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

by Dennis Showalter

  Max Hoffmann describes these orders as providing serious dangers for a weak or pessimistic character.12 They are more appropriately considered mission tactics with a vengeance. Prittwitz was responsible for using his best judgment to keep his army intact, yet he was expected to give battle even at long odds. He was authorized to abandon East Prussia in an emergency, but at the same time warned that such a decision would be little short of disastrous. He was supposed to secure German territory, yet his orders emphasized and re-emphasized the need for close cooperation with Austria. The chief of staff had covered himself by anticipating all contingencies. No matter what Prittwitz did, it was likely to violate, or at least seriously challenge, at least part of 8th Army’s assigned mission.

  Prittwitz and Waldersee were well aware that Moltke was expecting them to square the circle. Waldersee’s initial directive of August 6 was a cautious document. Corps commanders were told that until future notice 8th Army’s was to be a posture of watchful waiting. It would concentrate only when reconnaissance and intelligence reports provided specific information on Russian movements. This decision also reflected common-sense awareness that 8th Army’s ranks were filled by men and animals unused to the rigors of active campaigning. Such a force could not be moved around the map haphazardly in the manner of the good old Duke of York. Confusion and exhaustion might prove deadlier enemies than the Russians, particularly in the context of terrain features and transport capacities in the theater of operations.13

  East Prussia in 1914 was a maze of irregular hills covered with wild and uncultivated areas of barren, sandy soil, alternating with an intricate network of swamps, lakes, and forests. Strategically it could be divided into four zones. The first was the Königsberg region, extending east and west from Labiau to Tapiau. The Deime River, barely fordable and with few bridges, provided a natural first line of defense. Small fieldworks had been established along the Tapiau-Pillau line just before the war, and Königsberg itself was an up-to-date fortress, impregnable to anything short of heavy artillery. It could easily be reinforced by sea, and, properly defended, it offered a major threat to the flank of any force attempting to bypass it.

  The second strategic zone ran north and south: the forty-three-mile Insterburg Gap from Tapiau to Angerburg. Here the country was generally open, dotted with large farms and small villages, but containing forest areas that offered serious obstacles to the movement of large forces. The most important terrain feature in the gap was the Angerapp River. It was fordable, but the west bank was higher than the east and so provided a useful defensive position. The river line itself had been carefully reconnoitered by the Germans before the war.

  South of the Insterburg Gap came the fifty-mile region of the Masurian Lakes, extending from Angerburg to the Russian frontier south of Johannesburg. Taken as a whole, the chain of lakes presented an almost impregnable barrier to the movement of large forces: a nightmare of soft ground, water obstacles, and paths leading nowhere in particular. The only major road was barred by Fort Boyen. This nineteenth-century work might be technically obsolete, but an attempt to capture it by direct assault would almost certainly involve heavy casualties. In particular the fort’s glacis was completely exposed, and could not easily be stormed in the face of machine gun fire.

  The fourth strategic zone extended east and west from Johannesburg to Soldau, a distance of of seventy-five miles. The roads here were good, but the country was rugged and densely wooded. A number of long, shallow lakes with their axis extending north-south made lateral communications extremely difficult for any force advancing north.

  The Germans had strengthened nature by artifice—but only to a point. The state’s willingness and ability to construct railway lines exclusively for military purposes has frequently been exaggerated. The Prussian government evaluated proposed railway routes on the basis of existing movements of goods and people. Lines were built where current effective demands were heaviest, and correspondingly likely to generate profits. Eastern Germany was far from the Reich’s population centers. Since the 1880s it had been separated from potential Russian markets by tariff barriers. However impressive the region’s railway network may have been compared to the Russian side of the frontier, it was second-rate relative to the rest of the empire. Little money had been spent on sidings to expedite the loading and unloading of troops and equipment. Even less had been spent on spurs leading to nowhere except the Russian border.

  The province’s highway network was correspondingly thin, reflecting low population densities, limited local incomes, and a regional market system. The main roads and many secondary ones were paved. This would prove a boon to the horse-drawn guns, wagons, and ambulances that provided the 8th Army’s logistics. Motorization, however, had made far less progress in the German east than around Berlin, Hamburg, or Hanover. This meant that relatively few civilian trucks were available to supplement supply columns or provide emergency transportation for men. Far more than their comrades in the west, the Germans of 8th Army would fight a horse and rail campaign in the old style.14

  German regiments spent the first days of mobilization shaking down: absorbing reservists, staging practice marches, sending detachments in their new field gray uniforms to cover beaches, bridges, and roads against expected Russian raids. Hair was cut short or completely shaved in the interests of hygiene. Pastors announced God’s blessing on the war in open-air services, and all but the most committed Socialists or agnostics could be pardoned for joining in the hymns more enthusiastically than usual. In Danzig and Königsberg, in Allenstein, Lyck, and a dozen smaller towns, troops marched to the railway stations under flying colors, headed by their regimental bands, forcing their way through cheering crowds of well-wishers. Cigars, candy, and enthusiastic embraces from women of all ages helped submerge any lingering qualms in the ranks and among the spectators.

  On departing from their garrisons, the regiments of I Corps concentrated around Gumbinnen and Insterburg, with I Reserve Corps in support around Nordenburg and Angerburg. The XX Corps, from its home station of Allenstein, covered the southeast frontier. The XVII Corps moved southeast from Danzig to the area of Soldau. The 3rd Reserve Division was unloaded in the fortress of Thorn. This cordon deployment invited comparison to that allegedly criticized by Napoleon as perfect if a high command wanted to stop smuggling. But it possessed two complementary virtues. To a degree, it camouflaged numerical weakness. It also expedited concentration once the Russian threat developed: a covering force would be at hand.

  The Russians offered few signs of life. In 1910 the Königsberg intelligence office had obtained information that Russia would begin the war with a series of massive cavalry raids into East Prussia—a logical maneuver given her vast superiority in horsemen. In 1914 the Russian cavalry confined itself to patrol- and squadron-level skirmishes. The contrast between expectation and reality was so great that the Germans subsequently wondered if they had not been deliberately fed false information.15

  The answer was by no means so sophisticated. Deep-penetration mobile operations had a long tradition in the Russian armies, and Sukhomlinov was particularly impressed by the Civil War exploits of the Confederacy’s Jeb Stuart. The mobilization plan deployed eight of the best mounted divisions in the Russian army on the East Prussian border. But the Russian cavalry at its best moved slowly. Unaccompanied by infantry or artillery, its average rate of march were calculated at 3.3 miles per hour at a walk and 4.6 miles per hour at a mixed walk and trot.16 Neither speed would have impressed James Harrison Wilson or Nathan Bedford Forrest; neither gave great hopes for deep penetration behind German lines.

  Nor was Russian cavalry organized and trained to operate in masses. Russia had no peacetime cavalry formation higher than the division, and too many of those were led by men too old or too frail to spend days in the saddle and make quick decisions after two or three sleepless nights. The commander of the 1st Army’s improvised cavalry corps, the sixty-one-year-old Hussein Khan Nakhitchevanski, had reached the limits
of his ability commanding a brigade in Manchuria. This unhappy descendant of the Tatars was hardly likely to obtain maximum results from even the boldest warriors. Brave enough personally, he had neither the vision nor the energy required of a senior commander of mobile troops. Apart from the physical problems to be expected of a man his age, the Khan suffered so badly from hemorrhoids that it was almost impossible for him to mount a horse.

  The Russians were also suffering as badly as the Germans from mobilization jitters. When reconnaissance patrols did cross the border, their reports showed more creative anxiety than scouting ability. Lurid descriptions of German soldiers disguised as peasants and women, interpretations of curious adolescents as enemy intelligence agents, increased the level of jumpy trigger-happiness among Russian rank and file, but contributed little towards finding and fixing the enemy. Lieutenant Adam Bennigsen of the elite horse guards described a night alarm: “General quarreling in the darkness, swearing, complete ignorance as to where to go or what to do, anxious waiting—a usual picture of a night move.”

  Nor did the cavalry’s doctrine and training prove particularly useful in overcoming initial insecurities. Unlike their counterparts in Western Europe, Russia’s horsemen had a strong tradition of dismounted fighting. The enemies confronted on the empire’s southern and eastern frontiers were often less vulnerable to massed charges than to mobile firepower. Between 1872 and 1910, the army’s entire line cavalry had been baptized “dragoons” and trained extensively to fight on foot. But while this might safeguard against Balaklavas or Mars-la-Tours, it proved a positive handicap in patrolling and scouting. The concept of cavalry spirit, so often derided by critics of nineteenth-century armies, was by no means a pure atavism. Russian squadrons confronted by a detachment of snipers were less likely to press forward and test the enemy’s strength than to dismount and trade shots at long range with their adversaries. This early version of “reconnaissance by fire” seldom brought results more significant than a dead horse or two, a handful of empty cartridge cases in an abandoned position, and a growing sense of frustration. Wait for the real offensive, regimental wisdom counseled. Then the Russian troopers would show what they could do while pursuing a defeated enemy.17

  The German troops on the border were also learning some of the differences between a military campaign and a youth group hike. They went to war in uniforms whose color was the product of years of study and debate. In 1910 the Imperial army had relegated its traditional bright colors to the garrison and the parade ground, introducing for active service the color known as feldgrau (field grey). Its greenish tint set it apart from the hechtgrau (pike grey) of the Austrian field uniform. Particularly with a bit of wear, the color blended well with smoke, with mud, and—not least in importance—with the late-fall foliage of central Europe. The impression of a German column on the march in 1914 was of a drab flood, highlighted only by the scarlet regimental numbers painted on helmet covers and embroidered on shoulder straps. Throughout the war it would be shoulder straps, taken from prisoners or ripped from corpses, that provided basic hard intelligence on the location of German units.

  Color had been the army’s principal concession to modernity. The new field uniforms retained the style and cut of their predecessors, especially in the cavalry. They were correspondingly constricting. For the infantryman, however, tradition had even greater impact on his feet and at his head. Where the French and British armies had introduced shoes and puttees, the Germans retained calf-length boots. Boots, their advocates insisted, provided protection and support. They were less likely to impede circulation in a marching man’s leg than were puttees or leggings. The risks of loss in mud or snow could be limited by reasonably careful attention to fitting. While German storm troops and mountain formations adopted puttees later in the war, the army’s boots seemed on the whole to have justified their retention.

  Far less could be said for World War I’s single most prized souvenir, the spiked helment, or Pickelhaube. The initial version of this leather helmet, introduced in 1842, was high-crowned to provide its wearer with some protection against sword cuts. The elaborate pattern of metal trim on the more familiar, smaller version, adopted later, was only partly for decorative purposes. The chains and ribbing served to reinforce the leather and retard wear—an important point for an army having to watch its peacetime pennies. They added nothing to the helmet’s utility. On the march, its weight was not compensated by any protection from the sun. The leather and the metal acted instead as heat conductors. On peacetime firing ranges, the large neckpiece constantly tipped the visor into the shooter’s face. The addition of a canvas cover for field service did little to modify the headgear’s deficiences. But if no German soldier or politician was willing to assert “Die Pickelhaube ist Deutschland” with the same intensity their French counterparts proclaimed “Le pantalon garance, c’est la France” the spiked helmet continued to defy replacement by anything more practical or comfortable.

  The rest of the German soldier’s equipment was heavy but practical. He carried up to seventy pounds, most of it in a square knapsack nicknamed “monkey”—a term introduced to American slang first by drug addicts, then by any troubled person carrying “a monkey on his back.” Six ammunition pouches, bayonet and entrenching tool, haversack and mess kit, were suspended from a harness of belts and straps—leather instead of the more up-to-date webbing favored by the British—designed to distribute the weight as evenly as possible over the upper body with a minimum of handles or straps dangling below the waist to impede movement.18

  Not even German structural engineering could keep a fully equipped infantry private from resembling the proverbial Christmas tree. The process of lightening packs by abandoning gear, an art form in the less formal armies of the American Civil War, was a court-martial offense under the kaiser. The German soldier was, however, fortunate in belonging to an army that, though many of its veterans would dispute the point, in the field did not emphasize spit and polish for its own sake. The German private had less freedom than the French poilu to leave everything unbuttoned except his fly, but by comparison to his British counterpart, he was allowed to look positively scruffy.

  Other things—particularly diet—were perceived as more important, even by the regimental officers. In the 1870s, army doctors had evaluated the merits of the coca leaf as a source of quick energy on the march, a possible miracle cure for colic, constipation, and hypochondria.19 In 1914 soldiers continued to depend, at least officially, on more conventional stimulants: alcohol, tobacco, and above all hot food and drink. The German soldier was not expected to feed himself from the contents of his haversack. That contained emergency rations: tinned meat and preserved vegetables, biscuits, coffee, and salt, to be touched only on an officer’s orders. Under normal circumstances meals were prepared from bread baked by more or less stationary field bakeries, beef killed and seasoned at more or less stationary field butcheries, and vegetables and condiments obtained locally or sent from the interior, all of it distributed by corps supply columns.

  In the field, the state of these provisions on reception could hardly be guaranteed. Rock-hard loaves of bread and cuts of meat still quivering were common grievances even on maneuvers. Just before the war, however, the German army had introduced kitchens on wheels, able to boil coffee or cook stew on the move and issue it at any convenient halt. They made it possible for men to begin and end the day with something hot in their stomachs, without the effort involved in doing for themselves or erecting the old type of kitchens. This was particularly important for men new to active service and likely to end a day too exhausted to take any pains for their own well-being.

  War is described as being composed of two elements: mud and dust. The summer of 1914 had been dry and as hot as any in recent memory. After two or three days on the roads of East Prussia, few German footsloggers would not have welcomed mud as a change from their present miseries. Throats and nostrils clogged. Faces and hands turned as gray as uniforms. Feet burned in t
heir new boots. Men complained it was like walking on hot coals. Reservists fresh from office desks and workshops, enervated from several days in trains, strained to keep in ranks. A medical officer furnished his regiment with a welcome laugh when, never having ridden a horse in his life, he inadvertently used his spurs to improve his seat. His normally phlegmatic charger raced through the column at a dead gallop, with the unfortunate doctor sinking his spurs in deeper and deeper, until he was rescued by a comrade better versed in horse management.20 But most of the Germans found enough triumph in being able to put one foot in front of the other until the “halt” sounded at day’s end.

  II

  For the Germans to concentrate, they needed at least some idea of what the Russians were doing. Initially Prittwitz expected great things from Germany’s espionage networks, but the reports from field agents rapidly declined in number and value as Russian security measures tightened. The German civil police, who often acted as contacts, could no longer take peacetime risks along the frontier. Border guards who knew when to look the other way were reinforced by Cossacks inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. The outbreak of war cut off another useful source of information: German train crews on the international runs. Russian counterintelligence handicapped the Germans still further by the simple device of stopping the mails to Germany.

  Particularly in the operational zones, where information was most urgently sought, the Germans depended heavily on small fry: peasants and peddlers, customs personnel, an occasional middle-grade official. These men worked for money, and war increased the risks of their activities beyond any reasonable hope of profit from a German intelligence service with a history of tightfistedness. A typical “success” involved a Russian reservist who brought in one final report from Vilna, then answered his own mobilization notice like a good citizen.