Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History)

by Dennis Showalter

  Max Hoffmann later suggested that while Prittwitz was out of the office he informed both his superiors and his subordinates that he was going to withdraw beyond the Vistula. He forgot—or perhaps was too embarrassed—to tell any of his staff what he had said. Then when he changed his mind, he neglected to inform OHL of the fact.52 This explanation ignores the timing of the various conversations. A more reasonable reconstruction of events is that when Prittwitz left Hoffmann and Grünert he was convinced that retreat across the Vistula was necessary. His exchange with Moltke began the process of jolting him back to reality—at least the reality that ordering such a maneuver would almost certainly cost him his command. He returned to consult with his staff, and approved the orders designed to begin moving the army southward. At 8:23 p.m. army headquarters also sent a dispatch to OHL, briefly declaring that in view of the strong Russian concentration in the south, the army was withdrawing to West Prussia (nach Westpreusseri).53

  By design or accident, this was an interesting mental reservation. The Vistula River was not mentioned—but much of West Prussia lay behind this river. Perhaps Prittwitz was not quite as convinced by his staff’s calculations as he seemed and was readier to share his anxieties with Mackensen, whose corps had been so badly shaken, than with the aggressive and unsympathetic François. Or just perhaps the staff officers were not quite as confident as they sought to appear for posterity. It had been two busy hours at the end of a long day and a longer three weeks. A little geographic vagueness was a reasonable price for enough surface consensus to keep the headquarters functioning. Time enough now for a night’s sleep and hopes for a better tomorrow.

  The news from East Prussia had a shattering effect at OHL, not least because it arrived in the context of wildly optimistic reports of a complete German victory at Gumbinnen dispatched independently from Königsberg.54 General Ritter von Wenninger, the Bavarian military plenipotentiary, described the gloomy depression that settled over all the officers—especially Moltke—as they learned of it.55 Many of the officers at OHL had relatives, many had their own homes, in the suddenly threatened region. The campaign in the west was by no means progressing as smoothly as planned. Stubborn Belgian resistance in the north and a determined French attack in Lorraine were combining to alter the timetable of the Schlieffen Plan. The attention of the high command was focussed on the developing Battle of the Frontiers, the battle expected to decide Europe’s fate for a century. Now from the east came these confused reports of defeat and withdrawal.

  Eighth Army headquarters awoke on August 21 with a collectively uneasy conscience. At 7:45 a.m., OHL received a long-distance call offering a whitewashed explanation of the previous day’s events, ending with the statement that Prittwitz had decided “initially” to withdraw “behind the Angerapp.” At 9:30 a.m. an angry Moltke was on the telephone. Was Prittwitz planning a general retreat? Did he now propose to use part of his force to hold the Russians on the Angerapp while moving the rest around Prussia like a manic chess player? Attempts to explain via long distance only enraged Moltke further. Nor was the mood at supreme headquarters improved when during the morning François took advantage of his peacetime rights as a corps commander to bypass the chain of command and report the situation in the east—or his interpretation of it—directly to the kaiser.

  Moltke grew increasingly convinced that not only was the army in full retreat to the Vistula, but that Prittwitz was foolishly planning to divide his forces in the face of a superior enemy. Even if this should be interpreted as one of those “grave situations” in which the 8th Army was authorized to withdraw to the river, such a movement was feasible only if strong reinforcements could be sent east to cover the retreat and help hold the Vistula line. On August 21 OHL had no troops immediately available.56

  While Moltke stewed, 8th Army Headquarters began recovering its equilibrium. Gumbinnen, mused Max Hoffmann, had evidently hurt the Russians more than expected. Rennenkampf was not moving; 8th Army seemed on the way to gaining a day’s march on its enemies. Hoffmann contacted the chief of staff of XX Corps, and probably of I Corps as well, to discuss the prospects of an attack on the Russian 2nd Army. Waldersee was more specific in cautioning XX Corps to avoid those frontal attacks that had cost so many lives at Gumbinnen. Hold your position, he instructed Scholtz, until I Corps takes position on your right and XVII Corps and I Reserve Corps come up on the left.57

  OHL remained unaware of the changing mood. During the day, junior officers in its operations section, acting on their own initiative, also contacted 8th Army’s corps by phone, bypassing Prittwitz’s headquarters. None of the corps commanders felt themselves defeated or considered the outlook hopeless.58 Most probably, none would have risked expressing any doubts under the unusual circumstances. Openly ignoring the chain of command in this fashion was hardly routine in the German army. The sound of axes being sharpened was audible even across the miles separating Koblenz from East Prussia.

  During the afternoon Waldersee too received a private call. His came from Quartermaster General Hermann von Stein, urging that the 8th Army concentrate west of the Masurian Lakes and attack the right, rather than the left, flank of the Russians coming from the Narew. Waldersee temporized, repeating Prittwitz’s intention to concentrate in West Prussia and aim at the Russian left. Stein let the matter pass, but the conversation only confirmed impressions that Waldersee’s nerve was also gone. A chief of staff who allowed his commander to manifest unchecked the panic-stricken pessimism Prittwitz had shown the night before was a dubious quantity at best. Even in daylight, Waldersee seemed to have at least one eye fixed over his shoulder. Army headquarters had moved west, not south. Lines of communication troops were falling back with what seemed in Koblenz indecent haste. Rhetoric about concentrating against the left flank of the Russian advance from the Narew appeared little more than an attempt at camouflaging incipient disaster.59

  On the evening of August 21, Prittwitz and Moltke talked once more. In 1859, Moltke’s uncle had declared no commander to be more unfortunate than one having in his headquarters someone who could call him to account every day and every hour, subjecting his plans and decisions to criticism, offering advice without responsibility.60 The telephone, making possible instant communication over hundreds of miles, bid fair to turn a gloomy theory into uncomfortable reality. Moltke had been anxiously pressing Prittwitz for information about the eastern front well before the day of Gumbinnen, and the telephone left impressions that were as strong as they were limited. For men from a generation accustomed to visual contact on one hand and the detachment of the written word on the other, the telephone’s reliability as a means of judging states of mind was questionable. It was impossible to evaluate any intangibles except voice tones, and this was difficult enough given the shaky connections. But did it make sense to risk catastrophe in the name of sustaining command responsibility?

  Evidence indicates that Moltke had made up his mind to relieve Prittwitz before he talked to 8th Army’s commander on the evening of the 21st. The actual course of events, however, involves a problem of reconstruction more familiar to the medievalist than to the student of modern history, who is more likely to be embarrassed by a plethora of documents than baffled by their absence. It begins with internal contradictions in Moltke’s account of the conversation. He describes it as having taken place on the 20th—a date substantiated by the lurid circumstantial account of Prittwitz’s behavior discussed above, and in Max Hoffmann’s memoir. Most British and American histories accept that date without further ado. Yet Moltke also refers to an event that could only have occurred late on the 21st: Prittwitz declaring his 1st Cavalry Division out of touch and presumably annihilated, then a few minutes later reporting its reappearance with five hundred Russian prisoners.61 This in turn justifies the German official account, Walter Elze’s detailed narrative, and most German works derived from them, in attributing the whole conversation to the 21st—particularly since there were no independent records of a similar conversation on
the 20th.62

  More than a simple question of timing is involved. To partisans of Hindenburg and Ludendorff and critics of Max Hoffmann, the later date proves the case that Prittwitz was still panic-stricken beyond all reason, and that his G.S.O.I. was not quite the gray eminence that he described himself as being. Until his death in 1919 Prittwitz staunchly denied entertaining any serious intention to retreat behind the Vistula.63 Nothing in his behavior during the day inspired his subordinates or staff officers to suggest that the chief continued to be disproportionately anxious. But even if his fears had not subsided, why, on the night of August 21, should Prittwitz refer to XVII Corps as “finished” when his headquarters was well aware that most of Mackensen’s men were back in the ranks and the corps was responding to orders? By what stretch of imagination might he describe his army as “surrounded” by Russian cavalry when he was aware that the Russians had barely moved from their position all day? His concerns were correspondingly likely to fix on negative interpretations of the current day’s events—such as the missing 1st Cavalry Division.

  Other accounts from OHL are of little direct help. One possible straw in the wind is Wenninger’s report of August 21. It describes concern with the unfortunate leadership of Prittwitz and Waldersee, and talk of “hurried retreat behind the Vistula”—but it is dated 10:00 p.m.64 Two and a half hours is a relatively short time for any event to become the stuff of general gossip in a body as large as OHL. Wenninger was not a particular confidant of Stein or Moltke. His primary concerns involved the Bavarian troops in Lorraine; events in the east played a marginal role in his correspondence. On the other hand, OHL had enough contacts with the eastern theater during the course of the 21st to produce by nightfall a general sense that something was going wrong.

  Two possibilities seem likely. The simplest is that Moltke, who in any case had much on his mind, confused two successive evening conversations when he wrote his report. Alternatively Moltke may have confronted Prittwitz on the 21st with his own fears and suspicions, and the two men became involved in a long-distance shouting match. Moltke was high-strung and Prittwitz high-tempered: not the best combination for a meeting of minds under stress. The army commander might well have lost control of his tongue from a mixture of tension and embarrassment. It is worth noting that Prittwitz believed Moltke never quite understood what he planned to do with the 8th Army—a point whose accuracy need not be diminished by any lingering suspicions that Prittwitz was himself not too sure what to do next.

  The ultimate importance of the conversation of August 21 was not whether Prittwitz stated or repeated an intent to retreat to the Vistula. It was his inability to alter Moltke’s conviction that the situation in East Prussia was out of control, that the army commander had lost his head. No small part of Moltke’s frustration was the product of his own ignorance of circumstances combined with Prittwitz’s inability to communicate anything but a generalized sense of disaster. Whatever his private reservations, Moltke had chosen the Prittwitz-Waldersee team for the eastern theater. Already too many voices in OHL were suggesting that the chief of staff was not the man his uncle had been, that he needed to be propped up like a sick horse. Immediate action seemed necessary for Moltke to maintain his own position.65

  III

  None of these points made reorganizing the 8th Army’s command structure any easier. It was the first case of its kind since the war began, the first in the modern history of the German army. Even that prickly incompetent Karl von Steinmetz had been eased out of his command during the Franco-Prussian War, rather than being summarily dismissed. Nor would Prittwitz be the only one relieved. Any chief of staff unable to check the panic-stricken pessimism Moltke associated with Prittwitz was also superfluous. At 9:00 a.m. on August 22nd, Major General Erich Ludendorff received two messages, one from the chief of staff and one from the quartermaster-general. Moltke’s informed him:

  A new and difficult task is entrusted to you. ... I know of no other man in whom I have such absolute trust. You may yet be able to save the situation in the East. ... Of course you will not be made responsible for what has already happened, but with your energy you can prevent the worst from happening.

  Von Stein’s letter was written in a similar vein; it concluded by saying, “Your task is a difficult one, but you are equal to it.”66

  The decision had not been made in a vacuum. Ludendorff has frequently been described as representing everything negative in the rising generation of German staff officers: bourgeois by birth, specialist by training, philistine by temperament, an archetypical militarist with no vestiges of humanitarian impulse and no sensitivities beyond a Biedermeyer attachment to his immediate family.67 But he had made a peacetime reputation as an intelligent, hard-working staff officer, one of Moltke’s most able subordinates and a leading candidate for the post of chief of operations on mobilization. His thorny personality and his deep belief that Germany’s peacetime military establishment must be increased whatever the social, economic, or political costs made him numerous enemies inside and outside of the army. His premature transfer in 1913 from the general staff to the command of an infantry regiment went beyond the standard procedure intended to keep general staff officers au courant with troop duty. Ludendorff and most of his counterparts regarded his particular assignment, to an undistinguished regiment in the industrial city of Düsseldorf, as punitive. In the corridors of power he was considered to be well under a cloud. Then at the outbreak of war, he was assigned to the improvised task force sent against the key Belgian fortress of Liège. When an assault column faltered, Ludendorff rallied the men, led them into the city, and became an instant hero by demanding single-handedly the surrender of its citadel.

  It is scarcely surprising that he came quickly to Moltke’s mind as Waldersee’s successor. The German general staff had historically forgiven boldness far more readily than inaction. Ludendorff had proved in front of Liège that he was not a man to sit and wait for orders. As far as his personality was concerned, no one at OHL assumed that the situation on the eastern front in any way resembled a popularity contest. A hard-driving kicker of hindquarters seemed to be just what was needed at 8th Army headquarters. Ludendorff was ordered to report to Coblenz immediately. At noon on the 22nd, while he was still en route, his appointment as chief of staff of the 8th Army was confirmed by the kaiser.

  At 6:00 p.m., Ludendorff arrived at Koblenz and reported to OHL. There Moltke informed him the 8th Army had been defeated at Gumbinnen and was in full retreat, with Prittwitz planning to withdraw across the Vistula. In his memoirs Ludendorff says he viewed the situation as “serious but not impossible.” Interestingly, he agreed with at least part of Prittwitz’s judgment. Ludendorff too believed the Vistula line could not hold without reinforcements as yet unavailable—to say nothing of the effect a withdrawal to the river was likely to have on the developing Austrian offensive in Galicia. Based on the sketchy information he had been given, he ordered I Reserve Corps and XVII Corps to rest on the 23rd. The I Corps was to detrain around Deutsch Eylau, close to von Scholtz’s position. Army headquarters would meet him in Marienburg.68

  Ludendorff was unaware of the orders issued in East Prussia on the 20th and the 21st. That he arrived at almost the same conclusions as the men on the spot is frequently cited as proof of the high level of German staff training and the comprehensive nature of German doctrine. On the other hand, the concept of maneuvering between the two Russian armies was so familiar that it hardly required genius to consider it the most logical solution—particularly since 8th Army was already on the move west and south.

  The value of strategic insight is easily exaggerated. Any cadet, and many civilians, can plan brilliant campaigns on a map. The test comes in matching plans to the capacities of troops and commanders, in coordinating combat and logistics, and above all, in dealing with the friction endemic in that mixture of organization and confusion called war. Ludendorff deserved credit for instantly realizing the situation with only sketchy information,
and for the courage to issue orders at long range on his own responsibility. Whether he could oversee the implementation of these orders remained to be determined.

  Ludendorff left Koblenz at 9:00 p.m. by special train, with orders to pick up the new army commander on the way east. The selection of this man had also been a difficult task. Good knowledge of human nature was necessary to form a team under the German command system. Ludendorff was not an easy man to work with. He was arrogant, touchy, and humorless; his service in the general staff had made him more admirers than friends. He was almost certain to regard himself as responsible for salvaging a desperate situation at the last minute, and correspondingly disinclined to self-effacement. Prittwitz was no less stubborn. Even if OHL had not lost confidence in him, a pairing of these men would probably have proven unfortunate.

  At the least someone calm and steady, a man able to get along with almost anyone, would be required at 8th Army’s helm. The officers chiefly responsible for nominating the new commander, Major General von Lyncker and Colonel Freiherr von Marschall of the military cabinet, began by considering Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz. He knew East Prussia intimately, and had a substantial reputation as a theorist of war. But his very intelligence and strength of character suggested that he might find it difficult to cooperate closely with Ludendorff. Two sets of good ideas at the same headquarters could prove as disastrous as one bad set.69 Then Colonel von Fabeck suggested an acquaintance. Paul Beneckendorff und Hindenburg had the necessary seniority. He wanted an active assignment; on August 12 he had petitioned Berlin to be considered if a higher commander were needed. He was also living in Hanover, on the direct route to East Prussia from Koblenz—a useful plus when haste seemed imperative.

  According to Wilhelm Groener, while the choice of Ludendorff was universally welcomed, Hindenburg was “a blank page for most of us” at OHL.70 Yet Hindenburg was by no means the elderly and simple-minded dolt, the designated figurehead, of some legends. His was an old military family, though not an extensive and well-connected clan like the Kleists or the Bülows. Commissioned in the Prussian guards, he had served as a subaltern in the Wars of Unification, graduated from the war academy, and held the alternating succession of command and staff appointments that was the normal path to high command in the kaiser’s army. His reputation was in no way that of a blockhead. Julius Verdy du Vernois, one of the elder Moltke’s original demigods, was not a man with a weakness for flattery. In a letter of 1884 to Waldersee, he described Hindenburg as a man on whom the general staff could set great hopes.71