![]() ![]() Germany’s war plan, accepting a two-front conflict against France and Russia, initially allowed only token forces to defend East Prussia. The Western Front was an anomaly Tannenberg, now, THAT was real war! The German army would look at war through the lens of Tannenberg well into the age of World War II: brilliant German generals triumphing over stupid Russian hordes. The opening clash between the German and Russian empires in World War I ended in one of history’s most misleading outcomes. After the war, German officers would point to Tannenberg as their ideal battle. It was the only really decisive battle of World War I period, too, the only great victory won through traditional German maneuver rather than dull, lifeless attrition. Hindenburg and Ludendorff achieved the status of military heroes for saving Germany from the terrifying invader, and their triumph was the only real bright spot for Germany in the conga line of disappointment that was the beginning of World War I. ![]() It was perceived as a brilliant military victory, a battle of encirclement of the type that Hannibal had pulled off at Cannae. Interestingly, an ancestor of Hindenburg had fallen at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.The Battle of Tannenberg immediately sent the German people into celebration, and soon assumed a borderline mythical status. Battle of Tannenberg, (August 2630, 1914), World War I battle fought at Tannenberg, in what is now northeastern Poland, that ended in a German victory over the. The Russians remained on the defensive along the German front for the rest of the war. The German victory compelled Rennenkampf to withdraw his army from East Prussia, and thus cleared German territory of invaders. Rather than report the loss of his army to the Tsar, Samsonov committed suicide by shooting himself in the head on August 29, 1914. The battle acquired a significance that was not so much strategic as symbolic, and became an integral part of both Russia’s and Germany’s commemorative and political culture of the interwar period. With the Russian Niemen army having overrun half of East Prussia, the German commander in the exercise exploited the separation between the Russian Narew and Niemen armies to mass his troops against. Ludendorff chose Tannenberg as a way to exact revenge for the defeat of the Teutonic knights at at the Battle of Grunwald. The Battle of Tannenberg (26-30 August 1914), in which General Aleksandr Samsonov’s 2 nd Russian ( Narevskaia) Army was surrounded and completely annihilated, was one of the largest battles on the Eastern Front in World War I. In 1894 Alfred von Schlieffen, then Chief of the German General Staff, war-gamed a scenario that corresponded to the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914. General Erich Ludendorff, the chief of staff for the new theatre commander Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, dated the official dispatch reporting the victory from the nearby village of Tannenberg (Stębark), and the battle is thus known to history by the latter name. This forced massive surrenders, and saw the almost complete destruction of the 2nd Army near Frogenau. The German field commander, General Hermann von Francois, allowed the 2nd Army to advance, and then cut them off from their already tenuous supply route. Hoffmann’s plan left a screening force to delay the Russian 1st Army (under General Paul von Rennenkampf) which was approaching from the east, and set a trap for the Russian 2nd Army (under General Alexander Samsonov) which was moving up from the south. While replacements taken from the western front were in transit, the 8th Army’s Chief of Operations, Max Hoffmann, redeployed the German forces. The German theatre commander, General Maximilian von Prittwitz, was sacked when he attempted to completely abandon East Prussia to the Russians. At first, the battle appeared to go well for the Russians, with a German counterattack repulsed on August 20. The Russian armies crossed into East Prussia with Königsberg as their goal. However, the Germans easily intercepted the transmissions, and were expecting the Russians’ every move at Tannenberg. How the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg Emboldened German Forces at the Start of WWI The 1914 conflict dealt a defeat so devastating that it drove a Russian general to suicide. The Russian army used radio to transmit their attack plan, but they did not encrypt the messages, believing that the Germans would not have access to Russian translators. The Battle of Tannenberg of 1914 was a decisive conflict between Russia and Germany in the first days of World War I, fought by the Russian 1st and 2nd Armies and the German Eighth Army between August 17 and September 2, 1914. was located near Hohenstein, East Prussia today Olsztynek, POL Hindenburgs mausoleum was added 1934-35 this is the second battle of Tannenberg. ![]()
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