An even more pressing problem for the 2nd Army involved finding the enemy it was supposed to fight. The Russians were bedevilled by confused and contradictory reports of German concentrations and advances. The few aircraft at Samsonov’s disposal failed to coordinate their reconnaissance flights; their crews seemed unable even to find their way around East Prussia. His independent cavalry divisions were fully occupied securing the flanks of the advance. The mounted regiments allotted directly to his corps and divisions were not active units, but Cossack reserves. In 1914 this too often meant semitrained plowboys mounted on requisitioned farm horses. Reconnaissance demanded a set of skills not exactly complex, but also not capable of being imparted by osmosis. Too many patrols rode forward uncertain of what to look for and unwilling to get too far from their own supporting infantry.
By August 21, however, the cavalry had at least determined that there were some Germans in Neidenburg and Ortelsburg. With an enemy at last in reach, Samsonov’s orders for the next day were simple enough. The VI Corps, on his army’s immediate right, was to take Ortelsburg. Its left-flank neighbor, XIII Corps, would remain in support, ready to attack either Neidenburg or Ortelsburg as the situation required. On the army’s left I and XV Corps would advance to the line Neidenburg-Soldau, while the 2nd Division of XXIII Corps moved to Mlawa and made ready to strike the German rear.
Zhilinski was not pleased. To ease Samsonov’s command burden, Zhilinski had on the 21st transferred II Corps to the 1st Army. Now he telegraphed Samsonov to complain about the “lack of resolution” in 2nd Army’s operations. Samsonov pointed out in reply that his units were too depleted, his men too tired, to take both presumed German positions simultaneously by a single frontal blow. It made better sense to outflank them.
Samsonov was more accurate in his evaluation than even he knew. As his corps crossed the German border they found deserted villages and uncut crops. Commanders inculcated in peacetime with a horror of looting and a corresponding respect for private property found it difficult to organize systematic requisitions. Despite the better-paved roads of East Prussia, straggling increased as men stayed hungry. Staff work at division and corps level deteriorated as tired, anxious officers began snapping at each other. Despite these handicaps, XV Corps reached and occupied Neidenburg on the afternoon of August 22.4
Neidenburg’s experiences are as illustrative as they appear old-fashioned to a generation reared on the horrors of modern, ideologically based conflicts. Neidenburg in 1914 was a market town and county seat. Too small to have its own garrison, it had used its schools, churches, and the town’s one synagogue to quarter troops during mobilization. The town even provided free coffee—an initiative of Mayor Andreas Kuhn. He was forty-one years old, a career civil servant whose initial dreams of high office and distinction had been tempered by the realities of administrative routine in the provinces, but who remained as yet unsoured by his limitations. If Imperial Germany was largely ruled by its administrators, men like Kuhn were the bearings on which the machinery turned. His photo shows a man whose square face, short haircut, and bristling kaiser mustache combine to create an impression of energy uncorrupted by imagination—a bureaucratic and sympathetic version of Heinrich Mann’s Diederich Hessling.
Kuhn needed all of his phlegm as word of the Russian advance generated panic. On the morning of the 22nd, civilians began crowding the roads to the north and west burdened with whatever mix of personal and household goods they were able to seize and carry. Rabbit hutches and sewing machines, babies and grandparents, a cow or a few milk goats—Neidenburg was not too far from its days as an enlarged village. A patrol of Cossacks rode into the fast-emptying town from the south, exchanged shots with some German stragglers, and rode out again, leaving behind a half-dozen civilians wounded by random bullets. The next Russian probe was in squadron strength, and it ran into an unexpected surprise.
The armies of Europe had been debating the military potential of the bicycle for a quarter-century. Since 1913 each German Jäger battalion included a cyclist company in its order of battle, but their commanders were not quite sure how to use them. In Germany the uniformed cyclist fell between two stools. To the cavalry he was a road-bound object of pity as he puffed along in his vain efforts to keep up with horsemen. To the infantry he was a monkey on a stick, a man without a place in the serried ranks of the line.
Mobilization brought enlightenment. Theoretically, reconnaissance of all kinds was the cavalry’s responsibility. Cavalry colonels, however, were reluctant to split their proud commands into troops and squadrons for attachment to and probable misuse by mud-crunching infantrymen. The infantry turned to self-help. Not a battalion in 8th Army but counted its share of men who owned, rode, and loved bicycles. Volunteers were easily found for improvised cyclist detachments, which found plenty to do scouting and patrolling the East Prussian countryside.
Nor were all of these men civilian reservists. The 151st Infantry Regiment rejoiced in a lieutenant with the indisputably aristocratic name of Burscher von Saher zum Weissenstein, who in peacetime alternately shocked and amused his superiors by risking his neck on a motorcycle in his off-duty hours. He was a logical choice to command the regiment’s wheelmen, and on August 22 he was on a one-man patrol when he met four farmers on the road a few kilometers from Neidenburg. The civilians painted a vivid picture: a horde of Cossacks spreading terror to all points of the compass. The lieutenant reversed his direction, assembled his cyclists, and at the head of twenty-nine men started back towards Neidenburg. A kilometer outside the town he halted his column and went forward alone on foot. Pistol in hand, Lieutenant von Saher climbed a small hill to find himself almost face to face with a Russian scout on a similar errand. A frightened youngster in a spiked helmet fired a wild shot. Another frightened youngster in a flat cap turned and ran—only to be dropped in his tracks by a German rifleman with a steadier hand.
The shooting brought more Russians. A squadron of Cossacks advanced to carbine range, fired a volley from horseback, and charged. It was a drill book maneuver with predictable results. The Germans, by this time well under cover, emptied saddle after saddle. With half their men down the Russians rode back into the town, followed at a discreet distance by the Germans. The cyclists found no snipers, no machine guns hidden in carefully contrived ambushes—only empty streets and one old lady who marvelled at their willingness to take on such superior numbers. The patrol traversed the whole town before it discovered an enemy: a squadron peacefully preparing its noon meal in the Neidenburg Bahnhofsplatz, unaware of any danger until the Germans opened fire. Cossacks and horses scattered in all directions. When the shooting stopped the Germans counted their booty. Two hundred lances, stacked according to regulations. Discarded sabers. A single unwounded horse. And, most useful of all, a map taken from the body of the squadron commander, with the Russian advance positions carefully marked. Before departing with this important piece of intelligence, the lieutenant and his men took time to eat the Russians’ lunch.5
The Cossacks reported their discomfiture with suitable embellishments. Whether from ignorance, or understandable reluctance to admit they had been routed by a handful of Landser, their surviving officers insisted that they had been ambushed by franc-tireurs, armed civilians. The commander of the Russian XV Corps, Lieutenant-General Martos, responded by ordering his artillery to open fire on Neidenburg. Martos, while far from atrocity prone, was apparently motivated by a desire to scare off uniformed stragglers, while at the same time providing an object lesson to any belligerent citizens. His gunners had no specific targets, and the shelling was a bagatelle by later standards. To the Germans remaining in Neidenburg it seemed the end of the world. Over three hundred rounds hit and exploded, most of them in the center of town—a natural focus for batteries still developing their skills in observation and range taking. Of Neidenburg’s 470 buildings, 193 were destroyed. Many more were damaged by fires defying the best efforts of the Russians to put them out after they entered the town.
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For the next eight days Neidenburg was under Russian military occupation. Kuhn sent his family to safety but stuck to his post and kept his records. Initially the Russians lived down to the worst expectations of anti-Slav racists. Trees, fences, and sheds disappeared into their bivouac fires. Houses left locked by refugees were broken into, their furniture destroyed or vandalized. Stores were stripped of their goods, honey and syrup poured over what was not carried away. Every safe in Neidenburg was forced open and its contents requisitioned. Enterprising enlisted men, prefiguring the behavior of their sons three decades later, “collected” watches from those Neidenbürger foolhardy enough to appear on the streets.
The Germans rapidly learned to temper their indignation in the presence of armed foreigners who tended to be slightly trigger happy. The Russians had had ample time to develop and circulate their own rumors about civilians who poisoned wells, put pieces of wire in forage, or carried concealed weapons. One civilian was shot when he threw a stone at a horseman. A farm laborer met the same fate for not responding quickly enough to a Cossack NCO’s demand for oats. And—arguably even more shocking to respectable German sensibilities—Russian officers systematically spat all over the bust of William II that was a prominent feature of the lobby decor in Neidenburg’s best hotel!
But this was only one side of the story. Martos picked up lost children in his own car. Some of his privates shared their bread with a poor civilian reading his Bible in lieu of the dinner he could not afford. Even Mayor Kuhn conceded that the ordinary Russian behaved well enough when met with “tact and energy.” The town commandant, a Colonel Dovator, cooperated with German technicians to get water and sewer services back into operation. He issued orders to stop looting by soldiers or civilians. He threatened to shoot any Russian caught accosting or propositioning women. During the eight days of Neidenburg’s occupation a half-dozen executions were actually carried out, and as many lesser offenders were knouted in the public square. The form of punishment, with the victim held on the ground by his hands and feet while a Cossack plied his nagaika, generated “all respect” among the civilian onlookers-not least because the normal sentence was fifty lashes. Would-be resisters and potential saboteurs were at least as thoroughly deterred as prospective military miscreants.6
The relatively bloodless occupation of Neidenburg also convinced Samsonov that the Germans had withdrawn faster and farther than either the Northwest Front or his own headquarters had anticipated. Since there no longer seemed any possibility of pinning his enemy against the Masurian Lakes, Samsonov proposed to shift his axis of advance even farther westward. His orders for the 23rd held VI Corps in position around Ortelsburg. The XIII Corps would swing westward towards Jedwabno while XV Corps moved through the towns of Orlau and Frankenau. The I Corps would take position around Soldau as the army’s left-flank guard; and the 2nd Division would fill the resulting gap between I and XV Corps.
Samsonov and his staff were aware that this new line of march would increase the distance between his army and Rennkampf’s. The risk, however, seemed acceptable. Russian plans called for strategic, rather than tactical, coordination of the armies. By advancing westward instead of north, Samsonov argued to Zhilinski, the 2nd Army could cut the German line of retreat and eventually advance into the heart of Germany itself. More immediately, the army could use the Soldau-Mlawa railroad to move badly needed supplies forward.
Zhilinski was initially hostile to Samsonov’s concept. Not only did it represent a departure from northwest front’s original orders, it exposed both of the 2nd Army’s flanks. Almost half of Samsonov’s force, I and VI Corps, would be reduced to a security role, guarding the flanks of the five divisions in the center. In the course of the day, however, reports from Rennenkampf describing a headlong German retreat in the north led Zhilinski to reconsider. Ultimately he was more attracted by the possibility of preventing a German escape across the Vistula than concerned with the risks of a German concentration against the 2nd Army. Samsonov, moreover, was the commander on the spot, and presumably knew what he was about. Zhilinski finally instructed his subordinate to do at least part of what Samsonov proposed to do in any case: reach the line Sensburg-Allenstein with three and a half corps by August 26, while leaving I Corps in position at Soldau as a flank guard. At 7:30 p.m. on August 23, Samsonov issued the appropriate orders. They differed only in detail from those he had drawn up earlier.7
The Germans had not been idle in the face of Samsonov’s advance. Scholtz had his own XX Corps, reinforced by the 20th Landwehr brigade, the 70th Landwehr Brigade from Thorn, and the 69th Provisional Brigade from Graudenz—a total of eighteen improvised battalions. They were short of transport but well supported by artillery and machine guns, and the corps commander expected them to fight instead of march. Scholtz was a pathbreaker. Despite the growing importance of artillery in modern war, a combination of seniority regulations and caste prejudices had restricted the gunners’ access to higher commands before 1914. The military cabinet considered them in general unsuitable to lead combined arms formations because their training and experience was excessively specialized. This image of artillerymen as technicians was applied with far more vigor to the anonymous regiments of the line than to the Prussian Guard. Scholtz was the first line gunner to be promoted lieutenant-general in peacetime while still young enough to take command of a corps.
He had earned the appointment. Born in Schleswig-Holstein, he entered the 9th Artillery as a student volunteer in 1870, making a solid reputation as an administrator and establishing a sufficiently visible image of ambition that his biographer is at some pains to defend him from the charge of careerism. Perhaps what saved him was his easy-going charm. He was a bachelor; in contrast to British army mythology, bachelor senior officers, with fewer domestic problems to irritate them, were seen as preferable to married men. But Scholtz’s behavior was a matter of principle as well as character. More than François or Mackensen, Scholtz believed in a calm, steady approach. He considered “discussion” a better word than “critique” for the process of evaluating exercises. Well-known for a puckish sense of humor, Scholtz liked making jokes. Among his favorite ways of dealing with minor complaints was making the participants write reports on the issue until everyone gave up in disgust or laughter.
Scholtz’s assignment in October, 1912, to form and lead XX Corps was a sound matching of ability with mission. The bourgeois specialist would not be put into an existing command structure, with its risks of friction and tension. He could give the new corps his own stamp. And Scholtz’s chief of staff complemented, rather than challenged, his commander’s abilities. Colonel Emil Hell was also a gunner, a foot artilleryman whose early career had been spent in a role regarded by the infantry and cavalry as little more martial than driving wagons. Like Scholtz, Hell was a hard driver with a reputation for cast-iron nerves and imperturbable good cheer. He was also a local man who had ridden or hunted over every inch of the ground XX Corps was expected to defend. His home was near Gross-Grieben, directly in the path of the Russian invasion.
Within months of his appointment, at a time when administrative responsibilities might be assumed to absorb all of his energy, Scholtz was bombarding the kaiser, the war ministry, and the general staff with his ideas for the defense of East Prussia. Germany must, Scholtz argued, reckon with a Russian breakthrough in the frontier provinces. Russia must invade, not merely raid; otherwise she would forfeit all international credibility. And XX Corps lay directly in the path of one of the likeliest axes of advance. Schlieffen, in one of his last interviews before his death, grumbled to the new corps commander that the Russians were not coming at all, and that he had left three active corps in the east only until the first railway lines were free to move them west. He dismissed Scholtz with the sarcastic suggestion to “go play with your frontier security.”
Scholtz took the advice. The regiments of XX Corps were much like their commander. Most of them had no glorious histories. They were high-numbered wor
kaday units, organized in 1905 or 1912 or 1913, given a provincial title, and told to make their own traditions. But they had marched and maneuvered over the ground they were now defending. The corps’s peacetime headquarters was at Allenstein. Two of its infantry regiments were also stationed there. The 18th Infantry garrisoned Osterode; the 59th had a detachment at Soldau. More than other corps commanders, Scholtz encouraged close ties between the military and the civilian populations. Whatever the garrison, participation in local feasts and holidays was encouraged, bands and honor guards made freely available. Scholtz himself demonstrated enough talent as a public speaker to be in high demand on the regional banquet circuit.8
Initially he took a similarly aggressive approach to his assignment of screening the 8th Army’s right flank. In the war’s first weeks his two divisional cavalry regiments, the 10th and 11th Dragoons, took the measure of the Russians to their own satisfaction in a series of swirling fights along the border. A corporal and six men scattered two dozen Cossacks by a bold mounted charge. A reserve lieutenant and sixteen troopers, reconnoitering across the frontier into Russia, cut their way home through a full enemy squadron. The stories multiplied and spread, losing nothing in the telling.
Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History) Page 34