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

by Dennis Showalter

  The report, little more than a warmed-over version of prewar information, nevertheless confirmed Moltke’s decision to override the commander on the spot. From his first peacetime months as chief of staff Moltke had proven himself a tinkerer, a man unable to leave situations alone. It was fully in character for him to be eager to move troops from a theater where events seemed to be well under German control to a front where war was still the province of uncertainty.

  Ludendorff for his part faced what seemed a no-lose situation. Since the reinforcements could not arrive in time to influence the ongoing battle, he could well afford to enhance his budding reputation outside his own headquarters for iron nerves in a crisis by denying any need at all for them. On the other hand if Moltke was in fact determined to begin building German strength in the east, the two corps he proposed to send would be a welcome addition to 8th Army’s order of battle. These were no improvised formations of family men, no untested collections of middle-aged reservists. The XI Corps was part of the active army. If its Thuringian regiments had not quite the reputation of their Pomeranian or Brandenburg comrades, they were generally regarded as well up to the Imperial army’s average. The Guard Reserve Corps had been formed on mobilization, but one of its divisions included three active regiments plus a fourth raised from cadres and students of the musketry and NCO schools in the Berlin region. It was a crack formation by any standards. And a second cavalry division would be a welcome relief for 8th Army’s overworked horsemen.

  Ludendorff maintained his sanguine mood through the evening of the 28th despite the continuing absence of information on the whereabouts and circumstances of Below’s and Mackensen’s corps. At 9:30 p.m. he cheerfully informed OHL that everything was fine, with at least two Russian corps safely in 8th Army’s bag.21 Thirty minutes later, however, an army liaison officer, Major Drechsel, arrived by auto from I Reserve Corps headquarters. He brought bad news. Ludendorff and Hindenburg learned at first hand that not only had Below’s corps still not caught up with Kluyev, but that the Russians in that sector were far from destroyed. If Drechsel’s report was accurate, the positions of the two northern corps meant the 2nd Russian Army could retire eastward without much risk of being cut off by François’s already overextended troops. Worse yet, to the best of Drechsel’s knowledge XVII Corps was still somewhere on the road to Allenstein instead of advancing south. The army staff had the classic bad quarter of an hour assimilating this information—not least because its chief had only minutes earlier informed OHL that everything was rolling on wheels. The orders issued at 5:30 p.m. were cancelled. Instead, at 10:00 p.m. I Reserve Corps was told to continue attacking south and east on the 29th, this time with one division advancing directly on Hohenstein to assist in Kluyev’s defeat, and the other towards Jedwabno with the hope that it would be able to cut off the Russian retreat. The exact position of Mackensen’s corps was still a mystery, and it received orders accordingly: to remain in its bivouac areas and be ready to move against either Rennenkampf or Samsonov as circumstances demanded.

  Hindenburg read the document, then scrawled an addendum at the bottom. “I expect,” he said, “my orders to be followed exactly. This is doubly urgent in the present complicated situation.” It was the first overt sign of stress this consciously unflappable man had shown since his arrival in East Prussia. Neither Below nor Mackensen had demonstrated the kind of insubordinate independence characteristic of François. Both generals could have argued that the “complicated situation” in Ostgruppe’s sector had been caused by their attempts to obey too many orders not fitting the tactical situation. But a man of sixty-seven who saw his battle slipping away from him could be forgiven if his Olympian detachment slipped a bit as well.22

  An army staff desperately looking for troops to close roads that suddenly yawned open also turned to the cavalry. At midnight Brecht was ordered to send one of his brigades to Ortelsburg as a blocking force, and literally enjoined not to spare the horses.23 This left only two cavalry brigades directly facing the Russian 1st Army. But the risks of being taken in the rear by Rennenkampf seemed far less certain than the consequences of reporting to OHL that the promised enemy corps would not be delivered after all.

  Shortly after midnight 8th Army’s chief of staff telephoned OHL to inform them of the changes in the general situation, and to pass the buck. Ludendorff expressed his disappointment that part of the enemy would now probably escape due to the failures of individual corps commanders. He described 8th Army as “highly nervous” and badly in need of rest.24 Apart from the question of “loyalty downwards,” just whose nerves were by this time on the edge of breaking is a question for debate. Anything less than overwhelming success meant Ludendorff’s stock was not likely to be very high among colleagues whose unspoken motto was, “Be more than you seem,” and who had not forgotten prewar controversies in which this rising star had been all too prominent.

  Eighth Army’s chief of staff had another surprise for breakfast next morning. Ludendorff had counted on having XVII Corps ready for immediate service against Rennenkampf. At 6:30 a.m. on August 29, however, he learned that Mackensen had not received the 10:00 p.m. order to halt and camp, that instead his vanguards were in Ortelsburg. Ludendorff made the best of the situation. Ordering Mackensen’s men on still another countermarch after their previous exertions might well mean rendering the corps entirely useless from exhaustion. The XVII Corps would therefore continue south—but no farther than Passenheim. To replace it in the blocking role against Rennenkampf, one of Below’s divisions was to disengage as rapidly as possible from the fighting around Hohenstein and face front to the north. Unger’s troops and elements of Goltz’s Landwehr were ordered to concentrate in support of the reservists. And the governor of Königsberg was instructed to mount strong sorties to engage as many Russians as possible. Even if he had only second line troops available to open the battle, Ludendorff subsequently declared, he was determined to commence operations as soon as possible against the 1st Army, “whether it advanced or stood still.” For the moment he had little choice in his order of battle, and less in whether to accept action if Rennenkampf decided to force the issue by marching south.25

  II

  Ludendorff’s immediate opponents had also made some uncomfortable decisions. Samsonov reached XV Corps headquarters around 11:00 a.m. on August 28. He found a disturbed Martos who complained that his corps was fought out. It could not hold its positions much longer, to say nothing of advancing, unless it received reinforcements somewhat more substantial than an army commander and his staff. Throughout the afternoon Samsonov kept encouraging Martos to wait for XIII Corps to arrive from the north. But Kluyev was fighting his own battle, described above, against Below, Goltz, and Morgen. Instead of Russian guns shelling the German flank, instead of flat caps and khaki tunics becoming visible through the trees, instead of victorious shouts of “Urrah” the men of XV Corps only saw individual stragglers, then companies and battalions shaken by the increasing German pressure. Martos, according to his own account, told Samsonov the time had come to expect the worst. Samsonov was less pessimistic. The army commander informed Martos that he intended to fall back on Neidenburg with the XV and XIII Corps and the 2nd Division. Martos was instructed to issue appropriate orders to his divisions, then report to Neidenburg and organize the defense of the town. As long as Neidenburg was in Russian hands, Samsonov declared, it was still possible to avert disaster. As Samsonov expressed his hope, Neidenburg was on the point of falling, undefended, to the Germans.

  Unaware of the situation to their rear, Martos’s infantry and artillery, with what remained of the 2nd Division, began abandoning their forward positions late on the 28th. Kluyev’s predicament was even worse. During the day his corps had engaged Germans coming from north, east, and west. His trains had been overrun and scattered, with only the small consolation that most of the supply wagons were empty. To stand his ground was to invite destruction. Kluyev decided that his best alternative was to pull his corps t
ogether and push south in the direction of Martos’ guns. Then around midnight on the 28th he received orders from Samsonov. The XIII Corps was to move eastward to Kurken, and expect “further instructions.”

  Implementing these orders involved significant risks. The locations of Kluyev’s regiments by the evening of August 28 condemned them to night marches over sandy secondary roads in order to thread a needle. Kurken was a crossroads—but a crossroads that lay in the midst of a half-dozen lakes. The routes to the village were easily barred, and obvious targets for German artillery. In particular the Schlaga-Mühle causeway, between Little Plautzinger Lake and Stau Lake, was the only way from Grieslienen and Mörken to Kurken. Block it, and the elements of XIII Corps that had performed so well against Goltz and Morgen would be isolated prey for their enemies.

  The Russian army never encouraged the kind of initiative among its subordinates that might lead to the creative disobedience of a François. For Kluyev the move to Kurken was the line of least resistance in more ways than one. His original intention to march south would involve fighting his way through the Germans around Hohenstein, while the way to Kurken was as yet unobstructed. But as XIII Corps prepared to retreat, Below’s reservists were also on the move.26

  The revised army order of 10:00 p.m. was late in reaching Below’s headquarters. Rather than risk its interception or misunderstanding by using the radio or the telephone, Ludendorff had sent Drechsel back by car. He arrived around 2:00 a.m. on August 29 with the new orders, and almost certainly with the verbal information that Hindenburg and Ludendorff were anything but pleased at the situation in Below’s sector. The corps commander had reservations of his own. Below had already ordered both of his divisions to advance toward Hohenstein as early as possible the next morning without regard for straggling. This sharp contrast to Below’s usual concern for the condition of his men indicated his desire to complete on the 29th what he had expected, and been expected, to do on the 28th. Now he was supposed to send half his corps away from the fighting, towards Jedwabno, in the middle of nowhere in particular. Despite Hindenburg’s strictures on obedience, Below decided that both his divisions were too far west and too closely engaged with the Russians to be dispatched on this particular excursion. Instead he detached two independent battalions, the 1st and 2nd Reserve Jäger, and a machine-gun company, supported by two Landwehr squadrons and six guns. The senior officer of this improvised force, a captain, was told to advance not to Jedwabno, but toward Kurken, fifteen kilometers further west and correspondingly closer to the main body of the corps should his detachment need support.27

  Below’s initiatives suggest that he was expecting a harder fight than army headquarters thought likely. Initially he was not mistaken. The I Reserve Corps advanced down the Allenstein-Hohenstein road at first light, the 1st Reserve Division in the lead, picking up enemy stragglers on the way. Around 7:00 a.m., south of Grieslienen, the corps encountered the first serious Russian resistance and stuck fast. Below brought up his artillery—two field regiments and the pride of I Reserve Corps, a nonregulation battalion of heavy howitzers borrowed from the Königsberg garrison. The Germans even managed, for one of the few times in the campaign, to put up a balloon. Below’s operations officer, an artilleryman by training, shed rank, years, and dignity to climb an observation ladder and direct fire when he suddenly saw even more lucrative targets coming into range from the west.28

  Around 5:00 a.m. the battalions of Goltz’s Landwehr bivouacked south of Mörken had observed columns of Russians moving over the Schlaga-Mühle causeway. Their commander promptly sent his men forward to occupy the road and cut the Russian line of retreat. Shortly afterward the 6th Reserve Brigade also attacked towards Mörken, under orders from Morgen to push across the causeway. Then the 37th Division came on the scene with a commander burning to make good the previous day’s fiasco. Its vanguard advanced through Hohenstein, now ablaze from German and Russian shelling, while the Landwehr and reservists fought through the woods south of Schlaga-Mühle. Kluyev’s riflemen made the Germans pay for every yard of ground. Russian guns firing over open sights broke up advance after advance, defying the best efforts of Staabs’s batteries to silence them. Two Landwehr battalions finally reached the Schlaga-Mühle causeway, but lost their commanding officers in the process and were too badly disorganized to push further. The XIII Corps, in short, was fighting another model rear-guard action—until the artillery of I Reserve Corps took a hand.

  At 10:30 a.m. sixty-six German light guns and sixteen 150-millimeter howitzers opened fire simultaneously. Russians scattered in all directions. Driverless wagons and riderless horses careened through the fields. Gun crews fell around their suddenly silenced pieces. Yet detachments and organized units continued to put up a desperate fight, ignoring or overlooking the surrender tokens raised by their comrades. Would-be German parliamentarians were shot down beneath their flags of truce. In Hohenstein, snipers and stragglers continued to take toll of the careless and the unlucky. Goltz and his staff came under such heavy rifle fire on entering the town that the general personally organized a house-to-house mop-up. As the Landwehr and elements of I Reserve Corps cleared out other pockets of resistance, Morgen’s division pushed through the tangled mass of guns and wagons on the causeway to open the way for pursuit towards Kurken. By 2:00 p.m. the fighting in this sector was over. Germans who the day before had sworn vengeance for dead comrades were plying Russian prisoners with cigars and sweets. At least one group of Russians feared to eat the chocolate they were given, begging to be shot rather than be poisoned by “that brown stuff.”29

  As German privates enjoyed proof of their cultural superiority, as captains and colonels sorted out their formations, as generals congratulated each other, Ludendorff, accompanied by Max Hoffmann, suddenly appeared on the scene. In the course of the morning his headquarters had grown uncomfortably warm. At 8:40 a.m. the army’s telegraph service received a message from the Zeppelin base at Königsberg. It reported that a reconnaissance flight, begun around midnight and ending at 6:00 a.m., had observed Russian bivouac fires as far west as Preussisch-Eylau. Perhaps they had only been made by cavalry patrols. But the Zeppelin’s commander declared that his ship had been under heavy infantry and artillery fire during the entire flight, and the gas bag and the gondola had enough holes to sustain his description. Twenty minutes later the signallers reported another dispatch from Königsberg. Sent at 7:35 a.m. but delayed in transmission, it was an intercepted order to Rennenkampf from the Northwest Front. The 2nd Army was hard pressed; Rennenkampf was to send infantry and cavalry to Samsonov’s support—just how many, or which units, could not be deciphered from the message.30

  This information came near to precipitating another crisis at 8th Army headquarters. Opposed to the Russians stood only two brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division and, far to the north, the 6th Landwehr Brigade. A half-dozen small towns were garrisoned by small detachments. Against this weak cordon the whole 1st Army could be advancing. Suddenly it seemed that any hour might see at least Russian cavalry in 8th Army’s wide-open rear.

  What exactly had become of the Russian 1st Army? It had spent two days recovering from its victory at Gumbinnen, burying the dead and evacuating the wounded, replenishing ammunition and replacing officer casualties. On August 23 its advance resumed. By the 26th, the Russians had moved no farther than fifty miles against no more than the token resistance offered by scattered patrols and detachments. This slowness was a product of both tactical and operational decisions. Rennenkampf’s cavalry remained committed to dismounting in the face of a few rifle shots, despite the fact that the situation prefigured Palestine in 1918 rather than Cambrai in 1917. The Russians faced no complex network of prepared defenses, no impassable concentrations of firepower—only scattered detachments of home guards and rear guards. Opportunities for going around instead of going through were virtually unlimited. But Barrows, Macandrews, and Light Horse Harry Chauvels are not always available at need. The troopers who might have overt
aken the retreating Germans, and who certainly would have given their generals some anxious moments, remained tied to the main body—tied so closely that even junior officers wondered at their superiors’ caution.31

  At command level Rennenkampf was not a simple victim of his own inertia. A school of thought on the American Civil War holds that Union generals in the eastern theater suffered from a massive inferiority complex vis-à-vis their Confederate opposite numbers. This factor is presented as contributing to many southern military successes. Equivalent attitudes were not widespread in the Russian high command at this stage of the war. Like Samsonov, Rennenkampf respected his German counterparts. He did not concede that they were better generals in command of better troops—nor, based on the course of events to date, did he have any convincing reason to believe that. What Rennenkampf was doing was attempting to lead from strength. For all its prewar talk of mobility the Russian army of 1914 was not an ideal instrument for a proto-blitzkrieg. Its familiar image as a steamroller reflected structural realities in which haste was indeed likely to make waste. Rennenkampf’s attitude after Gumbinnen prefigured to a degree that of Montgomery after El Alamein. Maintaining the initiative did not mean preserving direct contact. Instead of challenging the Germans on their own terms, the process that was proving so costly to Samsonov, the better part of wisdom in Rennenkampf’s mind involved positioning 1st Army to deliver a single sledgehammer blow to end the campaign once and for all. Whether the decisive battle took place east or west of the Vistula was less important than its nature.