans. W. Wright (n.p., 1998), esp. pp. 18–19 (entry for 9 August 1914) and p. 42 (entry for 10 September 1914).

  10.Poster, 22 August 1914. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 1.

  11.Rittel, diary, 25 August 1914. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  12.Allensteiner Zeitung, Extra-Ausgabe Nr. 59, 25 August 1914.

  13.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 208, 10 September 1914.

  14.Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 40. The local newspaper estimated that only 2,000 people remained in the city. See ‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 208, 10 September 1914.

  15.The sources disagree about when exactly this looting took place. This account follows that of the teacher, Herr Rittel, who was tasked with assessing the damage to the pub caused by the plunderers. See Rittel, diary, 26 August 1914. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  16.Hirschberg, Russen in Allenstein, p. 9.

  17.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 208, 10 September 1914.

  18.Hirschberg, Russen in Allenstein, pp. 9–10.

  19.Rittel, diary, 30 September 1916. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  20.Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 40; ‘Als die Russen in Allenstein waren’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 204, 5 September 1914. Details about the clash between the Russian and German cavalry are in ‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 208, 10 September 1914.

  21.Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 40; Rittel, diary, 30 September 1916. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  22.Accounts of the Russians’ entry into Allenstein are in broad agreement about the main events, although with some variation in the times that are given. The evidence for this passage comes from the Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 211 and 213, 13 and 16 September 1914; Rittel, diary, 27 August 1914. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169; Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 40; Telegram from Oberbürgermeister Allenstein to Regierungspräsident Allenstein, 29 August 1914. GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3576: fo. 128.

  23.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 211, 13 September 1914.

  24.Hirschberg, Russen in Allenstein, pp. 11–12.

  25.Ibid., pp. 15–16. Cf. ‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 211, 13 September 1914.

  26.Telegram from Oberbürgermeister Allenstein to Regierungspräsident Allenstein, 29 August 1914. GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3576: fo. 128.

  27.Rittel, diary, 30 September 1916, section entitled ‘Unter russischer Herrschaft’. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  28.Hirschberg, Russen in Allenstein, pp. 19–21.

  29.Rittel, diary, 27 August 1914, and also the section of his memoir entitled ‘Das Brotbacken in der Russennacht’. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  30.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 211, 13 September 1914.

  31.Ibid., Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 222, 26 September 1914, and Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 40. Schroeder was present during these conversations.

  32.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 223, 27 September 1914.

  33.The troops who liberated Allenstein belonged to the 36th Reserve Division, a formation raised in West Prussia, the province neighbouring East Prussia. See D. E. Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (Hamden, CT, 1991, p. 288.

  34.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 223, 27 September 1914; Rittel, diary, 30 September 1916, section entitled ‘Unsere Befreiung’. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169; Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fos. 39–40; Hirschberg, Russen in Allenstein, p. 24, and telegram from Oberbürgermeister Allenstein to Regierungspräsident Allenstein, 29 August 1914. GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3576: fo. 128.

  35.Hirschberg, Die Russen in Allenstein, p. 29, ‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 223, 27 September 1914, and AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169: Rittel, diary, 28 August 1914.

  36.F. Gause, Die Russen in Ostpreußen, 1914/15. Im Auftrage des Landeshauptmanns der Provinz Ostpreußen (Königsberg Pr., 1931), pp. 191–2 and 218.

  37.For Zülch’s award, see Rittel, diary, 30 September 1916, section entitled ‘Kleine Erlebnisse’. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169.

  38.‘Die Allensteiner Russentage’, Allensteiner Zeitung, 72. Jahrgang, Nr. 213, 16 September 1914.

  39.Rittel, diary, 30 September 1916, section entitled ‘Unsere Befreiung’. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/169; Polizeiinspektor Schroeder[?], report, 15 April 1915. AP Olsztyn: Akta Miasta Olsztyn 259/168: fo. 41.

  40.Hirschberg, Russen in Allenstein, p. 5.

  41.See the daily ‘War Reports’ filed by the Regierungs-Präsident of Gumbinnen County, esp. 13, 15 and 17 August 1914 in GStA PK, Berlin: XX HA Rep 2II, 3559.

  42.M. Hoffmann, War Diaries and Other Papers (2 vols., London, 1929), i, p. 40 (entry for 23 August 1914).

  43.For fatalities and destruction, see Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, esp. p. 229. Gause’s figure is likely to be controversial, so it is worth stating here that it was the result of honest and impressively detailed research. As shown by surviving archival documentation, the East Prussian administration’s wartime investigations concluded that 1,615 civilians were deliberately killed by the Russian army over both invasions (see the tables for Königsberg and Allenstein Counties in ‘Besichtigung der durch die Russeneinfällen beschädigten Teile der Provinz Ostpreußen durch die Minister [Staatsministerium]’, c. April 1915 and the Gumbinnen table of 4 June 1915 in, respectively, GStA PK, Berlin: I. HA Rep 90A, 1064 and AP Olsztyn: OP Ostpreußen: 3/529: fos. 72–4). Through close examination of local chronicles written shortly after the invasions, Gause eliminated double counting and accidental deaths to reach his total of 1,491 East Prussians killed. For a full discussion of the investigations and killed, see A. Watson, ‘ “Unheard of Brutality”: Russian Atrocities against Civilians in East Prussia, 1914–15’, forthcoming in The Journal of Modern History 86(4) (December 2014).

  44.See ibid., p. 57. For the East Prussian population’s size and ethnic composition, see A. Hesse and H. Goeldel, Grundlagen des Wirtschaftslebens von Ostpreußen. Denkschrift zum Wiederaufbau der Provinz. Die Bevölkerung von Ostpreußen (6 vols., Jena, 1916), iii, p. 2, and L. Belzyt, Sprachliche Minderheiten im preußischen Staat 1815–1914. Die preußische Sprachenstatistik in Bearbeitung und Kommentar (Marburg, 1998), pp. 17 and 25.

  45.‘Bekanntmachung allen Einwohneren Ost. Preussens [sic]’, signed by Rennenkampf, 18 August 1914, in HHStA Wiesbaden: Plakate und Kriegsdocumente: Nr. 3012/3472.

  46.Y. Danilov, La Russie dans la Guerre Mondiale (1914–1917), trans. A. Kaznakov (Paris, 1927), p. 204. For the examples, see Watson, ‘ “Unheard of Brutality” ’.

  47.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 200–11 and 229.

  48.For Eydtkuhnen, see ‘Die Besetzung des Postamts Eydtkuhnen durch die Russen’, Liegnitzer Tageblatt. 79. Jahrgang, Nr. 196, 1 Beilage (22 August 1914). The other individuals were later given cash awards for their bravery. See the list compiled by the Geheimer Regierungsrat at the Landrat in Memel on 19 October 1914. GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3670: fos. 28 and 32, and Landrat in Heydekrug to the Regierungspräsident of Gumbinnen, 20 November 1914. AP Olsztyn: RP Gumbinnen
: 1576/14: fos. 83–4.

  49.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, p. 175. This was a semi-official investigation carried out in the aftermath of the First World War. For its reliability see Watson, ‘ “Unheard of Brutality” ’.

  50.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 212–19.

  51.Report of Königliches Konsistorium der Provinz Ostpreußen to Evangelischer Ober-Kirchenrat in Berlin-Charlottenburg, 23 October 1914. GStA PK, Berlin: I. HA Rep 90A, 1059: page 3 of report. Also, Gouvernement von Königsberg to Kriegsministerium, 25 Sept. 1914. GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3587: fo. 42. For the fear of Cossacks, see R. Traba, ‘Wschodniopruskość’. Tożsamość regionalna i narodowa w kulturze politycznej Niemiec (Poznań and Warsaw, 2005), pp. 252–5.

  52.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 164–9.

  53.Report by Fußgend. Wachtmeister Sahm I, 14 September, 1914. AP Olsztyn: Königlicher Regierungs-Präsident zu Allenstein (Rejencja Olsztyńskie) [hereafter RP Allenstein]: 179: fo. 105, and Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 161–2.

  54.A. V. Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2005), p. 29.

  55.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 152–4, and Oberwachtmeister Meyer, gendarmerie report, 17 September 1914. AP Olsztyn: RP Allenstein: 179: fos. 93–5. The accounts of what took place in Santoppen vary, although there is agreement over the number of fatalities. Gause’s account suggests only one woman was killed, but he mentions another woman among the prisoners executed, so Meyer’s report, which gives her name, is to be preferred.

  56.Report by Fußgend. Wachtmeister Sahm I, 11 and 14 September, 1914. AP Olsztyn: RP Allenstein: 179: fos. 19 and 105–7, and Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 177–8.

  57.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 183–4.

  58.Anna S., testimony (and supporting statements by others), 11 September 1914. AP Olsztyn: RP Allenstein: 178: fos. 3–4.

  59.See, for example, the report of Oberwachmeister Sadowski at Darkehmen on 4 March 1915 on the thorough investigations undertaken by the Russian army into a case of attempted rape and murder by one of their men. AP Olsztyn: OP Ostpreussen: 3/528: fos. 308–10.

  60.See ‘Besichtigung der durch die Russeneinfällen beschädigten Teile der Provinz Ostpreußen durch die Minister [Staatsministerium]’, GStA PK, Berlin: I. HA Rep 90A, 1064.

  61.Information on births resulting from rape is in a report on ‘Fürsorge für die Russenkinder’, accompanied by a letter from Oberpräsident to Minister des Innern, 24 November 1916, and also a letter from Oberpräsident to Regierungshauptkasse in Königsberg, 5 May 1917. AP Olsztyn: OP Ostpreußen: 3/530: fos. 290–93 and 391–4 and 399. For modern research, see M. M. Holmes, H. S. Resnick, D. G. Kilpatrick and C. L. Best, ‘Rape-Related Pregnancy: Estimates and Descriptive Characteristics from a National Sample of Women’, American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 175(2) (August 1996), pp. 320–25.

  62.Anna N., sworn court testimony, 26 January 1915. Cf. also her mother’s testimony, following. AP Olsztyn: RP Allenstein: 184: fos. 81–3. Cf. with testimonies of French rape victims in R. Harris, ‘The “Child of the Barbarian”: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War’, Past & Present 141 (November 1993), pp. 176–9.

  63.An estimate of 400, later corrected to 1,000, survives only for East Prussia’s southern county, where Samsonov’s army operated. Rennenkampf’s army in the north and east of the province took 704 men and 10 women from the northern Königsberg County and probably even more military-aged men from the easterly Gumbinnen County when it withdrew. See the Allenstein and Gumbinnen County reports of 29 October and 25 September 1914 in AP Olsztyn: OP Ostpreußen: 3/528: fos. 38–62 and 64–79, and the table for Königsberg, c. April 1915, in GStA PK, Berlin: I. HA Rep 90A, 1064.

  64.Letter of Bernard F. to Regierungspräsident in Allenstein, 29 September 1914. AP Olsztyn: RP Allenstein: 179: fos. 85–7.

  65.E. Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2003), pp. 17–18 and 124.

  66.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 142–4. See also the lists of deported for the Königsberg, Allenstein and Gumbinnen Counties from c. 1916–17 in GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3578, 3579 and 3580.

  67.Calculated from reports by Regierungspräsidenten in Allenstein and Gumbinnen, 16 February and 21 April 1915. GStA PK, Berlin: XX. HA Rep 2II, 3560: fo. 158 and I. HA Rep 90A, 1064: report pages 7–8; and Landräte reports for Johannisburg (15 February 1915), Lötzen (18 February 1915), Sensburg (19 February 1915) and Lyck (26 February 1915) districts. AP Olsztyn: RP Allenstein: 177: fos. 21–3, 27–8, 31–5 and 45–7. For the evacuation, see Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 69–70.

  68.See Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, p. 124, Auswärtiges Amt, Greueltaten russischer Truppen, annex 81, and Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 242–3.

  69.Report by Regierungspräsident in Gumbinnen to Unterstaatssekretär Heinrichs, 21 April 1915. GStA PK, Berlin: I. HA Rep 90A, 1064, pp. 7–8 of report. See also Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, pp. 242–3.

  70.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, p. 117.

  71.For the deportation of Russia’s enemy expatriates and ethnic Germans, see Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, pp. 122–37.

  72.Gause, Russen in Ostpreußen, esp. pp. 253 and 282. Also, for conditions in internment, see the US ambassadorial reports reproduced in S. Tiepolato, ‘Reports of the Delegates of the Embassy of the United States of America in St Petersburg on the Situation of the German Prisoners of War and Civil Persons in Russia’, DEP – Deportate, esuli, profughe. Rivista telematica di studi sulla memoria femminile 4 (2006), pp. 185–92.

  73.T. Wolff, Tagebücher, 1914–1919. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Entstehung der Weimarer Republik in Tagebüchern, Leitartikeln und Briefen des Chefredakteurs am ‘Berliner Tageblatt’ und Mitbegründers der ‘Deutschen Demokratischen Partei’, ed. B. Sösemann (2 vols., Boppard am Rhein, 1984), i, p. 96 (diary entry for 30 August 1914). For the period before, see the fourth ‘Stimmungsbericht’ of Polizeipräsident in Berlin, 2 September 1914. BA Berlin Lichterfelde: R43/2398: fo. 138.

  74.See A. von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009), pp. 14 – 27. For the Kaiser’s attempt to exploit the victories for his own personal standing, see G. A. von Müller, The Kaiser and his Court: The Diaries, Notebooks and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, 1914–1918, ed. W. Görlitz and trans. M. Savill (London, 1961), p. 65 (entry for 15 February 1915).

  75.See A. Hausner, diary (vol. 2), 16 November 1914 (p. 18). KA Vienna: Nachläße: B/217 Hausner.

  76.Deputy Stücklein in the Reichstag on 26 August 1915, quoted in J. M. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 1914–1919 (New York, 1941, 1972), pp. 113–14.

  77.Oberbürgermeister of Munich, 4 March 1915, quoted in Münchner Ostpreußenhilfe, Ostpreußennot und Bruderhilfe. Kriegsgedenkblätter (Munich, 1915), p. 1.

  78.Ostpreußisches Landesmuseum Lüneburg (ed.), Die Ostpreußenhilfe im Ersten Weltkrieg. Zur Ausstellung ‘Zum Besten der Ostpreußenhilfe’ (23.9.2006–28.1.2007) (Husum, 2006), p. 16. For further details see Watson, ‘ “Unheard of Brutality” ’.

  79.Von Hagen, War in a European Borderland, p. 20.

  80.See P. Holquist, ‘The Role of Personality in the First 1914–1915 Russian Occupation of Galicia and Bukovina’, in J. Dekel-Chen, D. Gaunt, N. M. Meir and I. Barton (eds.), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in European History (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 2010) p. 57.

  81.N. Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland. 1795 to the Present, revised edn (2 vols., Oxford and New York, 2005), ii, pp. 282–3.

  82.Słomka, From Serfdom to Self-Government, pp. 215–20.

  83.S. Ansky, The Enemy at his Pleasure: A Journey through the Jewish Pale of Settlement during World War I, ed. and trans. J. Neugroschel (New York, 2002), p. 116.

  84.Holquist, ‘Role of Personality’, p. 57.
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  85.Report of exponierter Stabsoffizier des Landesgendarmeriekommandos 5 in Lemberg, 13 December 1915, in k.u.k. Ministerium des Äussern, Sammlung von Nachweisen für die Verletzungen des Völkerrechts durch die mit Österreich-Ungarn Krieg führenden Staaten. III. Nachtrag. Abgeschlossen mit 30. Juni 1916 (Vienna, 1916), pp. 53–4.

  86.For the differences in the violence against East Prussians and Habsburg Jews, see Watson, ‘ “Unheard of Brutality” ’.

  87.See the report on Brody by the Jewish aid worker Dr Bernard Hausner in CAHJP, Jerusalem: HM2–9177 (originals held in Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy, L’viv: fond 146 opis 4), fos. 23–6, and Ansky, Enemy at his Pleasure, pp. 68–70.

  88.See the reports on Jaryczów Nowy, Zabłotów and Nadwórna by Hausner in CAHJP, Jerusalem: HM2–9177, fos. 110, 46–7 and 14, 59, and Holquist, ‘Role of Personality’, p. 54.

  89.‘Kriegsschaden in Westgalizien – Gendarmerieberichte’, 1 December 1914. AVA Vienna: MdI (1914) 19 in generl. Akte 45930.

  90.Mick, Kriegserfahrungen, pp. 105–6. Also Ansky, Enemy at his Pleasure, p. 78.

  91.See the complaints in the anonymous ‘Denkschrift’ sent to Minister President Stürgkh in the autumn of 1915 in AVA Vienna: MdI, allgemein 28 in gen. (1914–16) (Karton 2231): doc. 57652. Its complaints about Ruthene hostility towards the Jews are confirmed in k.k. Statthaltereipräsidium to Ministerium des Innern, 24 November 1915, p. 10. AVA Vienna: MdI, Präsidiale (1914–15): 22/Galiz. Karton 2116: doc. 25414, and also Hauser’s reports, esp. those from Horodenka, Delatyn and Grodek. See CAHJP, Jerusalem: HM2–9177, fos. 4, 13 and 103. For Russian commanders’ reactions to the pogroms, see Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland, pp. 26–9.

  92.J. Schoenfeld, Shtetl Memories: Jewish Life in Galicia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the Reborn Poland, 1898–1939 (Hoboken, NJ, 1985), p. 135. Hausner’s report for Śniatyn notes that the civilian population did not take part in the Russians’ robbing of the town. See CAHJP, Jerusalem: HM2–9177.1: fos. 49–50.

  93.Reports by Dr Hausner and the local k.k. Gendarmeriepostenkommando, 3 May 1916. See CAHJP, Jerusalem: HM2–9177.1: fos. 31 and 34.