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

by Dennis Showalter

  Nor was Rennenkampf likely to be galvanized into action from above. Zhilinski, cautious by temperament, was not anxious to see 1st Army exhaust itself prematurely, particularly since he expected Rennenkampf’s men to have to besiege or blockade the strong fortress of Königsberg. If the Germans were too hard-pressed in the north, moreover, they might retreat fast enough to outrun the 2nd Army’s pincer from the south. Zhilinski was not a strategist subtle enough to encourage Rennenkampf to halt in the hopes of holding the Germans in place. On the other hand, he saw no immediate need to drive his army commander faster than he chose to go. Probably fatigue and overconfidence played equal roles in Rennenkampf’s decision to halt—but his delay gave the Germans a golden chance to disengage and move south. In their dream of decisive victory, the Russians set the stage for their crushing defeat.88

  Meanwhile, the German I Corps was beginning its redeployment. François was for once in complete accord with his orders. At 6:00 p.m. on August 22, OHL asked him for a situation report. He replied that since the retreat had been in progress for two days, the chance of a successful attack against Rennenkampf was gone. The best possible course of action was therefore to concentrate in the south. By nightfall of the 23rd, I Corps was loaded and on its way. The Königsberg Division covered the entraining of François’s men, then fell back on its base and began entrenching along the Deime River.89

  The next formation to move south was the 3rd Reserve Division. Its commander, Major-General Curt von Morgen, was in German army slang an “iron-eater,” eager to show what he and his uniformed civilians could do, eager for distinction and promotion. He had been too late for Gumbinnen, but he drove his men forward during the evening of August 20, expecting to attack the Russian left flank at first light on the next day. He had no radio station and no telephone connections. An anxious army staff telephoned the fortress of Lötzen, requesting the commandant there to get in touch with Morgen at all costs. Not until midnight did a motorcyclist finally reach the elusive general. Morgen faced temptation. To turn Nelson’s blind eye to the dispatch and open battle as he planned, expecting the rest of the army to march to his guns in the manner of 1870, was to risk all to gain much: victory, acclaim, perhaps the Pour le Mérite itself, the much-coveted Blue Max.

  But Morgen’s stars did not sit quite firmly enough either in his eyes or on his shoulders to encourage him to stake his career on his judgment. The 3rd Reserve Division remained in place until daylight on August 21, then marched to the rear and boarded trains for Allenstein. Loading and unloading their reservists proved a complex challenge for inexperienced officers. By the night of the 22nd, Morgen’s combat elements had arrived at the assigned detraining areas. It took over forty-eight hours to move the rest of the division.90

  Mackensen’s corps was well on its westward way by noon on August 21, when a brief eclipse obscured the sun. In the eyes of those whose romantic visions survived Gumbinnen, it was nature’s own memorial to the dead. By evening of the 22nd the lost field was forty miles away. Most of the stragglers had by this time found their way back to their companies, and few awkward questions were asked by superiors themselves trying to make peace with their experience and their behavior. August 23 was officially a day of rest—for the lucky, a chance to clean clothes and equipment, to shave, to bathe in one of the small streams on the line of march, to write a field post card affirming survival, above all to sleep.

  On August 24, XVII Corps started to move south in earnest. By that night it reached Friedland. By the 25th it was in the region of Gross Schwansfeld. The West Prussians had fought a battle, then marched over a hundred miles in six days of ninety-degree heat—an impressive first view of the elephant by any standards. As his men left the field of Gumbinnen behind them, Mackensen’s spirits rose. By the 24th he was describing the situation as “interesting but difficult,” and expressing confidence that “we will succeed in mastering it”—a far cry from his gloomy report of the 20th.91

  But XVII Corps was marching through endless columns of refugees, forcing them off the roads and into the fields, upsetting wagons, throwing abandoned household goods aside like the rubbish they had suddenly become. To citizen-soldiers indoctrinated with their responsibility to defend the people they were now brutalizing, it was a heavy burden. Ambulances filled with the wounded from Gumbinnen were bypassed, despite the despairing appeals of men who feared being left behind for the Cossacks.

  Mackensen rode up and down the regiments telling his men that they were not retreating, only attacking in a different direction. His credibility in the ranks during those days was questionable. More important than the general’s rhetoric was an occasional loaf of bread commandeered from a passing supply column to supplement raw bacon scavenged from the bottoms of almost-empty haversacks and turnips dug from an abandoned field during one of the all-too-brief halts. Most of the kitchens had fallen behind, or had nothing left to cook.

  The moral recovery of XVII Corps was also fostered by the German army’s “book.” Whatever might be the mood of the fire-eating lieutentants, the captains, majors, and colonels were professionals who knew that only in storybooks is the enemy always defeated. Doctrine and experience since 1870 had stressed that a frontal attack against prepared positions with haphazard artillery support was unlikely to achieve much by itself. At best such a maneuver would hold an enemy in place and divert his strength from other sectors. In that sense XVII Corps’s middle-ranking officers could rationalize that they had done their job, and the real failures were the units on their flanks. It might be Dutch comfort, but it would carry the corps into its next fight.92

  The I Reserve Corps was the last to move. Below’s men were even more hindered than Mackensen’s by the refugees crossing their lines of march, not least because his officers seem to have been less ruthless than Mackensen’s in clearing the roads. Particularly at road junctions the tangle of wagons and animals so challenged the best efforts of the military police that detours seemed the better part of wisdom. More than the other corps commanders, Below was aware of the physical limitations of his reservists. He and his staff took pains to provide water, hot food, and regular brief halts. Regimental officers were more willing than their counterparts of the active corps to overlook the chickens, geese, and ducks from abandoned farmyards that volunteered for special duty in the haversacks of the rank and file. Better that than leaving them for the Russians. More than his counterparts, too, Below was willing to take citizens in uniform into his confidence. His order of the day for August 21 not only expressed the usual appreciation for the troops’ performance at Gumbinnen, but regretted that the fruits of victory had been rejected because of Prittwitz’s insistence on retreat.93

  By August 23, only the 1st Cavalry Division remained facing Rennenkampf. It had done well at Gumbinnen, not only keeping its Russian counterparts in check but riding behind enemy lines as far as Pilkallen, sowing panic in Rennenkampf’s headquarters and returning to its own lines, as mentioned with a sizeable bag of prisoners. A few more men, a bit more firepower, and a bit more aggressiveness might have enabled the writing of a last, heroic chapter in the mounted arm’s history. But the German squadrons had been constantly on the alert since mobilization. Some had been reduced to less than half their assigned strength. Casualties had played a less significant role in that process than exhausted horses. German cavalry were on the whole better horsemasters than their French or Russian counterparts. Nevertheless forced marches and night alarms, short rations and hasty saddling combined in an epidemic of cast shoes, sore backs, and injured legs. Senior officers, despairing requests for a day’s rest, and their even more despairing demands that the civil authorities do something to control the refugees blocking the roads, did not suggest a sudden return to the dashing days of Napoleon.94

  The weakness of the cavalry enhanced the problem facing 8th Army command. For its proposed concentration to have any effect the Russian 2nd Army had to be stopped as close to the German border as possible. Every mile it advanced mea
nt that the Germans had to concentrate further to their rear, giving Rennenkampf even more time to move into the gap opened as XVII Corps and I Reserve Corps moved south. Somehow the Germans facing Samsonov had to hold out; a reinforced corps had to stop an army. The burden of the campaign now rested on XX Corps, and on its commander, Lieutenant-General von Scholtz.

  PART III

  THE BLOOD-SWOLLEN GOD

  7

  The Province of Uncertainty

  I

  On a map, the advance of the Russian 2nd Army was a deadly thrust. An attack northwest towards the Vistula, if successful, would render impossible any German plans for switching troops from sector to sector behind the line of the Masurian Lakes. It would cut the German lines of communication into East Prussia. It would hopelessly trap every German soldier in the province. Ostheer would be forced either to fight at a disadvantage or to let itself be shut up in Königsberg. This bold conception was the product of evolution. Zhilinski, initially mindful of the risks of dividing his forces, had originally planned only a tactical envelopment on the 2nd Army’s front, with two of its corps advancing directly west towards the line Lyck-Johannesburg, and two more executing a short left hook around the Masurian Lakes. Then on August 10 the Russian high command “suggested” instead that the major axis of the 2nd Army’s advance should be south of the Lakes. Zhilinski took the recommendation as an order. On August 13 he informed Samsonov that the 2nd Army was to shift its lines of march westward. From right to left, VI, XIII, and XV Corps, and a division of XXIII Corps would advance to the line Rudczanny-Passenheim, then swing north to Seeburg-Rastenburg. Only II Corps would advance directly against the Masurian Lakes, while maintaining contact between the 1st and 2nd Armies. To cover his left, which would be more exposed by this change in plans, Samsonov was assigned three more divisions, I Corps, the 3rd Guard Division, which was the other division of XXIII Corps.

  Samsonov himself made a third set of changes in his march orders. His Directive Number 1, issued on August 16, extended the front of his advance by a further twenty-five miles. On paper the objective remained that set by Zhilinski: the line Rudczanny-Passenheim. But the 2nd Army’s three center corps would now begin by marching northwest. Only after crossing the frontier would they begin swinging northward as originally instructed.

  When Zhilinski protested sharply, Samsonov answered that the new lines of advance were necessary if he was to have sufficient freedom to maneuver. His alteration offered the chance of enveloping the Germans, avoiding the costs and risks of a head-on encounter. It also required two days’ extra marching for the corps involved. It increased the risk of losing communication with the 1st Army. It set back the time when the Russian forces could unite. It created the possibility of a dangerous overextension of the 2nd Army’s front. And it demanded from the start extremely rapid movements.1

  Complaints from higher authorities received the unvarnished reply that the troops were moving as fast as they could but were being delayed by “sand.” More than sand was involved. To reach Samsonov’s revised line of departure from their original concentration areas, XV, XIII, and VI Corps had to average between sixteen and eighteen miles a day for five days. Even more than on Rennenkampf’s front the strategic situation indicated prospects for what the Soviets now call an operational maneuver group: a strong advance guard of cavalry supported by enough infantry and artillery to give it a reasonable degree of firepower.2 But however often the Russians had used such a force in their military history, Samsonov and his staff regarded the risks as unacceptable. They preferred an alternate set.

  “Freedom to maneuver” was a shibboleth of peacetime wargaming. Considered in the abstract, long marches might seem a reasonable tradeoff, a Napoleonic decision to make war with soldiers’ legs. But men, not painted wooden blocks, were executing the new orders. They were moving not on a smooth map, but over roads little more than dirt tracks, often deliberately left unimproved to slow a potential German invasion. Nor were they all peacetime soldiers hardened to forced marches. As many as 60 percent of the men in some battalions were newly mobilized reservists, no more accustomed than their German counterparts to the feel of army boots and the weight of a full pack. Temperatures in the eighties and nineties added to the misery of clouds of dust kicked up by thousands of blistered feet. It was not mere superstition that led Samsonov’s men to curse the solar eclipse of August 21 as a bad omen. Their luck seemed hardly capable of getting worse.

  Efficient logistics could have done much to ease the strain of the Russian advance. Most of the infantrymen who lurched toward the frontier were young and healthy. Peasants or townsmen, they were inured to physical exertion. Ample food, regular supplies of water, and the opportunity for one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep were familiar restoratives of energy and morale.

  But the Russian army’s supply services were disorganized to the point of confusion. A new system of centralized administration had been

  The Southern Sector August 21–26

  introduced just before the war. As a result front, army, and corps quartermasters spent more time debating jurisdictions than moving rations forward or keeping roads clear. Supply columns frequently lacked their authorized number of wagons. Requisitioned civilian vehicles broke down under their loads. Heavy government wagons stuck in the sand. Using double teams restored mobility temporarily, but at the price of further exhausting horses unaccustomed to being worked such long hours on so little forage. The end result was rations not reaching their destinations at all, or arriving at odd times of the day and night, disrupting meal and sleep schedules accordingly. Water discipline collapsed as thirsty men broke ranks to empty wells in the villages through which they passed, then fell out with stomach cramps. Straggling grew from a problem to a plague as hungry, footsore men lagged behind the marching columns to nurse their galls and seek something to eat. Complaints from company and battalion commanders were discounted by senior officers who sententiously proclaimed that active service demanded energy and sacrifice from all ranks.

  The 2nd Army had more to worry it than an epidemic of blisters or an outbreak of empty stomachs. Its corps, in contrast to Rennenkampf’s homogeneous force, came from three different military districts and were correspondingly unused to working together. Its staff had been drawn from the Warsaw Military District, which had also formed the staff of the Northwest Front. The best and most ambitious officers naturally went to the higher formation. The 2nd Army inherited the remnants, a hastily assembled group of self-defined rejects unused to working together. The British military attaché, Major-General Alfred Knox, acidly criticized its inclusion of an “eccentric youth” whose appointment depended on his ability to draw caricatures. This degree of professional purism is acceptable only in terms of hindsight. Most higher headquarters include a few drones whose real function is to keep their harder-working compatriots relaxed and amused—an important function given the stresses of modern war. Questions of temperament and personality were far more relevant. Samsonov was identified with Sukhomlinov; his chief of staff, General Postovsky, was one of the war minister’s biting critics. At least as serious from an operational perspective, Samsonov was phlegmatic to the point of indifference; Postovsky was so nervous that his irreverent subordinates nicknamed him “The Mad Mullah.” A calm commander and a highly strung chief were regarded in all armies as a potentially fruitful combination. Too broad a gap in temperaments, however, could split a headquarters down the middle quite independently of questions of patronage or protection.

  Personal problems of command were rapidly overshadowed by technical ones. The 2nd Army depended for communications less on its own resources than on peacetime telegraph and telephone networks. Each corps was responsible for establishing links with army headquarters and with each of its subordinate divisions. But the available wire soon proved insufficient for both missions. Lines constantly went out of commission. Ill-trained repair crews stumbling thorugh heavily wooded, unfamiliar terrain took hours to find the br
eaks, and more hours to repair them. The Russians complained of sabotage on both sides of the frontiers. German stragglers or patriotic adolescents probably cut an occasional wire in defiance of the risk of being shot out of hand. But the alleged saboteurs were too consistently successful in evading Samsonov’s patrols to be much more than a symbol of Russian frustration.

  The unreliability of its electronic nervous system was a particular shock to the 2nd Army, because its corps were too widely extended for mounted dispatch riders to be of much use. The army’s establishment of automobiles and motorcycles was low. The vehicles available were regarded as best used for transportation and short-range liaison, as opposed to long-distance communication among scattered headquarters. Nor were they were so mechanically reliable that using them on unfamiliar roads, in a hostile country, with drivers guided by maps at best inadequate, was likely to improve connections.

  In this context, the decision of Samsonov’s staff to make extensive use of radio was hardly irresponsible. Over the preceding quarter-century high commands everywhere in Europe, even in Russia, had become dependent on modern communications technology to transmit orders and information. In 1904/05, Russian radio operators had discovered that they could pick up transmissions from Japanese warships, and that the intensity of those transmissions often prefigured movements and concentrations. In 1914, therefore, the Russians clearly understood the possibility of German interception—not least because their own operators were regularly able to pick up German messages, some in clear, others whose coding kept them a mystery. The 2nd Army headquarters was also well aware of the risk of sending dispatches in clear. Like its counterpart to the north, however, it perceived a choice between two evils: interception on one hand, incomprehensibility on the other. Samsonov’s staff could only guess at the qualifications of the German signal personnel, but knew all too well the weaknesses of their own. Sending messages in plain Russian while juggling lines and frequencies seemed an acceptable risk in the context of the alternatives.3