At this point-August 25th, the same day on which the British fell back from Mons and Kluck resumed his march toward Paris-there occurred one of those small, strange events that sometimes alter the fates of nations. This one was weirdly like what had happened, in the American Civil War, the 1st time
invaded the north; a copy of Lee's orders was found in a Maryland road wrapped around a packet of cigars. The discovery led directly to a stinging Confederate defeat and the end of Lee's offensive. The East Prussian counterpart to this incident was the discovery, on the body of a Russian officer killed in a skirmish, of the plans for both Russian Armies. It seemed too good to be true, but the plans' authenticity was soon corroborated by uncoded Russian radio message intercepted by the Germans.
The intelligence that the Germans now had in their hands indicated that Samsonov intended to continue moving westward, which would increase the distance between the two Russian armies unless Rennenkampf moved too. What the Germans didn't know was that Samsonov was being drawn forward by a glimpse that his troops had caught of the backward movement of a German infantry corps. This move had been nothing more than a minor tactical adjustment; the commander of the corps was shifting to a ridge stronger than his original position. But Samsonov leaped to the conclusion that the Germans were in retreat. He intended to press forward, keep the Germans moving, try to overrun them. A radio message sent from his headquarters, when intercepted, told the Germans exactly what direction he intended to take and what timetable he intended to follow. It stated also, not surprisingly, that he wanted Rennenkampf to come forward to join him.
Rennenkampf's messages indicated that he had other things in mind. He didn't know what happened to the German force that had attacked him at Gumbinnen, and so, like Rennenkampf, he guessed. His guess was that the Germans had decided to withdraw to the north, toward or even into the coastal fortress of Konigsberg(kingstown, the principal city of East Prussia and where the rulers of Prussia have always been crowned). Focusing his attention in that direction, he could see no need to move toward Samsonov; he didn't suspect that the main German force might be between them. If he laid siege to Konigsberg and bottled up the 8th Army inside it, all the rest of East Prussia would be undefended. He was in no hurry, however, because there was no way of being sure how far the Germans had moved. He had no way of knowing(but might have guessed, the reasons being so obvious) that allowing himself to be trapped inside Konigsberg was the one thing Moltke had ordered Prittwitz not to do.
For the Germans, the situation really did seem too good to be true. By continuing to move forward alone, Samsonov was practically inviting the Germans to lay a trap. By declining to come forward, Rennenkampf was making certain that his army would be unable to rescue Samsonov from that trap.
Together they were eliminating the need for the Germans to proceed cautiously. They were freeing the Germans to throw everything into their attack on Samsonov.
Hoffmann had received the Russian messages after his initial meeting with Ludendorff, who had departed by car with Hindedburg. He showed them to the 8th Army's quartermaster general,
offering them as confirmation that the entire 8th Army could safely be sent against Samsonov. Grunert was skeptical; what seems too good to be true, after all, usually is. it seemed inconceivable to him that the Russian commanders would violate one of the fundamentals of military doctrine by keeping their forces divided in the presence of the enemy.
Max Hoffmann may have been the only man on earth who was junior to Grunert in rank and yet able to win him over at this critical juncture. Hoffmann was one of Germany's experts on the Russian army, and a decade earlier he had been sent as an observer to the Russo-Japanese War. There he had observed Samsonov and Rennenkampf in action. One of the war's minor legends is that, by an astonishing coincidence, Hoffmann had been present when the 2 Russian generals literally came to blows at a train station in Manchuria. Though it is now regarded as unlikely that anything of the kind actually happended, Hoffmann did know that Rennenkampf and Samsonov belonged to rival factions of the Russian general staff and disliked each other intensely. He was convinced that neither would exert himself to help the other. When he explained this history, Grunert was persuaded. The 2 got into a staff car and sped off, catching up with Hindedburg and Ludendorff and showing them the intercepted messages. All reservations about risking everything were immediately dissolved.
Commander, Russian 1st Army. Failed to respond to Samsonov's Pleas for help.
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Risking everything meant exactly that: the Germans posted only a single division of cavalry opposite Rennenkampf's army. This was not a serious blocking force but merely a screen; its only function was to keep the Russians from seeing that nothing was behind it. All the rest of the 8th Army was moved south and west into Samsonov's path. many of the troops were able to move a 100 miles overnight. 9 divisions were formed into an arc that was open to the southeast and 60 miles across. This arc was intentionally weak in the center but had 2 strong wings. The idea was for Samsonov, as he continued forward, to strike the center, find himself able to drive it backward, and thus be encouraged to keep moving. When he had gone far enough, the wings would move in on him from both sides.
The very fact that they had 2 armies inside East Prussia by this date was, for the Russians, a great achievement. The Germans had hoped that Russian mobilization would take 6 weeks, and they had not given sufficient weight to the fact that 2/5 of Russia's regular army was stationed in Poland when the war began and so was near East Prussia and nearly ready for action. The result had been Rennenkampf's arrival in East Prussia in just over 2 weeks, with Samsonov close behind. This much speed was also, however, an act of folly; the Russians had begun their advance without adequate provision for supplying their troops, for dealing with the wounded, or for communicating. (Hence the uncoded radio messages that proved such a boon to the Germans.) Some of their soldiers were without shoes, marching with their feet wrapped in rags. Some had no rifles. They were worn out long before making contact with the enemy. Rennenkampf's troops had been on the march for a week by the time they crossed into East Prussia, and their supply system was already failing badly.
These problems were the work of
commander of the Russian North-West Front and therefore in charge of the 2 invading armies. 2 years earlier, while serving as chief of the Russian general staff, Zhilinski had promised the French that he could have his forces in the field 15 days after mobilization. Now he was keeping his promise. Far to the rear-his headquarters were more than 150 miles from the showdown that was now taking place-he thought he was masterminding a historic victory.
On August 26th, fearing a possible sudden forward lunge by Rennenkampf and unsettled by rumors of substantial Russian forces arriving from Rennenkampf's direction, a nervous Ludendorff tried to spring the trap on Samsonov. When he ordered an attack, however, the usually aggressive
curtly refused. His troops were still detraining. They didn't yet have their ammunition, their heavy artillery, or all of their field artillery. If they attacked, he said, they would have to do so with bayonets. When Ludendorff repeated his order, Francois went through the motions of complying but limited himself to occupying an uncontested ridge. In yet another of the odd and unintended twists in this oddest of battles, his failure to strike worked to the Germans' advantage. It allowed Samsonov to continue to believe that he was in contact with a weak enemy force and so to continue pushing forward into the trap. Both of his flanks were encountering German troops and being badly mauled, but his communications were so faulty and he had moved the divisions that formed those flanks so far out from his center that throughout most of the day he knew almost nothing of this. The Germans, meanwhile, were eager to engage him. Much of the 8th Army was made up of East Prussians, men with personal reasons for wanting to clear the region of invaders. One officer, on August 26th, found himself directing artillery fire on his own house after the Russians took possession of it.
Zhilinski continued to prod Samsonov to keep moving and to stay on his present course. When the scanty intelligence reaching Samsonov began to indicate that worrisome numbers of German troops were on his left, he sent a message to Zhilinski suggesting that perhaps he should confront this enemy force-whatever it was-by turning toward it. "I will not allow Genernal Samsonov to play coward," Zhilinski imperiously replied. "I insist that he continue the offensive."
Samsonov followed orders, but by the end of the day he understood that he was in serious trouble. A cautious withdrawal would have been the right next step. But perhaps because of Zhilinski's rebuke, he decided not to pull back, or even to stay where he was while watching the situation develop, but to continue moving forward. Though his flanks were in increasing disarray, and though his troops had no food and were low on ammunition, his center remained intact. That night he sent plaintive messages asking for confirmation that Rennenkampf was coming to join him. There was no answer.
Rennenkampf's failure to move need not be attributed to any hatred for Samsonov. He had lost 17,000 men in the Gumbinnen fight, 1,000's more before that at Stalluponen. He still thought that much or even most of the 8th Army was to his north, near Konigsberg, and that if he moved westward it could fall on his flank. He feared also that a pursuit of the Germans might hurry them across the Vistula before Samsonov could cut them off. Within the limits of the information available, he was thinking rationally if too cautiously.
At this point Moltke, never having been informed that the situation of the 8th Army was not nearly as alarming as he and Ludendorff had believed when they met in Koblenz, had his chief of staff telephone Ludendorff and announce that 3 infantry corps were being detached from the right wing in France and sent by rail to East Prussia. Ludendorff replied that reinforcements were not needed. He didn't, however, state categorically that they shouldn't be sent. Moltke ultimately decided to send 2 corps instead of 3, and Ludendorff would find plenty of use for them after their arrival.
At 4 A.M. on August 27th, ready for action at last, Francois opened an artillery barrage that devastated Samsonov's left wing. Confused and starving Russian soldiers, exhausted after having marched 10 and 12 hours daily for a week, broke and ran. Francois sent his troops forward in what he intended to be an encircling maneuver, but this was blocked. Samsonov, almost incredibly, then resumed the advance of his center. He advanced so aggressively that Ludendorff began to worry that the Russians were going to break through and out of the trap. He decided to call Francois's corps back to reinforce the center-a move that would have made an encirclement impossible. Hindedburg gently overruled him.
At dawn on August 28th Francois again attacked and discovered that the Russian left had evaporated. Its troops had had enough and fled en masse into the nearby woods. Everything began to fall into place for the Germans. Francois, meeting almost no resistance, swung his corps around to the south and cut off Samsonov's escape. Other elements of the 8th Army converged from the nooks and crannies of the East Prussian landscape. A corps hit Samsonov from the west. A division emerged from the northwest and attacked the Russians there. When a corps that had been stationed to the northeast in case Rennenkampf showed up finally turned around and also marched toward Samsonov, the trap was complete. Samsonov, saying that he had failed the tsar and could not go home, walked off alone into the woods and shot himself.
It was now just a matter of mopping up. But still Ludendorff was tortured, his judgement distorted by his fears. When he learned that Francois had spread his corps in a thin line along 35 miles of road southeast of the encircled Russians, he ordered him to pull it together more compactly. Francois ignored him; he had witnessed the disintegration of Samsonov's army and knew that the only remaining need was to intercept the bewildered and demoralized enemy soldiers as they came stumbling toward Poland. In the course of the next 3 days, Francois's thin net hauled in 60,000 prisoners. Overall the Germans captured 92,000 Russians. Total casualties were 250,000 for the Russians, about 37,000 for the Germans. The Germans decided to call what had just happened the Battle of Tannenberg because a nearby town of that name had been the site of a terrible German defeat at the hands of the Poles 100's of years before. Hindenburg's ancestors had taken part in that battle.
On the same day that Samsonov's left collapsed, a very different story was unfolding to the south. Conrad's Austro-Hungarian Armies, having launched an offensive against superior Russian forces in Galicia, were suffering a defeat even worse than the one inflicted on them earlier by the Serbs. Conrad never should have attacked(the Russians outnumbered him by an immense margin, and he had the Carpathian Mountains in which to stand on the defensive), but the fact that he did was not entirely his fault. Moltke, fearing that if Conrad did not engage the Russians they would send more of their armies into East Prussia, had demanded action. Promising to send help within 6 weeks, as soon as France had been defeated, he tried to ease Conrad's reservations by assuring him that "the fate of Russia will be decided not on the Bug(a Galician River) but on the Seine." In other words, defeating the Russians was for the moment less important than simply keeping them occupied.
In fact, Conrad's offensive may have contributed to making Tannenberg possible. It not only kept Russia's Galician forces in Galicia but drew out of Poland reserves that otherwise might have gone to East Prussia. But the long-term results would be disastrous. Austria's ability to deal with the Russians, to provide Germany with a strong ally, was going up in flames. And at the same time, almost withing sight of Paris, the in the west was suddenly and decisively changing. Across Europe a mixture of successes and failures was emerging on both sides, a balance so perfect as to seem almost mysterious. It would make victory impossible for either side and ensure that the terrible carnage of the war's 1st month was barely the beginning.
