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

by Dennis Showalter

  If Hindenburg’s star did not shine brilliantly over the next two decades, neither was it dimmed by false steps. In 1898, as chief of staff of VIII Corps, he was given the assignment of preparing a contingency plan for the defense of the east. His study followed in detail Schieffen’s developing conventional wisdom of an “offensive defense” by weak forces. He was conventionally critical of spending money on fortifications, insisting that Germany’s best defense was an army fighting on enemy territory. It was not entirely surprising that in 1903 Hindenburg was asked by the chief of the military cabinet if he was interested in becoming the next chief of staff. Hindenburg replied that he would not fit in at court. Six years later he was also briefly considered for the post of Prussian war minister.

  These trial balloons reflected the favorable impression Hindenburg made as a man of force and integrity—the latter mixed with a shrewd sense of the line between honor and intransigence. One anecdote in particular clung to Hindenburg’s name. During his last years of command, a captain justified the punishment of a private soldier by describing the man as dickfällig (thick-skinned). The battalion commander refused to accept this vulgarism. The colonel upheld the captain. The brigadier and the division commander took sides. The whole matter finally landed on Hindenburg’s desk, when he settled the affair by correcting the spelling of dickfellig72 The story’s validity is less important than its double-meaning credibility. It reflects a general opinion that Hindenburg did not possess the kind of subtle, imaginative mind needed in appointments demanding a certain degree of intellectual sophistication and a certain skill in people management. But it also suggests a degree of native shrewdness not to be lightly dismissed.

  Hindenburg finished his active career commanding IV Corps in Magdeburg, retiring in 1911, as he put it, to make way for younger men. He was neither promoted on retirement nor assigned as an army inspector. But he had not come so near to the top of his profession by accident. In 1912 the military cabinet had considered him as a possible field army commander in war. Once his name emerged from the discussion at OHL, more and more points in his favor came to light. His health was good. He was famous for his imperturbability. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, bulky without being fat—the kind of imposing physical presence that can convey authority without words. While he had never served with Ludendorff, von François had at one time been his chief of staff, an experience that should presumably give him some advantages controlling a man known throughout the army as headstrong.73

  At 3:00 p.m. on August 22, Hindenburg received a telegram from Koblenz asking if he were prepared for immediate employment. He answered simply, “I am ready.” OHL seems to have been sure of this, at least. Even before his wire could have reached Koblenz he received three more in succession. These informed him that Ludendorff was to be assigned as his chief of staff, that he was to command the 8th Army, and that a special train would pick him up at 3:00 a.m. on the 23rd. The new army commander had no time even to acquire a field uniform. He went to the station wearing the traditional Prussian blue.74

  The kaiser was not particularly happy with either choice. He regarded Hindenburg as not merely simple, but simple-minded, lacking the panache William so admired in his generals. Army rumor had it that the conflict of personalities had been exacerbated during the imperial maneuvers of 1908, when Hindenburg refused to cooperate in one of the elaborate military set-pieces his master so loved. As for Ludendorff, he was in the kaiser’s eyes a mucker, a jumped-up technician lacking in social graces.

  More than personal judgments were involved here. From the beginning of his reign William had sought to govern Germany himself, to concentrate key decisions in his hands. He had been markedly successful in this process, creating an entourage of yes-men and an administrative structure increasingly reluctant to act without first determining the kaiser’s will. The outbreak of war had changed that utterly, at least on the part of the army. For all William’s martial posturing, for all of his determination to exercise military command personally, even the most sycophantic generals found it difficult to take him literally as a war lord. The kaiser’s penchant for interfering with the conduct of maneuvers, taking command of one side or the other, was compounded by a tendency to treat the exercises as a contest in which victory or its trappings had the same meaning as a successful coup at the gaming tables. The results were uniformly negative. William was exposed to professional criticism from the umpires—a process artificial at best and risky at worst, depending on the state of the kaiser’s temper. Or the maneuvers themselves were distorted to allow the war lord his spectacles. Or William was politely but firmly sidetracked, a craft at which Moltke was far more skilled than his predecessors.

  Staff officers took pains to defend their guild from the charge of taking William’s generalship seriously. Everyone knew that the kaiser was a hopeless tactician, and at best an amateur strategist. If men like Schlieffen were content to humor him, to tickle his vanity, this was only another version of a process virtually universal in the modern world: flattering politicians into thinking they know more than they actually do, or ever can, know about complex technical specialties. To agree with Wilhelm Deist that this process encouraged “Byzantinism” and “corrupted the intellectual development” of senior officers is to accept an exaggeration.75 What William’s military behavior encouraged was less Byzantinism than cynicism. His consistent ignoring of the adage that it is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and confirm the suspicion was poor preparation for his taking the field with OHL.

  Isabel Hull describes a kaiser seriously depressed by the strain of the July Crisis, sleeping late in the morning, alarming even his wife by his despondency. His mood could hardly have been improved by his sense of being a fifth wheel in what he initially regarded as his own field headquarters. Suddenly under the stress of a real war, no one of importance had time to play with William, to soothe his ego or lift his spirits. He learned of the crisis in East Prussia only in the course of the 21st, and the news sent him into a tailspin. He invited his two cabinet chiefs—the only officers who could be spared—to take a walk with him. After several hours of aimless rambling, he seated himself on a bench and invited his companions to join him. Deeming the bench too small to hold three portly men, one of the officers brought another. William asked if he was already so despised that none would sit beside him.76

  The chief of the naval cabinet thought the kaiser was grieving over German territory in enemy hands. He might well also have mourned for lost illusions. He was not consulted on the new appointments for the east; he was given names for approval. Given William’s self-image and his recent frustrations, he would probably have balked at Napoleon and Clausewitz. But the situation was too urgent for even Moltke to worry about ruffled imperial feathers. Hindenburg and Ludendorff received official confirmation in the face of William’s grumbling. And the kaiser sealed his capitulation by summoning Ludendorff to his presence and personally investing him with Germany’s highest decoration, the Pour le Mérite, for his role in the capture of Liège. It was the first of many gestures of submission William would make in the next four years.

  At 4:00 a.m. on the 23rd the special train arrived in Hanover—one hour late—and one of the great partnerships of military history began. For about thirty minutes Ludendorff briefed Hindenburg on the general situation and on the orders that he had already issued. “Before long,” Hindenburg says, “we were at one in our view of the situation.” Specifically, both men agreed the important thing was to keep the 8th Army east of the Vistula. To help ensure that, I Corps must not be brought too far west but instead directed south towards the XX Corps sector. The rest would be left for decision at army headquarters. Then, since there seemed nothing to be done beyond unprofitable speculation, the two generals went to bed. Neither mentioned how long he required to fall asleep.77

  The relationship between Hindenburg and Ludendorff at this early stage remains difficult to determine. Subsequent persona
l, professional, and political developments have invited hindsight by soldiers and academicians alike. Winston Churchill regarded the two men as a symbiosis so complete he referred to them by their joined initials, as HL. Ludendorff in his memoirs says that “for many years Hindenburg and I worked together like one man in the most perfect harmony. . . . our . . . views were in complete agreement and harmonious cooperation was the result.” Hindenburg speaks of “a happy marriage. ... In such a relationship, how can a third party clearly distinguish the merits of the individuals. . . . They are one in thought and action.”78

  Hindenburg’s metaphor is the most suggestive for the Tannenberg campaign. Hindenburg’s and Ludendorff’s was a marriage—a marriage of convenience. Neither the general bypassed for higher command nor the staff officer whose career was still under a cloud were fools. Each was well aware that he had been given the professional opportunity of a lifetime, accompanied by a corresponding challenge. Both knew that they would be arriving as outsiders in a headquarters apparently unable thus far to produce anything but disaster, and presumably likely to be correspondingly hostile and suspicious. If the newcomers did not watch each other’s backs no one could be expected to do it for them.

  Overwhelming practical considerations, then, indicated deliberate efforts by both men to establish harmony from the first hours of their acquaintance. If Ludendorff expected to be the brains of the combination, Hindenburg was never reluctant “to give scope to the intellectual powers, the almost superhuman capacity for work, and the untiring resolution of my chief of staff.”79 Far more than Ludendorff, Hindenburg had been through the Imperial army’s mill. He knew that the degree of cooperation between a commander and his chief of staff was largely a matter of personalities. He also knew his own qualities and limitations: he could provide a base and framework for a man more brilliant than himself. Ludendorff for his part could drive ahead and be supported, knowing that if he slipped he had the base to fall back on.

  It was correspondingly important to establish the new team’s presence immediately, even if that required some conscious posturing. In the days to come Hindenburg and Ludendorff would play roles—one the abrasive genius, the other the imperturbable father figure. Both were calculated projections of aspects of their personalities. In time it would become difficult, if not impossible, to separate the men from their self-generated legends. But the great days of the Hindenburg/Ludendorff myth were far in the future as their train crossed Germany in the early hours of August 23, 1914.

  By a fluke of communications I Corps was the first formation in 8th Army to learn of the change in command, late in the afternoon of August 22.80 When Max Hoffmann called the chief of staff of I Corps to check on Russian movements in the corps’s front, Schmidtseck asked Hoffmann if he knew what had happened. Hoffmann said no. Schmidtseck replied that he did not feel called upon to enlighten him; he would learn soon enough. A few minutes later a junior officer brought in a telegram announcing the arrival of a special train with a new commander and chief of staff. The official telegram superseding Prittwitz and Waldersee arrived a half-hour later.

  Hoffmann accurately suggested that the manner of disposing of these two previously highly regarded officers was “a bit abrupt.” Hindenburg was relatively unknown outside his old corps district; few officers of the 8th Army staff were even casually acquainted with him. Ludendorff was a more familiar quantity. Hoffmann had served with him. They had been stationed at Posen together; from 1909 to 1913 they had lived in the same house in Berlin. Writing his wife next day, the G.S.O.L informed her that the army’s new chief of staff—“hold onto your hat”—was Ludendorff. The interjection suggests that Hoffmann, for one, did not regard Ludendorff as a savior from afar—an interpretation supported by Hoffmann’s grudging concession that the new chief at least had earned his Pour le Mérite81

  There was little time for anyone to study the personalities of the new commanders. By the afternoon of the 23rd the situation in the south appeared increasingly serious. The Austrian offensive in Galicia, begun with high hopes a week earlier, had promptly run into difficulties. On the 21st Conrad had contacted both OHL and the 8th Army and expressed an urgent request for a German offensive to support his own.82 This was obviously impossible. The mass of the Russian 2nd Army was advancing on a sixty-kilometer front from Soldau to Ortelsburg. Strong cavalry forces were believed moving forward on its right. On the 22nd Colonel Hell had countered his earlier breezy optimism and telephoned his anxiety about the left flank of XX Corps. It was possible, Hell said, that the Russians might envelop it before I Corps arrived. To prevent this he requested that the 3rd Reserve Division detrain at Allenstein and move to the left of XX Corps, instead of to its right as originally ordered. The Russians were by this time so close, Hell declared, that XX Corps expected a battle by the 24th at the latest.83

  It was with this prospect in mind that the army staff arrived in Marienburg. Hoffmann reported depression and discouragement as a natural consequences of the change in command. Ludendorff described the initial mood as “anything but cheerful.” According to Hoffmann the new chief of staff was very surprised to find that most of the preliminary orders for a concentration against the 2nd Army had been issued. Hoffmann told his new superiors not to be impressed by Russian numerical superiority; their army seemed unimproved since Manchuria. Moreover, a set of notes found on the body of a Russian officer revealed that the 2nd Army was extended so far west that the Germans would be attacking a scattered enemy. If the notes were accurate, any Russian blow through the center, the Masurian Lakes, was correspondingly impossible. Ludendorff was less optimistic. Should Rennenkampf follow up his victory at Gumbinnen XVII Corps and I Reserve Corps were likely to be unavailable for use against the Russian 2nd Army. In this case, the chief of staff declared, the balance of 8th Army would do what it could. If the attack failed the survivors would try to establish a defensive line east of the Vistula, holding the bridgeheads until reinforcements could arrive from the western front.84

  Ludendorff’s anxieties become clearer in the context of the German army’s lack of doctrine for fighting a delaying action against superior numbers. The regulations spoke instead of attack and defense, with the latter a temporary phenomenon. In all cases the implication that the Germans would retain the initiative was almost illogically strong. Collective unofficial wisdom went no farther than advising removing oneself as soon as possible from the enemy’s immediate reach—limited help in the context of the current situation.85 Yet despite Ludendorff’s concern, the Russian 1st Army was not advancing. Even its cavalry had remained inactive.

  Max Hoffmann described this tardiness as the last act of the feud with Samsonov discussed in a previous chapter. In his later years he was prone to say that if the battle of Waterloo had been won on the playing fields of Eton, the battle of Tannenberg was lost on the railway platform at Mukden where the two generals came to blows.86 Hoffmann told the story with such confidence that one standard reference work even describes him as having witnessed the fight—a remarkable feat for an officer attached at the time to the Japanese army.87 But this particular legend had an immediate, instrumental purpose. Given Ludendorff’s concerns about the possible threat from Rennenkampf’s sector, what was more logical for a man like Hoffmann than to search his memory for any scraps and tags of information that might calm the new chief? What was more likely than the fusion of vague rumors based on the Russian generals’ membership in different military cliques with a bit of poetic license to produce a story that even its author came to believe—particularly since it was not directly discredited by Rennenkampf’s behavior?

  IV

  The 1st Army’s failure to pursue its enemy reflected Rennenkampf’s perception of its condition. Before the Battle of Gumbinnen some of his staff officers had argued that a retreat was essential. The army’s supplies of food and forage were almost gone. Straggling was becoming epidemic. The ferocity of the German attack on August 20 had shocked veterans of Liaoyang and Mukden. Russian
casualties were heavy; ammunition had been used at a staggering rate. Then for no apparent reason the Germans had begun to withdraw. Why? One explanation was both reasonable and comforting: they had been beaten, soundly and unexpectedly. One of Rennenkampf’s staff officers, detailed to interrogate prisoners, was impressed in spite of himself by the respect amounting to terror all ranks showed for Russian firepower. “We have many things to learn from you,” one wounded officer declared. “The Russian army is not at all what we thought it was.” It was not entirely wishful thinking to argue that the Germans were perhaps a bit too civilized for the modern battlefield. Lacking Russian staying power they were retiring as fast as possible, preserving their forces for a major battle further west. It was little wonder that Rennenkampf ended the day by telling one of his staff officers that he could safely take off his clothes and go to bed.

  The sense of relief at 1st Army headquarters may have been inappropriate. It was also understandable. No European army was unaware of the inertia tending to strike troops and headquarters alike in the aftermath of a victory. The need for pursuit to physical and emotional limits had been inculcated into Russian generals as well as their German counterparts. But peacetime theory was of little help to a headquarters commanding hungry, tired men, confronting an enemy with a high reputation for wiliness in adversity. The retreat might be an elaborate deception. Even if it were genuine, attempting to follow the Germans too closely in the 1st Army’s current state of disorganization might well have the approximate effect of throwing boiled peas at a windowpane.