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

by Dennis Showalter

  Around 4:00 p.m. François, hearing from one of his pilots that Neidenburg had been evacuated, drove forward with his staff to see for himself. Outside the town the caravan halted. Peering through his binoculars, François noticed “a few brown spots” in a nearby potato field. Then bullets started whistling past his ears. The officers took cover, but as the Russian fire grew heavier a passive defense seemed insufficient. Cars were ransacked for rifles. Majors and captains whose days on the small arms range were long behind them formed a skirmish line and tried to remember how to estimate ranges and set sights. Their world was turned right side up again when a cavalry detachment arrived on the scene, dismounted, and drove the Russians off. François, zeal undiminished, ordered his rescuers to bypass Neidenburg to the south and head for Willenburg and the Russian supply trains. He agreed to wait for his own infantry before entering the town.

  The first foot soldiers on the scene were the men of Schmettau’s Force. His battalions had helped take Soldau early in the morning, then had covered the twenty-five kilometers to Neidenburg without a halt. But instead of allowing the East Prussians to spend the night in Neidenburg François told Schmettau to move through the city, bivouac at Muschaken, and advance on Willenberg as early as possible the next day.57 Around 7:00 p.m. the German vanguard entered Neidenburg after exchanging a few shots with Russian stragglers. Schmettau’s Landser turned their march into a victory parade, cheered to the echo by the civilians remaining in the town. During the day some unknown patriots had hoisted two huge German flags on the municipal fire house. When ordered to remove them Mayor Kuhn refused, saying that he had not put them there. Kuhn abandoned his schoolboy defiance in the face of a drawn pistol. He now had the satisfaction of seeing the erstwhile Russian town commandant a crestfallen prisoner. The 1st Jäger Battalion occupied the municipal hospital, one of the few principal buildings undamaged and unlooted. They found a large number of German wounded, including some of their own comrades captured at Orlau and Lahna. These men were loud in praise of the treatment they had received from the Russians. One young lieutenant, his face cruelly mutilated, had even had a sentry posted at the door of his room to ward off the curious and the ghoulish.

  François, finally able to set up his corps headquarters at Neidenburg, received an unexpected reinforcement at 7:30 p.m. when I Corps’s own Lost Battalion, the II/4th Grenadiers, arrived on the last lap of its erratic odyssey and was put to work rounding up stragglers. Its commander faced the task of reporting and explaining himself to an unsympathetic François. About the same time, Mayor Kuhn, body and spirit alike tried by his recent experiences, stopped to rest in the hotel housing François’s staff when his eye was taken by a sight unseen for nine full days in Neidenburg: a keg of beer, prominently displayed at the bar. Kuhn promptly ordered a glass, and was just as promptly stopped from drinking it by a carmine-striped major. “How did you get the beer?” asked that gentleman. “The general staff brought it for itself. You’ll have to forego the pleasure.” The officer took the glass from Kuhn’s hand and walked into the hotel dining room. The incident tells more about the social dynamics of Imperial Germany than many a learned and footnoted volume—not only by itself, but because Andreas Kuhn described and recorded it with neither indignation nor irony.58

  Meanwhile the war went on for other men to whom beer had long been a memory. Schmettau’s riflemen finally bivouacked at 3:00 a.m. on August 29 in and around the village of Muschaken. The 1st Division’s 2nd Brigade reached Neidenburg around midnight. The 1st Brigade halted south of the town, its men exhausted from up to eight hours of stop-and-go marching on secondary roads and tracks.

  Falk’s 2nd Division had spent a day less spectacular and less successful. It was opposed only by the Keksgolmski Regiment of the 3rd Russian Guard Division, three batteries, and a depleted brigade of the 6th Cavalry Division. But for once the Russian cavalry provided an effective screen, keeping the Germans from discovering how weak the enemy in front of them really was. The Keksgolmski Regiment, which had been detached from its parent formation to support the hard-hammered 2nd Division, put up a stout fight against superior numbers in its first action of the war. The guardsmen had dug individual foxholes and small rifle pits instead of trenches. Their officers knew enough to ensure the positions were well-sited for mutual support. The 2nd Division emptied its cartridge pouches firing at shadows, neither reaching its assigned objective of Grünfliess nor making contact with the 41st Division.59

  Russian resistance in Falk’s sector was facilitated by German inactivity further north. The army order issued at 1:30 p.m. ordered XX Corps to attack “in the direction of Lahna-Kurken.” Seven minutes later Scholtz instructed the 41st Division to advance on Orlau and the 3rd Reserve Division on Kurken. The Goltz Division and the 37th were to secure the corps left flank against the Russians presumably coming from Allenstein. Sontag demurred. He informed the staff officer who deliverd Scholtz’s order that his troops were physically and emotionally exhausted, that the Russians in his sector were well dug in, and that he had no intention of ordering or leading another attack that day. Everywhere his men lay asleep, rousing only to laugh skeptically at reports of victory in other sectors. The staff was more exhausted than the line. Too many nights spent redrafting orders had finally taken their toll. The 41st Division stayed in place until evening. Then, far from advancing, it withdrew to bivouacs up to five kilometers behind the front line.

  In Scholtz’s center, Unger’s garrison troops and elements of the 3rd Reserve Division made slow but steady progress against Russian resistance that softened with the waning day. Martos’s corps was almost fought out. Not even local reserves remained to plug gaps in the fighting line. As water bottles, haversacks, and cartridge pouches emptied, hands went up. Almost two thousand Russians surrendered to the 70th Landwehr Brigade. Unger proudly looked on as his middle-aged warriors marched off their prisoners. The Russians on Morgen’s front were also showing signs of wavering. Galloping forward, Morgen grandiloquently informed a cavalry major that he was getting a true cavalryman’s mission. “Do you see those retreating Russians? Follow them!” The orders were worthy of a Murat, but the troops obeying them were saddle-sore peacetime soldiers, Landwehr men and ersatz reservists. The major in command was dubious at the prospects of achieving anything before nightfall. The cavalry boldly charged through one Russian bivouac area, then lost its way in the growing darkness and began stumbling into ambushes.

  At around 6:00 p.m. the infantry took over. With the 41st Division unwilling to move, Scholtz gave its assignment to Morgen. Instad of going east towards Kurken the 3rd Reserve Division was turned southeast towards Orlau. The 5th Reserve Brigade advanced almost without opposition, bivouacking for the night on the ground over which the 59th Infantry had fought in the morning and liberating around two hundred German wounded left behind in the 41st Division’s collapse. But in this sector the Germans had, in the final analysis, pushed their enemy back rather than broken through.60

  The men of the 37th Division had spent most of the forenoon battling bad roads and leg weariness rather than Russians. Staabs had no idea where the enemy was—only vague orders to advance east against what was “probably” no more than a weak force. He took correspondingly few chances. Unlike Morgen, Staabs moved his brigades forward in deployed lines covered by unlimbered guns. Then at 11:20 a.m., a messenger arrived from Morgen stating that the 3rd Reserve Division was heavily engaged and the 37th Division’s line of advance was clear. Staabs suddenly became aware not only that he was missing a major battle, but that the brunt of the action was being borne by reservists. He shook his men into column and started them down the road to Hohenstein at the fastest pace they could sustain—or that their general assumed they could sustain. Men marched open-mouthed in the heat, gasping for air as their tongues swelled and their mouths filled with dust. At every halt men fought for a chance to drink the cloudy water of roadside ditches. Men asked each other, where were the water carts? Where were the rations? The German a
rmy was a citizen army, for all its vaunted iron discipline. As Staabs rode past the columns of the 150th Infantry he was greeted by shouts of “Kohldampf! Kohldampf!” (“We’re starving! We’re starving!”) from the ranks. He was soldier enough to know when to hear nothing.

  The division’s vanguard reached the high ground west of Hohenstein around 3:00 p.m. The 37th Field Artillery Brigade formed a gun line and opened fire on the landscape to its front as the infantry struggled through the heat and dust, to deploy as skirmishers. Joined by two stray batteries from the 70th Landwehr Brigade and a battery of 150-millimeter howitzers, the German guns drew Russian fire from everywhere in the sector. Some infantrymen fell so sound asleep that their snoring seemed to drown out the sound of bursting shrapnel. Those still conscious began digging themselves in with an eagerness foreign to maneuvers. The 150th Infantry’s colonel was inspecting his forward positions when he was greeted by a salvo of 122-millimeter Russian shells. He seized a spade, shoveled like a badger after each series of explosions, and popped into his fast-deepening hole at the whistle of the next incoming rounds. Everyone else was too busy or too frightened to laugh.

  Compared to the Russians, the German artillery’s target acquisition left much to be desired. Within minutes Goltz sent a staff officer to report that the 37th Division was firing on his Landwehr, and would Staabs please desist. Major-General von Staabs was one of the Imperial army’s educated soldiers, with extensive service in the general staff and in the war ministry. He had spent his life preparing for these days, only to see his division repeatedly split up and marched to exhaustion in response to threats that had proved mostly imaginary. Now he bade fair to miss the climactic battle of the campaign. By the time Goltz’s liaison officer reached him, Staabs was on the edge of explosion. The unfortunate captain compounded the problem because he was not wearing the staff officer’s uniform that lent weight to critical messages. Staabs “suggested” that the Landwehr was blocking the advance of his division, then demanded that Goltz move his men out of the way so the 37th could attack.

  After the war Staabs professed not to remember the incident—a memory lapse perhaps assisted by his division’s failure to support the Goltz Division more effectively during the afternoon of August 28. Goltz had originally intended to attack south with the bulk of his force. Instead he found himself facing east as well, feeding companies and battalions into the Kämmerei-Wald to protect his flank against growing Russian pressure from the forward elements of XIII Corps.

  Goltz, a cool head and a solid professional, kept at least his staff calm by cracking jokes, but morale was no substitute for rifles in the fighting line. A Landwehr battery advanced at the gallop to the south end of the Kömmerei-Wald, unlimbered in the open, and blasted the Russians back into the forest. But the gunners, whose experience was seldom less than a decade old, were less successful when it came to hitting targets they could not see. Fighting from tree to tree, the Landwehr infantry kept contact by singing and shouting to each other. Time and again the familiar Hamburg rallying cry, “Hummel, Hummel,” and the equally familiar obscene response, served as password and countersign for men blinded by smoke and sweat. But the Germans steadily lost ground to their younger and fitter adversaries. When Goltz rode forward to rally his men, his personal staff was scattered to the points of the compass by a sudden Russian charge. Unlike their comrades of the active reserve, the Landwehr had no machine guns to provide close fire support. They fell back, leaving not only the Kömmerei-Wald but the village of Mörken in the hands of XIII Corps. Goltz’s division was cut in half, its companies and battalions scattered almost at random across the sector, when darkness ended the fighting.61

  Goltz’s downcast staff officers settled for the night with the sense of having taken a beating. Ludendorff, with the advantage of hindsight, could afford to be more generous. The Landwehr had performed a mission prewar planners regarded as appropriate only for active troops or first-line reservists. They held off an army corps and barred its road to the south. Yet a fresh Russian brigade might have given Goltz’s division, and by extension the whole German position in that sector, much more than a sense of guilt. As things stood on the night of August 28, the 2nd Army’s center had not broken. Its flanks had been shaken. It had been pushed back. But disaster was to overtake it only on the next day, and only through the efforts of troops other than those on its immediate front.

  9

  The Province of Victory

  I

  At 1:20 a.m. on August 28, one of Mackensen’s staff officers telephoned army headquarters to report the Russian VI Corps in full retreat. Over two thousand prisoners and two complete batteries of artillery were in German hands. Fifty more Russian guns were reported bogged down and abandoned. Mackensen hoped this information would convince Hindenburg and Ludendorff to allow XVII Corps to continue its pursuit south instead of marching on Allenstein. “I do not believe it possible,” he declared, “that we will go still further back tomorrow.” But this ambiguous, not to say incoherent, statement was as far as he went in questioning what he believed were his orders.

  Army headquarters responded with no more than a question mark in the margin of the message’s written version. The lateness of the hour probably had as much to do with the confusion as did Mackensen’s diffidence. The results were the same. Mackensen ordered his divisions to turn towards Allenstein. Even the detachments which had gone south ahead of the main body were called back—all except for one advancing on Ortelsburg, as directly prescribed by orders.1

  Eighth Army command had insisted that I Reserve Corps attack Allenstein as soon as possible on August 28—at least, no later than noon. Below, however, put his own gloss on the requirement. Over the protests of the army liaison officer Below decided, as he had done on the 26th, to wait for Mackensen and give his own men an extra bit of rest. The I Reserve Corps left its bivouac areas only around 10:00 a.m., its divisions one behind the other on a single road. This meant they were not likely to reach Allenstein much before 2:00 p.m. The reservists were edgy; an unfortunate Russian pilot overflying their line of march attracted the attention of what seemed to be every rifle in the corps. At 10:30 a.m., however, a cavalry patrol reported that Allenstein was only lightly held. From that Below concluded that the Russians had gone south and decided to follow them, hoping to overtake them from the rear.

  Hindenburg and Ludendorff had the same idea. Responding to Kluyev’s intercepted radio message stating his intent to be in Grieslienen around noon, 8th Army at 9:45 a.m. ordered Below to pursue the Russians by the shortest possible route “at all costs.” This time Ludendorff took no chances. A phone call sent a plane from Air Detachment 16 northeast. Its crew, guiding on the spiked helmets, tossed out copies of the new order over the marching columns. Instead of waiting on the chain of command, the commander of Below’s leading division informed the corps commander of the change in orders and promptly turned his men south. By that time, 11:30 a.m., Below had received the orders himself, by both aircraft and phone. “Just like a war game” he commented as he and his staff determined the new lines of march.2

  One element of a successful war game was missing: completeness. The revised orders made no reference to XVII Corps. Hindenburg believed only part of the corps was with Below. His staff was sure, for reasons unknown, that all but “elements” of Mackensen’s men were on the march south and that in any case Below would promptly inform Mackensen of the new situation.3 Both assumptions were unfounded. Mackensen remained ignorant; XVII Corps remained on the way to Allenstein. Not until noon did Below communicate with Mackensen, and then it was only to suggest that, in view of the “changed situation,” XVII Corps march south once more to cut the Russians’ escape routes eastward.

  Mackensen, whose temper was proverbial, flew into a rage. Against his better judgment he had abandoned the pursuit of a beaten enemy—at Below’s urging. Now he was being asked by the same man to reverse his direction again. Mackensen was tired of marching hither and thither on the reco
mmendations of the commander of a mere reserve corps, a man his junior in years, seniority, and influence. He was determined to fight somebody that day, and by this time he was not overly concerned about who it was. The nearest target seemed to be somewhere around Allenstein. Senior officer Mackensen ordered Below to clear the main road. Then, as Below’s troops and wagons slowly made way, Mackensen had second thoughts. Halting his corps for a brief rest, he decided to send Captain Bartenwerfer of his staff by airplane to army headquarters to inform them of his decision and to request specific orders.

  Meanwhile, at 2:00 p.m. 8th Army finally established phone contact with the liaison officer attached to I Reserve Corps. Exactly what he reported remains uncertain. After the conversation his superiors definitely remained unaware that XVII Corps was not moving south as expected. They did, however, know that the Russians had left Allenstein. And a crew from the army’s reconnaissance flight, Air Detachment 16, had just returned with a report that the Russian VI Corps had retreated so far out of the battle zone that it no longer posed an immediate threat to Mackensen. A sudden euphoria gripped the army staff. It seemed possible once more to use XVII Corps as the northern arm of an operational pincers, linking up with François’s advance from the south to cut off any Russians that excaped XX Corps and its attached troops. Technology underwrote the dream at 2:35 p.m., when the army signallers opened a telephone connection with Mackensen’s headquarters. The bemused commander of XVII Corps was promptly ordered to advance south with every man he could muster, pursing the Russians “to the last breath.”4

  About this time Bartenwerfer landed at 8th Army headquarters. Whether he arrived before or after the conversation with Mackensen is uncertain. Hoffmann says he came before XVII Corps had been contacted. Mackensen and the official history disagree. In any case, Bartenwerfer brought the first detailed news of the situation in the north—and he received “a correspondingly cool reception.” The army staff saw Mackensen’s ill-tempered and ill-judged orders for Below to clear the Allenstein road as at the least risking a monumental traffic jam that would render both corps useless. Bartenwerfer was ordered to fly back immediately and see that Mackensen understood and carried out his new mission.5