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

by Dennis Showalter

  The night remained quiet. Daylight increased the confidence at army headquarters as every hour saw more of François’s corps arrive and detrain. During the morning of August 25 Hindenburg decided to go to François’s headquarters and coordinate final plans for the attack he intended to make next day. Before he left, an intercepted Russian wireless message came in from Königsberg. It was a complete army order of the 1st Army, sent in clear at 2:30 a.m. It embodied detailed instructions for the 1st Army’s advance—instructions setting the limits of that advance only as far as the line Gerdauen-Allenburg-Wehlau by August 26.20 This meant Rennenkampf had almost no chance of reaching the new battle area in time to support the 2nd Army directly—if the order was genuine, and not a Russian plant.

  Eighth Army received another welcome message early on the 25th. OHL informed Hindenburg that a Landwehr Division, previously on guard duty in north Schleswig, was being assigned to 8th Army and would arrive on August 27. Mindful of the still-vague situation on its left flank, army command decided to set the detraining areas well out of the zone of operations.21 A division of German Landwehr was small change against an army of Russian regulars. Nevertheless, the new division might provide some security against a surprise move by Rennenkampf.

  François established his field headquarters on a hill southeast of the village of Montowo at 8:00 a.m. on the 25th. Hindenburg and Ludendorff found him there and informed him I Corps was to attack towards the village of Usdau at 5:00 a.m. the next day. François immediately began to raise objections. His corps, he declared, had only half its complement of field artillery. Its heavy howitzers and ammunition columns were still en route; their trains were behind schedule. Fire support was more important than peacetime doctrines suggested to infantry regiments whose casualties of Gumbinnen and Stallupönen had not yet been replaced. “If it is ordered,” he said sarcastically, “naturally the attack will be made; of course the men must fight with bayonets.”22

  François’s objections had a hidden agenda. Mackensen’s repulse on August 20 had shown, if it needed to be redemonstrated, the danger of a frontal attack against even improvised positions. Moreover, by attacking Usdau directly, I Corps would expose its own right flank to the Russians François’s air reconnaissance reported around Soldau. Gumbinnen and Stallupönen had suggested that the Russians were extremely vulnerable to a flank attack, and François wanted to swing south towards Soldau and attack northeast.

  Ludendorff disagreed sharply. Probing for a flank would give Rennenkampf more time to change his mind about his rate of advance. It would hand Samsonov another day to mount a coordinated frontal attack on Scholtz in the German center. And the same airmen who gave François his information had also reported strong Russian forces even further south, in the Mlawa area. Logically, then, the proposed German flanking movement would have to extend its own flank guard south of Mlawa. This in turn would stretch I Corps beyond acceptable limits and leave it too weak to attack anywhere.

  The debate over tactics was merely the tip of an iceberg. François had met the new command team at Marienburg. He professed to be shocked at how much Hindenburg appeared to have aged since his retirement, at how little he conveyed the image of an inspired captain. Ludenforff and Hindenburg for their part had been thoroughly briefed by the 8th Army staff on François’s behavior since the outbreak of war. Ludendorff was aware of François’s peacetime career, and did not regard him highly. But whatever the talents of I Corps’s commanding general, it seemed clear that François was once again trying to force his plans on higher headquarters. It was correspondingly necessary to show him that the new commanders intended their orders to be obeyed. The discussion grew more and more heated, until Ludendorff finally said that if François was unwilling to attack he would ask Hindenburg to appoint a new corps commander. Hindenburg said nothing. But François remembered his former chief well, and interpreted Hindenburg’s silence as indicating that I Corps would attack with or without François at its head. Deciding that discretion was the best course, François stopped arguing.23

  Hindenburg and Ludendorff sweetened the pill by insisting that everything possible would be done to strengthen I Corps by the 26th. Army headquarters would try to speed up the arrival of its missing artillery. The XX Corps would also support the operation by attacking Usdau from the north, and by sending a strong detachment to reinforce I Corps directly. François, his face suitably saved, issued preliminary orders for an advance at 11:30 a.m.—under the eyes of his superiors.

  After this stormy conference Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and most of their staff officers returned to Löbau by car. On the way they stopped in Montowo, where Max Hoffmann telephoned army headquarters to see if any new reports had arrived—another indication of the increasing pace of the modern battlefield. Prewar theories had emphasized the need for peace and quiet in higher headquarters, creating an environment that would sustain the generals’ energies for the crucial plans and decisions they must make. Realities in East Prussia involved dashing from point to point to impose one’s will on situations, using automobiles as Frederick the Great’s generals used horses, but with periodic halts to call the office and inquire after important messages.

  This mixture of the heroic and the bureaucratic, characteristic of military leadership throughout the twentieth century, influenced even a sober staff officer like Hoffmann. In his conversation he learned that German radio intelligence had intercepted another Russian message in clear. Sent to XIII Corps by Samsonov himself, it was an order projecting the dispositions of the 2nd Army for August 25. This overview of what was on the other side of the hill so excited Hoffmann that he drove furiously after his superiors, who had gone on ahead, and handed them the message from a moving car—a maneuver more appropriate for a rodeo cowboy than a middle-aged staff colonel with a weight problem.24

  The order originated in Samsonov’s earlier reports to Zhilinski. By this time Russian battlefield intelligence was worse than ever. On August 23 XV Corps had captured a bagful of unsent personal letters. Not for thirty-six hours did anyone think to look through the mail. Even then the initial examination was the work of an underemployed aide rather than an intelligence officer. When General Knox acidly suggested that a more systematic evaluation of this material might prove useful, no one literate in German was on hand.25

  Yet, despite lack of specific corroborating information, Samsonov interpreted the withdrawal of Scholtz’s left wing on August 24 as a general German retreat. In consequence he proposed to shift his own axis of advance even further westward, marching on Allenstein-Osterode instead of Allenstein-Seeburg. Zhilinski agreed with Samsonov that a wider sweep than originally calculated would be necessary to gather 8th Army into the Russian net. The front commander, however, made one modification. He had received information from Rennenkampf’s sector that German troops had been seen retreating directly south from the field of Gumbinnen. Zhilinski therefore ordered Samsonov to protect his right flank by sending his VI Corps and a cavalry division north, towards Bischofsburg, fifteen miles from its presently assigned positions around Ortelsburg.

  This was making war by map with a vengeance. If the Germans were retreating in disorder, they were unlikely to be going anywhere except towards the Vistula. There was certainly no reason for them to retreat across their enemy’s line of advance in numbers strong enough to demand the attention of a full corps. And if the German movement instead was offensive, the Russian flank guard was at significant risk of becoming a military appetizer, devoured before it could be supported. Sending VI Corps to Bischofsburg also further dispersed Russian forces already suffering seriously from wastage. Casualties had been heavy in XV Corps. Straggling had become sufficiently visible for Knox to remark on it to Samsonov. The Russian commander’s reply that the shirkers were overwhelmingly Jews seeking to avoid the firing line convinced neither man. Samsonov, nonetheless, continued to believe “God helps the brave.” As developed, dispatched, and intercepted, his orders for August 25 were for 2nd Army’s center, XII
I and XV Corps and the 2nd Division, to advance northwest on Allenstein-Osterode. As ordered by Zhilinski, VI Corps would move due north to Bischofsburg. The I Corps would continue to support the army’s left.26

  A few minutes of reflection and evaluation by the side of the road showed Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Hoffmann that the Russians were preparing no major operational surprises. Almost certainly the 8th Army would have to face neither major frontal attack on the 25th nor a tactical envelopment from 2nd Army’s left flank corps. Operationally the German plans could stand as written. But no one had ever expected subtle strategy from the tsar’s generals, and the fighting capacity of the Russian soldier could never be discounted. The 2nd Army still had to be defeated in the field.

  Certainly General von Scholtz was not ready to consider victory in his hands. Before Hindenburg and Ludendorff left Löbau they sent Grünert by car to inform Scholtz of the Russian intercept and the army’s plans for the following day. When he arrived at XX Corps headquarters he found Scholtz and Hell full of good cheer, since the attack they had expected had failed to materialize. Samsonov’s orders spoiled their mood. Whether VI Corps remained at Ortelsburg or moved further north was at the moment less relevant than the threat posed to XX Corps’s left flank by the as-yet unengaged and presumably full-strength XIII Corps.

  Scholtz proposed to transfer the garrison troops that had been holding down his extreme right to his left, forming a new defensive flank behind the Drewenz River. Army command agreed. By nightfall the 41st Division was alone on XX Corps’s right. The 37th Division, reinforced to eighteen battalions by the attachment of some fortress units, held the center, its left covering the high road west of Mühlen. North of Mühlen were stationed the 70th Landwehr Brigade and the by-now footsore garrison troops of Unger’s command, a total of eleven battalions and four batteries. The 3rd Reserve Division remained behind them in corps and sector reserve. Well fed and well dug in, with fields of fire cleared and batteries ranged, Scholtz’s East Prussians would be a tough nut to crack at any odds the Russians were likely to generate.27

  Higher levels of command had their concerns as well. On the evening of the 25th Hindenburg informed his staff: “Gentlemen, our preparations are so well in hand that we can sleep soundly tonight.”28 But he knew air reconnaissance was continuing to report Russian troop trains on the way to the stations at Mlawa. The possibility of a major thrust from the south against I Corps by fresh Russian forces made Hindenburg and Ludendorff even more determined to seize the initiative in François’s sector. Final army orders were issued at 8:30 p.m. The I Corps would attack the Seeben Heights “around” 4:30 a.m. From there the corps was to advance to Usdau by 10:00 a.m. at the latest, while keeping its forward units deeply echeloned to the right against a possible threat from Mlawa or Soldau.29

  A venerable German proverb warns against adding up the bill without consulting the waiter. By the night of the 25th, the arrival and concentration of François’s corps from the west was increasingly apparent to the Russian cavalry in that sector. Even Samsonov was concerned. His original intention for August 26 had been for his I Corps to move northwest from Soldau, supporting and conforming to the movements of the two center corps. With Germans reported in strength on his army’s left, Samsonov considered the wisdom of halting his advance and redeploying to meet this possible threat. The I Corps was stationed in St. Petersburg in peacetime and had a high proportion of reservists from the city’s factories. Their fighting spirit was at least questionable. Their commander, Lieutenant-General Artamonov, was considered neither one of the army’s brighter intellectual lights nor one of its better combat leaders. Samsonov’s men were tired and hungry. Hard marches and short rations were by now swelling the sick list, especially with reservists who had had no time to harden themselves. But the 2nd Army’s logistical crisis is easy to exaggerate in the light of the disaster that overtook it in the coming days. Of Samsonov’s troops, only XV Corps had been seriously engaged, and the Russian soldier was historically accustomed to privation. To go over to the defensive now would be to give in to ghosts and shadows—those formless fears that stalk the corridors of all higher headquarters, and whose mastering is a prerequisite of effective command.

  Instead of halting his army Samsonov decided to reinforce his menaced flank. The I Corps was assigned XXIII Corps’s other division, the elite 3rd Guard from Warsaw, some of whose trains the German airmen arriving had seen at Mlawa. It was given the 1st Rifle Brigade, eight good active battalions, and the 6th and 15th Cavalry Divisions. Added to I Corps’s two organic divisions this force appeared strong enough on paper both to make up for any of Artamonov’s shortcomings as a general and to secure the 2nd Army’s left flank against almost any opposition.

  Critics accurately insist there was little chance of concentrating these troops except on paper. The guardsmen and the rifles were too far away to reach I Corps’s positions in less than forty-eight hours. Both cavalry divisions were badly scattered. Samsonov’s rhetorical flourishes ordering the corps to hold at all costs were merely a counterpoint to his generalship by map.30Yet with no more than its own resources, I Russian Corps was intimidating François. Like Scholtz, he had received a copy of Samsonov’s intercepted order. Like Scholtz, he found it cold comfort. The Russian forward positions in his sector were based on high ground around the village of Seeben. To reach them I Corps would have to advance over broken country, ford a river, and then cross open fields in the face of an entrenched enemy. Most of I Corps’s infantry had arrived on August 25, but much of the artillery and, even more important in the era of rapidfiring guns, most of the ammunition columns were still en route. François’s staff doubted if these deficiencies could be made good during the night. Even if the guns and wagons could be unloaded, they could hardly be deployed in time for a dawn attack.

  François continued to hope army command would adopt his plan of a flank movement. Though he verbally agreed to advance after his argument with Ludendorff, he did not prepare formal orders until the written army order reached him at 11:45 p.m.—twelve hours later. The corps order went out only at 12:30 a.m. on August 26. The 1st Division was to advance at 4:00 a.m., capture the Seeben Heights, then at 10:00 a.m. advance towards Usdau. The 2nd Division and the 5th Landwehr Brigade, which had just arrived from Thorn, were to advance in support at 7:00 a.m., echeloned to the south.

  While the instructions certainly conformed to the sense of the army orders, François’s real intentions are not so plain. Given the march distances involved it was impossible for the 1st Division to reach its assigned line of departure by 4:00 a.m. unless it was ready to move as soon as it received the orders. But François had not informed Conta of Hindenburg’s and Ludendorff’s insistence on an early attack. As a result Conta had settled his division for the night, with no thought of having to advance until sometime into the next morning.31 The attack order came as a corresponding surprise to all ranks—even Conta, who by this time had grown used to the unpredictable behavior of his corps chief. The 1st Division shook itself out of its blankets, fell into ranks, and struggled slowly forward in the dark over unfamiliar roads.

  At 5:30 a.m. François telephoned army headquarters and reported the attack “in progress,” though he could not answer for its outcome. Hindenburg and his staff assumed this was just another of François’s complaints.32 Actually, the advance had not yet begun. Conta’s regiments neither pushed nor were driven. Not until 8:00 a.m. did they reach the Russian outposts in front of Seeben. François arrived at Conta’s headquarters shortly afterward, and both commanders agreed that continuing under existing circumstances was risky. Conta had only eight battalions and four light batteries on hand. He had no ammunition columns, which meant empty caissons and cartridge pouches within minutes of engaging. François promptly contacted army headquarters and requested permission to set the time of attack himself. He was just as promptly informed that this was impossible. At 9:00 a.m. François was instructed by phone that the attack on Usdau would have to
start at noon. At 10:30 a.m. written orders to this effect arrived at I Corps headquarters. At 11:15 a.m. army headquarters received a message that Seeben still remained in Russian hands. It answered with a sharp request for an explanation why the position had not been carried seven hours earlier, as ordered. François replied that his men had been fighting for Seeben since 4:00 a.m., but so far without success. Infantry alone, he implied, could not be expected to carry modern defenses even against Russians.33

  Ludendorff flew into a frustrated rage—a rage exacerbated by its causes. The days when a Marlborough or a Wellington could survey the battlefield and control the actions of his subordinates by messenger had ended a century earlier. Even Napoleon had been unable to direct his campaigns effectively by keeping his corps and army commanders on a short leash. Necessity had led the Prussian army and its imperial successor to develop the conception of mission performance. An officer given an assignment was expected to execute that assignment on the basis of the situation he faced. Evading responsibility by awaiting orders was a sure ticket to civilian clothes, even in peacetime.

  The system functioned well enough by default in 1866 and 1870. The increasing frontages of modern battles made it virtually impossible for higher headquarters to keep abreast of operational situations as long as information was supplied by horsepower. But the introduction of the telephone altered circumstances substantially. Unlike some of his superiors, Ludendorff was at home with the instrument’s use. He was doubly eager to make good in directing his first battle. Saving East Prussia meant that his own career would be back on the main track. He was correspondingly reluctant to submit his fate to an unruly subordinate like François. But what exactly was he to do? Ludendorff could hardly repeat his behavior at Liège and risk the disruption of his general plan while personally supervising the execution of one of its parts. As for relieving François on the spot, aside from the risks of changing I Corps’s commander in the midst of battle, who would replace him? Nothing indicated that either Falk or Conta would drive the corps any harder than its present commander.