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

by Dennis Showalter

  Apart from its effect on Russia, a Central Powers victory in the eastern theater might deter Italy from entering the war. Nevertheless, any belief Falkenhayn might have had in the effectiveness of wide-ranging strategic penetrations on the Russian front had been destroyed by the January offensives. The new operation must remain limited. Not only was there no time for grand combinations. Were German aid too generous Austria might continue her policy of diplomatic intransigence, blackmailing Germany at will by threatening to collapse. On the other hand, with too little German support the Austrian front might disappear entirely. The best compromise seemed to be direct intervention: inserting German troops into the Austrian sector, where their presence would be immediately felt, and where relatively small forces might achieve dispro-portinate results. As much to the point, direct intervention would clip Ludendorff’s claws. The new sector would be, at least on paper, under Austrian command, not German.45

  Falkenhayn scraped up eight divisions. Most of them had been organized when existing divisions were reduced from four to three regiments. Falkenhayn’s plans accepted the need for a breakthrough, and these troops were as well qualified for the mission as any in Germany’s order of battle. Unlike their predecessors, the new formations were composed of case-hardened combat veterans seasoned in the trench warfare of the western front. Their commander too was, at least in Falkenhayn’s mind, the right man for the job. August von Mackensen made no secret of his belief that breakthrough battles could be won with enough resources and a capable commander. He had shown since Gumbinnen an aggressive willingness to accept casualties in pursuit of an objective. And he was chafing under Ludendorff’s authority. Giving this man an independent opportunity might well diminish Ludendorff’s luster by creating a rival. As an insurance policy Falkenhayn assigned as Mackensen’s chief of staff one of the army’s most brilliant young officers. Hans von Seeckt had gone to war as chief of staff of III Brandenburg Corps, and established his reputation as a planner in the positional warfare of autumn, 1914. The combination seemed both promising in itself and susceptible of control from Berlin.46

  Beginning on May 2, 1915, Mackensen’s troops and guns, organized as XI German Army, tore the Russian front wide open on a forty-kilometer sector between the Galician towns of Gorlice and Tarnow. By the third week of June a quarter-million prisoners crowded Mackensen’s cages. Hundreds of thousands more were dead, in hospital, or missing. The Russian army’s disposable reserves of ammunition and material were virtually exhausted, its cadres of regular officers and NCOs virtually destroyed.

  The relative contributions to this outcome of German material superiority and tactical skill on one hand, Russian “misfortune and mismanagement” on the other, remain subjects of controversy. Ludendorff insisted almost automatically that with a few more troops on the ground and a broader strategic vision on the part of OHL, the Russian army could have been entirely destroyed and the war in the east ended. Falkenhayn and his supporters pointed to grand-strategic restraints: the Franco-British spring offensive against an undermanned western front; Italy’s declaration of war on May 23, and its attack on Austria’s virtually undefended southern frontier; and the British assault on Gallipoli. Underlying these operational factors, however, was Falkenhayn’s belief that Gorlice-Tarnow could be the first, military step to a negotiated peace with Russia.47

  This was by no means an isolated position. Writing in 1915, Max Weber warned that for all the rhetoric about the dangers posed by England, Russia was the only power that, once victorious, could threaten not only Germany’s political independence but her very existence as a nation. Above all the western Slavic peoples must somehow be convinced that escaping Russia’s clutches did not mean violation by Germany. An exaggerated policy of annexation would mean no more than German elbows in everyone else’s ribs.48

  Bethmann-Hollweg developed a similar attitude during 1915. His initial proposals to Russia in the summer and early fall of that year were relatively moderate, involving frontier rectifications rather than the drastic changes of sovereignty proposed by the annexationists. They fell on deaf ears. The Russian foreign office, and Tsar Nicholas himself, were not indifferent to the German overtures. But since August Russian war aims, like those of the other belligerents, had grown in proportion to the demands and sacrifices made of the system. Few men in positions of power anywhere in Europe believed their people could withstand the stresses of a long war without corresponding gains. The belligerents depended heavily on hopes and promises. More and more of the empire’s vocal pressure groups advanced specific aims and goals, political, cultural, or economic. Sazonov still hoped for a network of Slavic client states in central Europe—including an independent Bohemia, whose creation meant the end of the Habsburg Empire. In the spring of 1915 the British offered to fulfill a dream of centuries: Constantinople. The western allies also guaranteed Russia a share, unspecified but large, of the reparations to be exacted from Germany at war’s end. A government confident of its own strength might make peace in defiance of these factors. Russia, which had entered the war largely from a sense of its own weakness, was in no position to take such a perceived risk.49

  “Russia remains the puzzle,” the German chancellor wrote to Progressive Reichstag deputy Conrad Haussman. Reports on her prospective behavior were “uncertain, changing, and contradictory.” Bethmann, like Falkenhayn, was a product of that belief in Russia’s strength and military potential, which had so influenced Germany’s strategy and diplomacy before 1914. The mind-sets that expected Cossacks in Hohenfinow and accepted the impossibility of conquering, as opposed to defeating, Russia in a two-front war found no difficulty in assuming a level of strength and coherence in Russia’s diplomatic decision making that did not exist—at least not in the context of the combination of threats and pressures Germany produced in 1915.50

  Michael Geyer puts the Bethmann-Falkenhayn strategy in the context of modern deterrence theory: balancing limited interests against the risks of general catastrophe.51 Experience suggests, however, that deterrence is successful not so much from actual positions of strength as from perceptions of strength, whether equivalency or sufficiency.52 By mid-1915, what remained of Tsar Nicholas’s government resembled nothing so much as a novice gambler seeking to recoup an initial loss by the process of doubling the stakes. In such a context the game assumes a life of its own, independent of any initial wagers. As long as her allies would back Russia’s bets, even if only with promises, she was likely to remain at the table. Even the first revolutionary government proposed to continue the war.

  Does that in turn suggest the validity of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff strategy, of a revived and expanded Ostaufmarsch? The answer, demanding an excursion into the world of might-have-been, involves several levels of consideration. On the tactical/operational level, it remains open to speculation whether the armed forces of any great power could have been in fact crushed by the balances of firepower and mobility technically possible between 1914 and 1918. Time and again Russian armies proved able to evade the ultimate consequences of defeat by withdrawing faster than their enemies could pursue them.

  Ludendorff throughout his career found it difficult to grasp this point—not least because his early successes, at Liège and Tannenberg, were ultimately tactical. The concept behind his planning for the March offensives of 1918, that victory in the field would generate strategic success, was the product of four years’ belief that he never had been given quite enough resources to achieve the triumph glimmering over the horizon.53 In this sense, for all his native ability and general staff training, Ludendorff never rose beyond the level of an infantry colonel.

  Nor must Falkenhayn’s concern for the western front be entirely dismissed. The allied offensives of 1915–16 bled, if they did not cripple, a German army already focussed on that theater. A reallocating of force for the benefit of the east generated corresponding risks, particularly given the complex structure of the German state. A Napoleon, a Stalin, even a Churchill or a Roosevelt, co
uld take strategic risks impossible for a Bethmann or a Falkenhayn.

  And this in turn suggests Germany’s fundamental failure in grand strategy. The German Empire had made no preparations for winning the war, as opposed to fighting it. Both Bethmann and Falkenhayn were sharply critical of what they regarded as Pan-German fantasies. They were also constrained to recognize the increasing domestic problems in concluding peace with Russia on the basis of a status quo ante helium. Austria’s weaknesses, demonstrated all too clearly in the first nine months of war, suggested to a broad spectrum of German opinion that Habsburg survival depended on tight German control: not merely a customs union but sweeping Germanization, at least in Cisleithania. This would be accompanied by massive territorial gains for the Dual Alliance—Russian Poland and the Baltic states at a minimum. In this way the Slavic threat would be forever banished and German predominance at the heart of the continent secured.54

  Germany’s diplomats spoke of “freeing Europe from Russian pressure,” and of “forming several buffer states” between Russia and her western neighbors.55 Exactly how this was to be done, no one was quite certain. From the war’s beginning the German foreign office was submerged in memoranda from people no one had ever heard of, guaranteeing revolts next week if only the Reich would pay the bills. The German embassy in Stockholm was charged with preparing an uprising in Finland. It replied that to make much impression on the Finns, the German navy must operate extensively in the eastern Baltic.56 The German consul in Lemberg reported that Ukranian nationalists were ready to set south Russia ablaze. All they needed was Germany’s moral and financial support.57

  In theory the proposals were attractive, particularly in the first heady days of war. In practice they encountered snags. There were no ships available to inspire a Finnish rebellion. The German ambassador to Vienna supported the idea of a Ukranian insurrection. The only problem was that Germany had no direct contacts in that area. Any German initiatives were likely to generate friction with Austria, and the Habsburg government had its own ideas on the matter. The Ukraine, declared Berchtold, was in no way ready for autonomy.58 Revolution would create only anarchy. As for any Russian territory that might come under direct allied occupation, the Austrians proposed that they take “temporary” responsibility. After all, they had a large number of Polish and Ruthenian officials, and centuries of experience in dealing with touchy nationalities. “Naturally,” Germany could claim as much of White Russia and Russian Poland as it wished, but the issue was best settled after the fighting stopped.59

  The increasing differences of opinion between the allies over what should ultimately be done with Eastern Europe precluded developing a coherent policy of what to do next month. Senior officials of the Prussian civil administration debated the merits of sending food across the prewar frontier to Russians who had worked in the Silesian mines until August. Generals said they “had no objections” to letting “Russian citizens of Polish nationality” continue to mine coal in Germany.60 It was all a far cry from both the subsequent compulsory mobilizations of labor in France and Belgium, and the cloud-castle dreams of German empires in the east. But precisely that lack of planning made the latter events possible—in the way that hot air ultimately fills a balloon.

  The kinds of victories foreseen by German military and civil planners before 1914 demanded an enemy government not only willing to conclude peace, but able to enforce it as well. Lacking that, the Germans in any theater were all too likely to conquer themselves to destruction, dispersing their forces as they occupied and controlled Russian territory. The possibilities of organizing subjected territory to support a war of attrition remained undeveloped by 1918—not least because the Second Reich was not the Third. The general staff’s encouragement of revolution in Russia, culminating in the famous “trainload of plague germs,” reflected three years of failure to secure any kind of peace in the east, whether by victory or negotiation.

  Epilogue

  From 1914 to 1918 Tannenberg retained some links to diplomatic and military realities. Thereafter it moved increasingly into the realms of myth. This process reflected decision as well as accident. The Weimar Republic needed heroes; its critics required focal points for nostalgia. Tannenberg was one of the few points of common agreement. Most of the “battles” of 1914–18 had lasted for months, their phases distinguished only by official, artificially determined dates. Tannenberg was the only battle of World War I that could be directly compared with the great victories of history. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end, coming over a relatively short span of time. It was an undisputable victory, the only one of its kind Germany could show for four years of war.

  Tannenberg as a rallying point had more practical political aspects as well. It had been won against a safe enemy—the vanished tsarist empire. Its glorification could hardly damage relations with a Soviet Russia that was already doing everything possible to separate itself from its history. Domestically the Versailles Treaty, by creating the Polish Corridor to the Baltic Sea, severed East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The Weimar Republic and the government of Prussia made corresponding efforts to reassure the inhabitants of that province that isolation did not mean abandonment. The East Prussians took pains to stress the continued importance of their roles as guardians of the Reich’s eastern border. Tannenberg became symbolic, particularly for the DNVP and the other nationalist groups that dominated postwar East Prussian politics. When Hindenburg, still in retirement, visited the province in 1922, the trip became a tour through the memories of 1914.

  The Tannenberg mythology was further enhanced when Hindenburg ran for the presidency of the Weimar Republic in 1925. Whatever his feelings about the new order, his role as a symbol of German grandeur was a key feature of his campaign. The marshal was identified, not with 1915’s nameless victories in the middle of Russia, not with 1917’s stalemate in the west, or 1918’s collapse, but with the glory days of 1914—with Tannenberg.1

  Such a victory needed a fitting monument. Germany’s veterans’ associations took the lead in raising funds and mobilizing support for a memorial, which they described as a symbol of defiance, an assertion of Germany’s continued presence in the east. Logically, and perhaps unfortunately, the Social Democrats and the trade unions refused to become involved in the project despite the presence on the battlefield of so many men from Social Democratic strongholds. In contrast to 1914, Tannenberg was left to the nationalists.

  The design of the memorial itself was impressive. The architects, Johannes and Walter Krüger, took Stonehenge as their model. They envisaged not a monument to be observed from outside, but an enclosed space, an assembly area where rites could be performed. This owed something to ancient Nordic imagery. It also reflected the fact that the numbers involved in national celebrations were growing. The crowds to be expected on great occasions defied contemporary techniques of amplification; too many people at a traditional monument could neither hear nor see.

  The Krügers therefore blended myth and acoustics. Eight large towers, placed in a circle large enough to contain 100,000 people, were linked by heavy walls. Each tower had a specific function. One was a youth hostel, one housed battle flags, a third was a chapel, and so on. Together they defined what George L. Mosse calls a “sacred space,” with the participants at the center of the festival rather than looking upward and forward at a ritual performer.2 This significant departure in German national monuments would be replicated time and again during the Third Reich.

  There were simpler, homelier memorials as well. Stones and plaques marked individual sites of the battle. Nor were the graves of the fallen collected, as in the west, into huge plots suggesting anonymous mass sacrifice. The region was dotted with little military cemeteries, fenced in birch and carefully tended. Even after the memorial’s erection these remained places of pilgrimage. School children from all over the Reich came by train on reduced fare excursions, back-packing from Allenstein or Neidenburg to the villages mentioned in their guidebooks, placing
flowers on the graves, completing the trip by standing open-mouthed within the memorial to East Prussia’s German identity.3

  Among Tannenberg’s principal figures, Ludendorff’s postwar career is only slightly less familiar than Hindenburg’s. An open foe of the Weimar Republic, he became a corresponding focal point of nationalist and Right-radical elements. His involvement in the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 was followed by his selection in 1924 as head of the Nazi delegation in the Reichstag. For a time Hitler even considered himself the “drummer” of Ludendorff or someone like him. But the strain of years of war service combined with the influence of his second wife to lead Ludendorff down the path of crackpot religious and political activity. As Hitler moved closer to power, Ludendorff withdrew even further into a shadow world. Alienated from Hindenburg, and from most of his wartime comrades, he emerged in 1934 to warn his old commander that in appointing Hitler chancellor he had delivered Germany to “one of the greatest demagogues of all time.”4