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

by Dennis Showalter

  The chief of staff contented himself with a curt order to François that he report as soon as Seeben was captured.34 François’s response was to set back army command’s timing even further. His final orders, issued at 11:30 a.m., sent the 1st Division “from” a still-uncaptured Seeben against Usdau. The time of the advance, however, was given at 1:00 p.m.; the troops were to be given a chance to eat before going forward.35

  As François bought time in half-hour increments, Prussia’s railway staffs gave their best to bring up the balance of I Corps. Conductors and stationmasters abandoned lifetimes of adherence to regulations to push along open stretches of track as fast as possible. Derailment or brake failure could have sent trains piling into each other in a chain reaction of disaster. But in the clichè of one junior staff officer, nothing ventured meant nothing gained. Peacetime schedules allowing up to two hours for unloading were cut back to twenty-five minutes and less. One engineer saved ninety minutes by taking his train forward into the combat zone. Only when Russian shells began exploding around the locomotive did the battalion he was carrying abandon its boxcars, form skirmish lines, and advance on foot towards the front.36

  By noon, all but two of I Corps’s twenty-four infantry battalions were on the ground. Most of the artillery was also in position. As patrols reported Russian defenses lightly held, battalion and regiment commanders tested their sectors more seriously. By 12:30 p.m. Seeben was in flames and the Russians in retreat, with Conta’s infantry rounding up die-hards and stragglers.

  Following up initial success was a skill that required practice in all the armies of 1914. Even with Seeben firmly in German hands it took two hours to concentrate the 1st Division for the next move on Usdau. Then it was Conta who balked. His men had been advancing since the early morning of a day that had turned blindingly hot. Their water bottles were empty. Cases of heat exhaustion were mounting. To reach Usdau meant an advance of seven kilometers over open fields in the hottest part of the day, against positions that were sure to be stronger than the outposts around Seeben. The Germans might be able to work up to the Russian defenses, but their ability to carry them before dark without becoming seriously disorganized was questionable.

  In taking this position Conta was following generally approved procedures. In the later stages of the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese army had tended increasingly to make its attacks under cover of darkness. The method, intensively considered in all Western armies prior to 1914, did provide some security from the effects of modern firepower. It also sacrificed any advantages of command, coordination, and flexibility. Night combat tended to dissolve almost immediately into an all-out brawl, with victory going to the more ferocious or the more fortunate. German military theorists might admire the Japanese, but unit commanders were soberly aware that the men they led were not samurai manquè. Fighting at night against the Russians was to test the enemy at his strongest points: imperturbability and brute strength. The experience of XX Corps on August 24 had hardly been an encouraging practical test of the German army’s capability to operate even under twilight contitions. There might be enough remaining daylight to go for Usdau, but in Conta’s judgment a night’s rest, full stomachs, full ammunition pouches, and full caissons were more likely ingredients of success than a series of regimental or battalion-scale blows that were likely only to improve the defenders’ morale. Conta was also well aware that his immediate superior did not consider the situation to require extreme measures. François solemnly deferred to the commander on the spot. At 3:45 p.m. he decided to break off I Corps’s attack for the day.37

  François did not have his tongue entirely in his cheek. Falk’s 2nd Division, advancing on the corps’s right, had become badly stuck in the woods south of Usdau. Though the Germans faced only detachments, broken terrain combined with memories of Gumbinnen to make everyone in the front line more than a little cautious. Company-level rumor credited the Russians with mounting machine guns in trees, the better to catch attackers by surprise. The difficulties of finding a tree large enough to support a plaform stable enough to sustain a water-cooled machine gun’s recoil are exceeded only by the difficulties of building that platform and camouflaging it. The Russian army’s machine gun was so heavy that it was mounted on a small two-wheeled carriage to facilitate its movement. Yet to men and officers raised on Karl May’s novels, arboreal automatic weapons seemed a reasonable explanation for the bursts of bullets, seeming to come from every direction, that stopped the 2nd Division in its tracks by midafternoon.

  As with Conta, François made no effort to get Falk moving again.38 The day-long inactivity of a man who had demonstrated such an aggressive spirit in earlier operations, and who was to demonstrate it again in the coming days, is usually explained in terms of his defiance of the 8th Army staff. B. H. Liddell-Hart describes Ludendorff as more concerned with time than tactical realities.39 Max Hoffmann, not one of François’s admirers, comments that an attack against a prepared position without artillery support could be justified had XX Corps been in serious danger of being overrun.40 During the night of the 25th, however, François had contacted Colonel Hell at XX Corps Headquarters. Hell informed him that the situation in his sector was not serious enough to require a premature attack.41 Ultimately Ludendorff himself not only declared that the attack was postponed because I Corps had been unable to concentrate in time, he agreed that François was correct in his actions. Hoffmann went even further, asserting that had I Corps attacked with only the units available on the 26th the attack would probably have been defeated. Had it failed, the approach of I Reserve Corps and XVII Corps would only have forced a Russian retreat. The encirclement could not have succeeded.42

  These commentators on the strategic implications of François’s decisions overlook another significant point. The generals of World War I are commonly described as indifferent to man management, believers in the power of èlan to overcome the most extreme physical obstacles. Realities at the operational level could often be quite different. In 1927, François engaged in an acrimonious debate with Lieutenant-Colonel Theobald von Schäfer of the Reichsarchiv. Schäfer had been responsible for the official history’s volume on the East Prussian campaign, and contributed an excellent narrative volume on Tannenberg to the popular German series, Battles of the World War. He was convinced Hindenburg and Ludendorff were right to order François to attack on August 26. The I Corps’s halfheartedness, he argued, reflected unnecessary caution. François’s reply was uncharacteristically reflective. The situation, he declared, was not as clear on the battlefield as it might seem in a library. Even in peacetime, 8th Army’s new chief of staff had shown no sense of the importance of cooperation between infantry and artillery, and no sense of the limits of will on the battlefield.

  François was a Prussian aristocrat to his fingertips, with none of that common touch so dear to reporters and correspondents in the contemporary West. But he had a thoroughly modern sense of what his still-unhardened infantry could and could not do under twentieth-century conditions of warfare. To treat every operation as an emergency was to risk neglecting war’s physical side: the importance for combat efficiency of full canteens and full stomachs. The Germans, moreover, had no idea of the main location of the main Russian artillery positions. François sent his son, a gunner officer serving on his staff, to climb a tree and look for muzzle flashes, but in vain. François had not quite internalized the postwar French aphorism that the artillery conquers while the infantry only occupies. But two weeks of campaigning had shown him that enthusiasm was no substitute for a well-prepared fire plan, and that aggressiveness could be significantly enhanced by following up a properly executed bombardment.43

  III

  In the German center, Scholtz and Hell had learned through their conversation with François that I Corps would probably not require a supporting advance immediately. Scholtz therefore decided to hold his position on the 26th. He was less concerned with his role in a possible Cannae than with maintaining his lines against ste
ady Russian pressure. The manor house dominating Mühlen village collapsed under Russian artillery fire, its lord abandoning his home hell for leather in an elegant landau to the amusement of the watching soldiers. Colonel Hell’s well-known imperturbability passed a test when he turned XX Corps’s artillery on his own house in Gross-Grieben on learning that it was in enemy hands. In the 1st Jäger a company commander discussed with one of his lieutenants the respective mathematical probabilities of being hit by a bullet, a shell splinter, or a shrapnel ball.44

  During the morning 8th Army headquarters received several reports of a gap between the left flank of the Russians opposing XX Corps and the right flank of the Russians in front of François. At 1:00 p.m. Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided to order Scholtz to test the opportunity.45 At 2:45 p.m. the commanding general ordered the 41st Division and the 75th Brigade of the 37th Division forward. In the first attack in the corps’s history, the East Prussians did well across the board. Scholtz’s infantry moved out at 3:45 p.m. after a fifteen-minute artillery preparation that caught the Russian 2nd Division completely by surprise. Carelessness in reconnaissance and flank security cost the Russians even more dearly. The 41st Division enveloped the Russian left and drove it south of Lake Kownatken. A brigade of the 37th Division found a gap between the 2nd Division’s two brigades, struck the left flank of the 1st Brigade, and forced it back on the north side of the lake.

  Large-scale histories make the process sound easy. The 41st Division’s infantry advanced with the enthusiasm of inexperience, taking heavy casualties because of their reluctance to lie down between rushes. One colonel went so far as to inform his officers that he would have prohibited such eagerness in a peacetime exercise. For the men of one regiment the jest had little humor. The 59th Infantry’s first and second battalions suddenly came under fire from their own guns. Unable to establish contact with the erring batteries, company officers led their men forward away from the shelling, only to fall dead or wounded in front of Russian rifle pits no one saw. Command from the front against a determined enemy compounded the results of failure. The surviving captains and lieutenants, commanding mixed bags of anyone willing to rally to their voices and whistles, lacked the opportunity to consider alternative plans. Probing for a flank or waiting for neighboring units to put pressure on the Russians were dismissed as insults to the regiment’s dead. At 6:00 p.m., what remained of the 59th finally carried the Russian positions to their front. Five hundred fifty men, including twenty-three officers, lay in the tracks of the advance.

  German casualties elsewhere on the field might have been correspondingly heavy but for the artillery. The broken terrain and the speed of the advance put scientific gunnery at a discount. Instead battery and battalion commanders pushed their guns almost into the infantry’s skirmish lines, taking Russian positions under point-blank fire, then moving before enemy artillery had time to register. The only major Russian counterattack was shattered by the 150th Infantry’s machine gun company. Six Maxims firing as a unit smashed an embryonic charge into piles of corpses within minutes. In one part of the front a Russian NCO systematically shot down any of his own men who showed signs of wanting to abandon the fight or surrender. Once this man’s position was discovered and blasted with machine-gun fire, the collapse continued unabated.46 By nightfall the 2nd Russian Division was temporarily finished as a combat unit. Its 7th Reval Regiment alone had suffered over 2,900 casualties; the survivors were so scattered and demoralized as to be almost out of control.

  On Scholtz’s left, the 3rd Reserve Division had been initially ordered to move to Hohenstein. Its commander had other ideas. These, Morgen declared in his memoirs, were still wonderful times for a senior officer. He could stand on a hill, survey the situation, and give orders without being bound to a telephone line. Morgen was convinced that advancing as ordered would bring him into frontal collision with the Russian XV Corps, and perhaps expose his left flank to their XIII Corps. On his own reponsibility Morgen therefore decided to remain in position until the enemy was committed to the attack on XX Corps. Only then did he intend to move his division south and strike the Russian right flank. Unfortunately—and deliberately—Morgen failed to inform either the 8th Army or XX Corps of his decision. As late as 6:00 p.m. both headquarters still firmly believed the 3rd Reserve Division was advancing as ordered.

  This episode again reveals the advantages and the disadvantages of the German insistence on individual initiative. Max Hoffmann was convinced that if the division had gone forward it would have enveloped the right flank of XV Corps without interference from XIII Corps. Walter Elze similarly blames Morgen for thwarting Hindenburg’s offensive designs in the north as François had in the south.47 On the other hand, by late afternoon of August 26, XIII Corps had reached Stabigotten and Allenstein. XV Corps extended its right as far as Grieslienen and Hohenstein.48 Had the 3rd Reserve Division followed orders it might indeed have walked into a trap. Under the best circumstances an encounter battle against superior forces in the broken, wooded country around Hohenstein would have been a risky business. Morgen preferred a solid shoulder to a broken neck. His decision, like François’, would be justified in the next twenty-four hours.

  By the end of August 26 8th Army’s staff, Ludendorff in particular, was badly on edge. The army’s command post had been established east of Löbau, but its communications center remained in the larger town of Rastenburg. This reflected a problem that would recur time and again during World War I. Communications networks were just sufficiently developed to be frustrating. Like its Russian adversary, 8th Army was still heavily dependant on the ordinary peacetime telephone network, kept operating by civilian officials. Air reconnaissance and radio intelligence provided more strain than reassurance. A pilot from the army’s air detachment had reported around noon that strong Russian reinforcements were still detraining in Soldau and Mlawa. An intercepted radio message from that sector mentioned the arrival of a regiment of the Russian Guard. Perhaps this was the 3rd Guard Division, the other half of XXIII Corps. But perhaps it was the vanguard of the Russian Guard Corps, reported by German agents to have been sent to the Warsaw area. Not only had I Corps gained no ground, it seemed entirely possible that François’s delay had given the Russians a chance to start a flank attack of their own with some of the best troops in their army. The advance of XX Corps had gone well enough, but its units were badly mixed up and the men were tired. No reports at all had been received from the 3rd Reserve Division. Of XVII Corps and I Reserve Corps, army headquarters knew only that they were engaged in battle, and that Rennenkampf’s forward units had reached Gerdauen and Drengfurth in their rear—too close for comfort.49

  The staff ate its evening meal in dead silence. Ludendorff had a habit of rolling bread crumbs at the table when he was concentrating or worrying. That night his hands never stopped. Suddenly he stood up and asked to speak privately with Hindenburg. The men left the room to a sudden buzz of speculation. All available intelligence indicated that Russians were advancing against the rear of both of 8th Army’s flanks. Two-o-clock-in-the-morning courage might be important for a field commander. For the 8th Army’s staff, the crucial time was early evening, when orders for the next day had to be issued. Should the army strengthen its rear against Rennenkampf and turn a flank guard towards Soldau? Should it abandon the hope of destroying the 2nd Army in order to save itself from possible destruction?

  As Hindenburg’s memoirs grandiloquently put it, “Misgivings fill every heart; firm resolution yields to vacillation; doubts creep in where clear vision had hitherto prevailed.” It was generally accepted among the staff and command of 8th Army that these words were an oblique reference to Ludendorff’s temporary loss of confidence, leading to his urging that François’s attack, at least, be abandoned. Ludendorff’s reminiscences are silent on the subject. Hindenburg says only, “We overcame the inward crisis, adhered to our original intention, and turned in full strength to effect its realization.” Whether in public or in private, Hin
denburg to the end of his life insisted that the commitment to continue the operations as they were originally conceived was a joint decision.50

  This stand was complicated by the appearance in 1928 of Walter Elze’s Tannenberg. Elze, professor of military history at the University of Berlin, was a distinguished civilian scholar of operational history. His account of events at army headquarters implied that the chief of staff virtually collapsed in panic on the night of the 26th and had to be brought to reality by a stiff dose of Hindenburg’s common sense. Elze’s statement that Hindenburg had affirmed the accuracy of his interpretation in a personal conversation is credible given the close relationship between them, but was only written four months after Hindenburg’s death, and remains correspondingly unverifiable.51

  Ludendorff reacted by denouncing Elze, Hindenburg, and anyone else remotely connected with the issue. Writing to Friedrich Wilhelm Förster, director of the Military Archives, he insisted that Elze’s book showed that the “establishment” was out to destroy his reputation. Ludendorff dismissed Förster’s explanation that Elze had no official standing as “the most unheard-of calumnies under the mask of good will,” and accused Elze of falsifying history under the influence of “Freemasons and unknown sources.”52

  The best that can be ascertained from the tangle of charges and countercharges is that the original plan was left intact. It strains no possibilities to suggest that Ludendorff, a nervous and highly strung man, may have been temporarily overcome by stress. It is equally logical that Hindenburg was able to talk him out of it with limited effort. That, after all, was one of his functions as army commander. But at 8:30 p.m. an even better nerve tonic arrived at army headquarters—the day’s first message from Ostgruppe, the name given to the operational grouping of XVII and I Reserve Corps.