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

by Dennis Showalter

  The Russian center had fought well enough to deserve a better fate. Martos, responding to Samsonov’s last orders, spent the night of August 28th/29th trying to reach a Neidenburg that he did not know was in German hands. He learned the truth at dawn, but spent the rest of the day dodging enemy patrols and never regained contact with any of his headquarters. Deprived of central control, the units of XV Corps and the 2nd Division retreated south and east, fighting the previously described series of stubborn but uncoordinated rear-guard actions against I Corps and the 41st Division. By nightfall the bulk of the troops still under command were in the woods north of Muschaken, their surviving officers trying to decide what to do next.

  As for XIII Corps, its headquarters reached Kurken at noon on the 29th with what remained of its infantry straggling along behind. At 2:00 p.m. Kluyev’s chief of staff returned from Orlau with new orders from Samsonov. Issued at 11:00 a.m., they provided for a “phased withdrawal.” XV Corps and the 2nd Division would cover XIII Corps’s march to Muschaken; Kluyev would in turn cover the retreat of the latter units across the frontier.

  As a staff exercise these orders deserved a failing grade for passing the fighting elements of one corps across the lines of communication of another. But they had been issued almost in the face of the enemy. Kluyev believed—again—that 2nd Army headquarters must know what it was doing. He not only started his men south; for the second consecutive day he ordered a night march. This time the route lay through even denser woods whose few secondary roads were blocked beyond immediate remedy by the trains of XV Corps. Kluyev, his way south cut off, turned his column east.46 At Kaltenborn it was fired on by German pickets—the men of the 5th Hussars.

  The hussars, two and a half squadrons of them, had a paper strength of over 350. Straggling detachments and lame horses had reduced the actual number of men available for the firing line to about seventy. The troopers were accompanied by a field battery, but guns were more a source of weakness than of strength if they could not be properly supported. Too few in numbers to man a perimeter defense, the Germans instead established outposts on the main roads through the village. German cavalrymen were not as completely helpless afoot as their French counterparts, but they had no machine guns, no entrenching tools, and no bayonets. Regulations allowed them only forty rounds per man instead of the 150 carried by the infantry. That ammunition fast ran out as Russian detachments mounted probing attacks on the hussars’ positions. Out of touch with higher headquarters, with no support in sight, the troopers faced a choice: either write their regiment’s name in the history books with what was likely to be a heroic last stand, or mount, ride out, and live for later fights at better odds. Their commander wasted little time deciding on discretion as valor’s better part. Hussars, after all, were supposed to be light cavalry! Leaving a dozen casualties behind them, the 5th evacuated Kaltenborn shortly before 6:00 a.m.—to the scarcely muted curses of their comrades from the artillery, forced to abandon to the Russians two guns whose crews fought to the last round before being overrun.47

  Elsewhere in the woods, just outside of Kannwiesen, a battalion of the 35th Division’s 21st Infantry provided a neat reverse lesson in tactical ambushes. The battalion had spent an uneasy night north of the village, its commander unwilling to involve his bone-tired men in a house-to-house fight that might well attract more Russian attention than he could handle. In his neglected prewar classic, The Defence of Duffer’s Drift, British author Sir Ernest Swinton had argued that modern firepower offered infantry better ways of controlling a position than physically occupying it. Now Captain Tamms had a chance to prove the point. His four rifle companies counted only half their assigned strength, but were supported by two platoons of the regimental machine gun company. As dawn broke he saw long columns of Russian wagons moving through Kannwiesen on their way east. Within minutes four German machine guns and five hundred rifles turned the village streets into an impassable tangle of wrecked wagons and screaming horses. With every exit under fire, the Russian escort was unable to mount anything like a coordinated counterattack. A thousand of them surrendered on the spot. Eight hundred more fled the scene to fall into the hands of another battalion of the 21st, hurrying to the aid of its presumably desperate sister formation.48

  The Russian main body, such as it was by then, turned south again, faute de mieux. The XIII Corps by this time had covered almost seventy kilometers through thick woods in forty hours, without either rations for the men or fodder for the horses. Water bottles were empty. Most of the men were out of ammunition. Many had abandoned their packs and “lost” their rifles. As the night waned the Russians, all order lost, straggled south towards no particular destination. As for Samsonov, after leaving XV Corps headquarters on the afternoon of the 28th the army commander went to Orlau, where he briefly met, as noted, the chief of staff of XIII Corps. He then decided to ride to Yanov, where the rear echelon of his headquarters was supposed to have gone, but found the road blocked by a mass of carts, wagons, and ambulances. He turned toward Willenburg hoping to contact his VI Corps, only to find the town in German hands. Any lingering hopes of restoring the situation by command decisions had long since vanished. Samsonov ordered his Cossack escort to save themselves while he and his staff tried to continue on foot. Through the night of the 29th/30th the officers blundered through the woods north of the Neidenburg-Willenberg highway. Weight and asthma slowed the general’s movements and further lamed his spirit. Again and again Samsonov repeated that the disgrace was more than he could bear: “The Emperor trusted me.” Finally he slipped aside in the dark. Minutes later a single pistol shot cracked out of the underbrush. Samsonov would never be called upon to explain the fate of his army.49

  At 2:40 a.m. on August 30, 8th Army headquarters received further information about Rennenkampf’s movements. According to these reports Zhilinski’s injunction to move south did not seem to have taken effect. Instead the mass of the 1st Army was turning on Königsberg. Even its IV Corps, according to another intercepted radio dispatch, was apparently under orders to attack the Baltic fortress. Should the new information prove correct, the only threat from the north on August 30 would come from Rennenkampf’s cavalry, and this was no threat at all.50

  The staff felt correspondingly comfortable in turning to matters of interior administration. Hindenburg notified his corps commanders that since his appointment his orders had been frequently protested, ignored, or thwarted—“naturally with the best intentions.” Because things had worked out satisfactorily did not mean that such insubordinate behavior was to be institutionalized. A word to the wise should be sufficient to avert sterner measures.

  Communications and liaison were also major subjects of Hindenburg’s concern. German troops had regularly fired on each other by mistake, and had been shelled by their own artillery. Now Hindenburg ordered the infantry to sew white patches on their knapsacks or the backs of their tunics, and instructed them to mark their forward positions by brightly colored cloths or boards. He accompanied these suggestions with the common-sense reminder that German soldiers wore helmets while Russians wore flat peaked caps—a difference that should assist the least-experienced artillery observer. The army commander’s recommendation that the artillery should not allow an excessive distance to develop between its batteries and the infantry they were supporting showed slightly less appreciation of the problems of fire control in 1914. Guns pushed too far forward were frequently guns lost to enemy artillery. Nor did the forests in which so much of 8th Army’s fighting took place give many suitable sites for battery positions—especially for the flat-trajectory cannon which still made up over three-fourths of the German field artillery.

  Temporary panics might be difficult to avoid in modern war, but their effects could be limited by taking sensible precautions. Supply columns should be kept outside of the battle area. Soldiers spreading rumors of defeat were to be arrested and court-martialed. Men of the telephone detachments were not to discuss the general situation without di
rect orders from a superior. Hindenburg also reminded corps commanders that they were responsible for maintaining contact with, and thereby control over, their subordinates. Influenced by his memories of events at Scholtz’s headquarters on August 27 and 28, he specifically warned against depending on the telephone to the exclusion of the old-fashioned dispatch rider. Some information was preferable to none at all.51

  III

  Apparently all that remained was mopping up. Nevertheless, for all of Samsonov’s despair and Ludendorff’s confidence, the fighting was far from over. The Russians might no longer be able to win the battle. It was still possible for them to avoid losing it, either directly, by breaking through the thin German cordon and breaking out the survivors of Samsonov’s center, or indirectly, by intimidating and confusing a tautstretched opponent into making mistakes in deployment or concentration. Neither possibility should be dismissed out of hand. German concerns for what their enemy might do had been amply evidenced since the beginning of the campaign. As for a breakthrough/breakout, the Russian soldier has time and again demonstrated his capacity to rise to a desperate occasion. What would be remembered of Stalingrad had the beleaguered 6th Army’s command been willing to lunge towards Manstein’s relief columns—which were no more formidable relative to their opposition than the Russian troops available outside the German cordon.

  In particular, François remained concerned for his southern exposure. Ever since his corps had turned away from Soldau he had been expecting a Russian counterattack from that direction. After Artamonov’s relief on August 29, General Sirelius of the 3rd Guard Division had assumed tactical command in the Soldau-Mlawa sector. His orders were to concentrate all available forces and attack Neidenburg immediately to relieve the 2nd Army’s center. Rather than lose time collecting I Corps, he started his own division towards the objective, and throughout August 29 François received enough reports of the Russian advance to make him uneasy.52

  The commander of I Corps was almost more disturbed by 8th Army’s optimistic orders. They entirely ruled out the possibility of a Russian advance in force from the south. François was supposed to move his whole force north toward Jedwabno, both to complete the circle around the 2nd Army and for possible eventual use against Rennenkampf. François says in his memoirs that it was “lucky” that this document reached him too late to affect the corps orders for the 30th. In reality, it arrived in good time. François, once again going his own way, simply decided he needed more information before taking the risk of leaving his rear wide open.53

  In this situation, the corps commander turned to his airmen. He was sufficiently assertive and sufficiently unconventional to feel more affinity for the lieutenants of Air Detachment 14 than was perhaps to be expected from one of his rank and responsibilities. A reconnaissance flight made with the last light of August 29 had reported a Russian brigade at Mlawa, and a regiment only fifteen kilometers from Neidenburg. François ordered his airmen to resume patrols at daybreak. At 6:00 a.m. on the 30th an air crew spotted a Russian column on the road from Mlawa to Neidenburg. The pilot tried to land at corps headquarters, but saw no suitably open ground. Rather than risk a crash the two officers agreed to return to their airfield, then drive to Neidenburg and deliver their information in person. They reached the town shortly after 8:30 a.m.

  François had spent an anxious night. In an effort to cheer himself up he was inspecting the captured guns and wagons in the marketplace when at 9:15 a.m. another aircraft circled low and dropped another message. Lieutenants Hesse and Körner reported a Russian column of all arms advancing on Neidenburg from Mlawa—about a corps in strength on the basis of the road space it occupied. This confirmed the earlier sighting. Even worse, when observed at 9:10 a.m. the Russian vanguard had been only six kilometers south of Neidenburg itself.54

  The two reports were an unpleasant shock. François had been expecting a Russian counterattack, but was amazed that such a strong force had come so close to his positions unobserved. The enemy was indeed too close for written orders. François sent an officer by auto to summon Major Schlimm, commanding the Neidenburg garrison. Another of I Corps’s staff cars went to the 2nd Division with orders for Falk to turn his men about, advance south, and attack the Russian left. Initially François refused to disturb the 1st Division along the high road. In retrospect, he declared he was never anything but confident that I Corps could check this new attack without abandoning the encirclement. In reality, by the time Conta’s strung-out formations could be concentrated, the fighting was likely to be over one way or another.

  Just as François finished issuing his orders, Schlimm reported to the marketplace. The two batteries originally assigned to his force had left during the night. But even without artillery, Schlimm proposed to make a stand with his two infantry battalions along a low range of hills south of the town. François ordered the major to hold at all costs—or at least long enough to force the Russians to deploy from line of march into fighting formation. His promise of immediate reinforcements rang slightly hollow to the men on the spot, particularly when corps headquarters drove out of town as the first Russian shells began falling on the marketplace.

  As Schlimm’s men marched south, François halted at the neighboring village of Gregersdorf. His first act was to find a phone and inform both Falk and 8th Army headquarters of the new situation in more detail.55 His superiors were taken by surprise. At 9:00 a.m. army command had once more boasted by telephone to OHL of complete success, with the prospect of an even larger bag of prisoners than originally expected.56 An hour later it learned of Lieutenant Hesse’s sighting of Russians outside Neidenburg. And bad news kept coming. An aircraft of Air Detachment 16 returned from a patrol to report Russians—at least a division of them—advancing on Ortelsburg in Mackensen’s sector.57 Given the time the report took to reach army headquarters, the Russians could easily have overrun Ortelsburg and opened an escape route for Kluyev and Martos before Hindenburg and Ludendorff knew of their presence.

  Air reconnaissance in 1914 resembled ULTRA in 1942. It simultaneously generated skepticism and was credited with magical accuracy. Both attitudes could and did exist not only side by side, but in the same officers. To date 8th Army’s airmen had never been proved wrong enough to be summarily dismissed. Instead of ordering a second mission to confirm the advance on Ortelsburg, 8th Army headquarters combined the single report with the information received from François, and concluded that the Russians were advancing in force from the east and the south in order to break the German ring around the 2nd Army. It was what they would have attempted had the situations been reversed.

  In focussing its attention on Rennenkampf, the 8th Army staff had neglected 2nd Army’s remaining fighting power. But how best to cope with a threat that seemed all the greater for being unexpected? The I Corps was extended along a day’s march worth of roads from Neidenburg to Willenberg. The XVII Corps was even more widely scattered, its men even more exhausted. Army headquarters saw the attack on Neidenburg as the most immediately dangerous. The concentration against Rennenkampf, so carefully developed the night before, was tossed aside as waste paper. Instead Grünert, the coolest head among the junior staff officers, was sent north to deliver orders for Unger’s troops and the Goltz Division to march south and support François. Scholtz was ordered to turn the 41st Division, which had been moving northeast as originally ordered, southward once more, with the 3rd Reserve Division following it. The 37th Division was ordered east to reinforce XVII Corps.

  It was noon by the time the new instructions were on their way to 8th Army’s subordinate commands. In the interval, the phone line to I Corps had been cut by Russian artillery fire. François compensated by sending the airmen who first saw the Russians to Osterode by car, where they reported personally to Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Their intelligence was by then over six hours old. No further information about the Russian advance on Ortelsburg had reached Osterode. Army headquarters was still almost completely in the dark.58

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p; As for the commanders on the spot, by noon François had assembled only a half-dozen battalions on the high ground north of Neidenburg. This force, however, was supported by no fewer than sixteen artillery batteries, including seven of heavy howitzers, drawn from everywhere in the corps sector. With that mass of guns behind them, François was confident his infantry could hold its position against anything up to an army corps. But as the day passed the Russians failed to appear. Major Schlimm’s two battalions, reinforced by odd lots of cyclists and gunners, were still—somehow—holding on south of Neidenburg.

  Defeat had made their enemy cautious. Long-range artillery fire from François’s new positions slowed the attack even more. By 3:45 p.m. the fighting line was three kilometers outside the town. Schlimm’s infantry put up a resistance determined enough to deter the Russians from using their superior numbers in one quick, overwhelming rush. Instead they sought a way around, and made no haste in the process. Not until 6:00 p.m. did Schlimm report to François that he was outflanked and in danger of being overrun. Shortly afterwards all communications with him were lost. His small force continued, however, to delay the Russians by making a fighting withdrawal through Neidenburg. Not until 9:00 p.m. did elements of the 3rd Guard Division occupy and secure the town. Schlimm’s valiant defense had bought François most of a day.59

  The bulk of I Corps spent that day rounding up Russian prisoners—a process more easily described than accomplished. Through the night of August 29/30, bursts of rifle and machine gun fire, the screams of terrified horses, and the uglier sounds of men dying had echoed everywhere along the Neidenburg-Willenberg road. In the midst of disaster the Russian artillery lived up to a tradition dating back to Peter the Great. Batteries, sections, and individual crews fought it out to the muzzle until shot to pieces by German guns or overrun by German infantry. In one sector dawn found a silent Russian battery, its cannoneers shot or bayoneted to a man, with fifty German bodies heaped in front of the guns as grim tokens of the last rounds.