by G. J. Meyer
With the BEF and Lanrezac’s army in almost headlong flight, it seemed to many on Moltke’s staff that the Germans had already won in the west; “complete victories” were being declared. Belgium was firmly in hand, and the right wing was in France and staying on Schlieffen’s schedule. The German Fourth and Fifth Armies had broken the back of the French offensive in the Ardennes, and in the southeast Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria continued to report that he was gaining ground, taking thousands of prisoners and capturing guns. Rupprecht was also continuing to badger Moltke for more troops with which to press his advantage. Moltke agreed. He also decided to send three infantry corps and a cavalry division to East Prussia. These were fateful moves. Combined with Moltke’s earlier adjustments—the use of two corps to besiege Antwerp, and of another to besiege a French stronghold at Maubeuge—they would reduce his right wing from seventeen corps to fewer than twelve. This was a reduction of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men, and it was in addition to the Germans’ battlefield losses. The hammer upon which Schlieffen had wanted to bet everything thus shrank by nearly a third. Meanwhile Joffre was doing the opposite, using his rail lines to transfer increasing numbers of troops from his right to his left. Even as the Germans continued their advance, in terms of manpower the balance at the western end of the front was gradually shifting in France’s favor.
Moltke’s decision to dispatch troops to East Prussia has been much criticized but is easy to understand. He had good reason to be alarmed not only by the situation in East Prussia but by what was happening all across the eastern theater. He knew that the Austrian invasion of Serbia—an invasion he had opposed, arguing rightly that all of the Hapsburg empire’s available troops were needed against Russia—had ended in total defeat. He knew too that massive Russian forces were engaging the Austrians on the Galician plain to the north of Serbia, and that if this too ended badly, Conrad’s position would become desperate. And his own commander in East Prussia had told Moltke that the German position there was already desperate. That commander, the fat and elderly Max von Prittwitz, an intelligent enough general but one with no combat experience, had at his disposal a single army of some one hundred and thirty-five thousand men—eleven undermanned divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, barely one-tenth of Germany’s available total. Moving against this Eighth Army, a small one by the standards of 1914, were two exceptionally large Russian armies that outnumbered it by a huge margin. The Russian First Army, commanded by General Pavel von Rennenkampf (German surnames were not uncommon in the Russian aristocracy and senior officer corps), had been first to cross the border into German territory, approaching from the east. Thereafter it had continued to move forward, capturing towns, burning the farms of the Junkers, and clashing with elements of Prittwitz’s army first at Stallupönen and then at Gumbinnen. It was shortly after the Gumbinnen fight, and upon learning that the Russian Second Army under General Alexander Samsonov was entering East Prussia from the south with fourteen and a half infantry divisions, four divisions of cavalry, and 1,160 guns, that Prittwitz had telephoned Moltke and told him that he had to abandon East Prussia. He was afraid that if he stayed where he was, Samsonov would soon be behind him and able to block his escape. The situation was ripe for an encirclement that would end in the destruction of the Eighth Army and leave Germany defenseless in the East. There was no alternative to withdrawing behind the north-south Vistula River, Prittwitz said. Moltke did not demur. Giving up the Prussian homeland was an intolerable thought, but everything being accomplished in France would become meaningless if the Eighth Army were lost.
That Prussian homeland was already involved in the war more directly than any other part of Germany, with the invaders inevitably clashing with the inhabitants and outrages being committed on both sides. An Englishman, John Morse, was serving among the Russian troops, and he later wrote of the brutalities he witnessed. “The Cossack has a strong disinclination to be taken prisoner,” he observed, “and I knew of several of them sacrificing their lives rather than fall into the hands of the Germans, who heartily detest these men, and usually murdered such as they succeeded in catching—and murdered them after preliminary tortures, according to reports which reached us. The country people certainly showed no mercy to stragglers falling into their hands. They usually pitch-forked them to death; and this lethal weapon was a favorite with the ladies on both sides of the border, many a fine Teuton meeting his end by thrusts from this implement.”
Members of Moltke’s staff began telephoning the commanders of the four corps that made up the Eighth Army. The technology of the day made this a laborious process, requiring much waiting for connections, much shouting into receivers, much uncertainty about what the faint and fuzzy voice on the other end of the line was saying. Moltke’s men had one question: was a retreat really necessary? The answer was unanimously negative: the Eighth Army need not, must not, fall back. This was reported to Moltke, who concluded that Prittwitz had lost his nerve and could not be left in command.
Prittwitz himself, however, was having his mind changed too. This was accomplished by a new member of his staff, the tall, chubby, hard-drinking, and colorfully un-Prussian Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffmann, who had been sent from Alsace to join the Eighth Army when mobilization was declared and now took the first of the steps by which he would establish himself as one of the war’s master tacticians. Using a map and compass, Hoffmann showed Prittwitz that Samsonov’s army was already closer to the Vistula River than the main German force, so that a clean escape was no longer possible. He outlined a plan aimed not only at making withdrawal unnecessary but at defeating both Russian armies. First the Germans would strike again at Rennenkampf, who was still at Gumbinnen, apparently regrouping after the clash there. Finishing off Rennenkampf, Hoffmann calculated, would take only a few days; at a minimum his army could be rendered incapable of pursuit. The Germans would then be free to deal with Samsonov.
His composure restored, Prittwitz agreed that there need be no retreat. He did not, however, accept Hoffmann’s plan without amendment. He decided to go after Samsonov without first attacking Rennenkampf. Speed was essential—everything depended on wrecking one of the invading armies before the two of them could combine into a single force too big to be coped with. Expecting his troops to deal with two big armies in just a few days, Prittwitz wisely decided, would be asking too much.
But in the excited rush to prepare, Prittwitz made two mistakes. He neglected to tell Hoffmann or anyone else on his staff of his conversation with Moltke—his announcement of a retreat—and after changing his mind he failed to inform Moltke that he had done so. Moltke continued to believe that the Eighth Army was beginning to withdraw.
Fearful of the consequences if the Eighth Army did not stand and fight, Moltke looked about for a solution. And he thought of Erich Ludendorff, who had been an important member of his planning staff until 1913 and was now the hero of Liège. “I know of no other man in whom I have such absolute trust,” Moltke said. He sent orders for Ludendorff to join the Eighth Army not as commanding officer—he was too young for that, too junior in rank, and definitely too much the parvenu commoner—but as chief of staff.
On his way east Ludendorff stopped at Koblenz to confer with Moltke, and the two agreed that the situation in East Prussia was not yet hopeless. When Ludendorff suggested attacking the Russian armies one by one before they could combine, Moltke agreed. That Hoffmann and Ludendorff came up with exactly the same idea, and that they had no difficulty in winning over Prittwitz and Moltke, is not as astonishing as it may seem. The German general staff had given much thought to the defense of East Prussia, had anticipated the arrival of Russian forces from two directions, and had planned accordingly. Ludendorff and Hoffmann were simply drawing upon established doctrine in making their proposals, and in giving their assent Moltke and Prittwitz were simply endorsing that same doctrine.
Before departing Koblenz, Ludendorff was taken to see Kaiser Wilhelm, receiving from him the Pour le Mér
ite (Germany’s highest military honor, higher than the Iron Cross, created and named by the Francophile Frederick the Great) and learning that a new commanding general of the Eighth Army had just been appointed. This was the sixty-seven-year-old Paul von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, who was being called out of retirement because of his reputation for steadiness and the fact that he, like Ludendorff, knew the complicated East Prussian terrain. Then Ludendorff was again on his way east, traveling in a special train, stopping along the way to pick up his wife so that she could join him for part of the trip. Hindenburg, dressed in the outdated uniform in which he had ended his long career two years earlier, came aboard at Hanover at four A.M. They talked briefly—Ludendorff outlined the plan he had discussed with Moltke—and retired for a few hours’ sleep.
Upon their arrival in East Prussia the next morning, they had much to do. Hindenburg had to tell Prittwitz, who happened to be his wife’s cousin, that he was being put on the army’s inactive list effective immediately. Ludendorff meanwhile got a staff briefing. When Hoffmann outlined his plan and explained that it was already being put in motion, Ludendorff of course approved it without change. The two knew each other well—had even lived in the same quarters for four years earlier in their careers. Despite being very different kinds of men, they respected each other’s abilities. From the start they were able to work together easily.
The situation was challenging in the extreme, requiring the Eighth Army to fight its own two-front war. Its complications began with the landscape of East Prussia, a region pocked with lakes and marshes and studded with woods and low hills, difficult for large armies to maneuver in, especially in the sectors nearest to Russia. Running north-south was a jumble of irregular-shaped bodies of water known as the Masurian Lakes. Rennenkampf’s army was north of the lakes, Samsonov’s south. They would have to move westward in order to unite. Between them were the Germans, already west of the lakes and in a position from which they could attack in either direction. They also had the advantage of knowing the terrain intimately—it was often the setting for their annual maneuvers. And they had installed the rail lines needed for the execution of their plans.
It was obvious that the Russians should converge without delay. If they did so, the Eighth Army was doomed. It was equally obvious that the Germans must proceed with extreme caution. If they attacked one of the Russian armies, they would have to leave enough troops behind to protect themselves from an advance by the other. It was far from clear that they had enough troops to do both things.
At this point—August 25, the same day on which the British fell back from Mons and Kluck resumed his march toward Paris—there occurred one of those small, strange events that sometimes alter the fates of nations. This one was weirdly like what had happened, in the American Civil War, the first time Robert E. Lee invaded the north: a copy of Lee’s orders was found in a Maryland road wrapped around a packet of cigars. The discovery led directly to a stinging Confederate defeat and the end of Lee’s offensive. The East Prussian counterpart to this incident was the discovery, on the body of a Russian officer killed in a skirmish, of the plans for both Russian armies. It seemed too good to be true, but the plans’ authenticity was soon corroborated by uncoded Russian radio messages intercepted by the Germans.
The intelligence that the Germans now had in their hands indicated that Samsonov intended to continue moving westward, which would increase the distance between the two Russian armies unless Rennenkampf moved too. What the Germans didn’t know was that Samsonov was being drawn forward by a glimpse that his troops had caught of the backward movement of a German infantry corps. This move had been nothing more than a minor tactical adjustment: the commander of the corps was shifting to a ridge stronger than his original position. But Samsonov leaped to the conclusion that the Germans were in retreat. He intended to press forward, keep the Germans moving, try to overrun them. A radio message sent from his headquarters, when intercepted, told the Germans exactly what direction he intended to take and what timetable he intended to follow. It stated also, not surprisingly, that he wanted Rennenkampf to come forward to join him.
Rennenkampf’s messages indicated that he had other things in mind. He didn’t know what had happened to the German force that had attacked him at Gumbinnen, and so, like Rennenkampf, he guessed. His guess was that the Germans had decided to withdraw to the north, toward or even into the coastal fortress of Königsberg (“kingstown,” the principal city of East Prussia and the place where the rulers of Prussia had always been crowned). Focusing his attention in that direction, he could see no need to move toward Samsonov; he didn’t suspect that the main German force might be between them. If he laid siege to Königsberg and bottled up the Eighth Army inside it, all the rest of East Prussia would be undefended. He was in no hurry, however, because there was no way of being sure how far the Germans had moved. He had no way of knowing (but might have guessed, the reasons being so obvious) that allowing himself to be trapped inside Königsberg was the one thing Moltke had ordered Prittwitz not to do.
For the Germans, the situation really did seem too good to be true. By continuing to move forward alone, Samsonov was practically inviting the Germans to lay a trap. By declining to come forward, Rennenkampf was making certain that his army would be unable to rescue Samsonov from that trap. Together they were eliminating the need for the Germans to proceed cautiously. They were freeing the Germans to throw everything into their attack on Samsonov.
Hoffmann had received the Russian messages after his initial meeting with Ludendorff, who had departed by car with Hindenburg. He showed them to the Eighth Army’s quartermaster general, a Major General Grünert, offering them as confirmation that the entire Eighth Army could safely be sent against Samsonov. Grünert was skeptical; what seems too good to be true, after all, usually is. It seemed inconceivable to him that the Russian commanders would violate one of the fundamentals of military doctrine by keeping their forces divided in the presence of the enemy.
Max Hoffmann may have been the only man on earth who was junior to Grünert in rank and yet able to win him over at this critical juncture. Hoffmann was one of Germany’s experts on the Russian army, and a decade earlier he had been sent as an observer to the Russo-Japanese War. There he had observed Samsonov and Rennenkampf in action. One of the war’s minor legends is that, by an astonishing coincidence, Hoffmann had been present when the two Russian generals literally came to blows at a train station in Manchuria. Though it is now regarded as unlikely that anything of the kind actually happened, Hoffmann did know that Rennenkampf and Samsonov belonged to rival factions of the Russian general staff and disliked each other intensely. He was convinced that neither would exert himself to help the other. When he explained this history, Grünert was persuaded. The two got into a staff car and sped off, catching up with Hindenburg and Ludendorff and showing them the intercepted messages. All reservations about risking everything were immediately dissolved.
General Pavel von Rennenkampf Commander, Russian First Army
Failed to respond to Samsonov’s pleas for help.
Risking everything meant exactly that: the Germans posted only a single division of cavalry opposite Rennenkampf’s army. This was not a serious blocking force but merely a screen; its only function was to keep the Russians from seeing that nothing was behind it. All the rest of the Eighth Army was moved south and west into Samsonov’s path. Many of the troops were sent by rail and thus were able to move a hundred miles overnight. Nine divisions were formed into an arc that was open to the southeast and sixty miles across. This arc was intentionally weak in the center but had two strong wings. The idea was for Samsonov, as he continued forward, to strike the center, find himself able to drive it backward, and thus be encouraged to keep moving. When he had gone far enough, the wings would move in on him from both sides.
The very fact that they had two armies inside East Prussia by this date was, for the Russians, a great achievement. The Germans had hoped that Russian mobi
lization would take six weeks, and they had not given sufficient weight to the fact that two-fifths of Russia’s regular army was stationed in Poland when the war began and so was near East Prussia and nearly ready for action. The result had been Rennenkampf’s arrival in East Prussia in just over two weeks, with Samsonov close behind. This much speed was also, however, an act of folly: the Russians had begun their advance without adequate provision for supplying their troops, for dealing with the wounded, or for communicating. (Hence the uncoded radio messages that proved such a boon to the Germans.) Some of their soldiers were without shoes, marching with their feet wrapped in rags. Some had no rifles. They were worn out long before making contact with the enemy. Rennenkampf’s troops had been on the march for a week by the time they crossed into East Prussia, and their supply system was already failing badly.
These problems were the work of General Yakov Zhilinski, commander of the Russian North-West Front and therefore in charge of the two invading armies. Two years earlier, while serving as chief of the Russian general staff, Zhilinski had promised the French that he could have his forces in the field fifteen days after mobilization. Now he was keeping his promise. Far to the rear—his headquarters were more than one hundred and fifty miles from the showdown that was now taking place—he thought he was masterminding a historic victory.
On August 26, fearing a possible sudden forward lunge by Rennenkampf and unsettled by rumors of substantial Russian forces arriving from Rennenkampf’s direction, a nervous Ludendorff tried to spring the trap on Samsonov. When he ordered an attack, however, the usually aggressive General Hermann von François (whose name derived from the fact that his ancestors had migrated to Prussia to escape France’s persecution of Protestants in the seventeenth century) curtly refused. His troops were still detraining. They did not yet have their ammunition, their heavy artillery, or all of their field artillery. If they attacked, he said, they would have to do so with bayonets. When Ludendorff repeated his order, François went through the motions of complying but limited himself to occupying an uncontested ridge. In yet another of the odd and unintended twists in this oddest of battles, his failure to strike worked to the Germans’ advantage. It allowed Samsonov to continue to believe that he was in contact with a weak enemy force and so to continue pushing forward into the trap. Both of his flanks were encountering German troops and being badly mauled, but his communications were so faulty and he had moved the divisions that formed those flanks so far out from his center that throughout most of the day he knew almost nothing of this. The Germans, meanwhile, were eager to engage him. Much of the Eighth Army was made up of East Prussians, men with personal reasons for wanting to clear the region of invaders. One officer, on August 26, found himself directing artillery fire on his own house after the Russians took possession of it.
