![]() ![]() Finally, a fourth corps was ordered to remain at Vistula to meet Samsonov as his army moved north. Hindenburg's remaining two corps, under Mackensen and Below, were to await orders to move south by foot so as to confront Samsonov's opposite right wing. Meanwhile, General Hermann von Francois's I Corps were transported by rail to the far southwest to meet the left wing of Samsonov's Second Army. Hoffmann proposed a ploy whereby cavalry troops would be employed as a screen at Vistula, the intention being to confuse Rennenkampf who, he knew, held a deep personal vendetta with Samsonov (who had complained of Rennenkampf's conduct at the Battle of Mukden in 1905) and so would be disinclined to come to his aid if he had justifiable cause not to. ![]() While Hindenburg and Ludendorff received much credit for the subsequent action at Tannenberg, the actual plan of attack was devised in detail by Hoffmann. Upon his arrival in East Prussia on 23 August Hindenburg immediately reversed Prittwitz's decision to withdraw, choosing instead to authorise a plan of action prepared by Colonel Maximilian Hoffmann, Prittwitz's deputy chief of operations. Upon receipt of this news Helmuth von Moltke, the German Army Chief of Staff, recalled Prittwitz and his deputy von Waldersee to Berlin - an effective dismissal - and installed as their replacement the markedly more aggressive combination of Paul von Hindenburg - brought out of retirement at the age of 66 - and Erich Ludendorff as his Chief of Staff (having earlier distinguished himself at Liege). Prittwitz, shaken by the action at Gumbinnen and fearful of encirclement, ordered a retreat to the River Vistula. Rennenkampf brought about a modification however following a scrappy victory against Eighth Army at the Battle of Gumbinnen, after which he paused to reconsolidate his forces. The two armies planned to combine in assaulting General Prittwitz's German Eighth Army, Rennenkampf in a frontal attack while Samsonov engulfed Prittwitz from the rear. General Samsonov had begun to take his Second Army into the south-western corner of East Prussia whilst General Rennenkampf advanced into its north-east with the First Army. Russia's incursion into German territory was two-pronged. Perhaps the most spectacular and complete German victory of the First World War, the encirclement and destruction of the Russian Second Army in late August 1914 virtually ended Russia's invasion of East Prussia before it had really started. Go to the actual url attached to link to specific ancillary threads: The battle is notable particularly for a number of rapid movements of complete German corps by train, allowing a single German Army to present a single front to both Russian Armies.Īlthough the battle took place near Allenstein, Ludendorff's aide Max Hoffmann suggested to name it after Tannenberg in an attempt to erase the defeat in the medieval Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) of 1410 in which the Teutonic forces were defeated by the Poles and Lithuanians.Īs pointed out by Christopher Clark, the actual Tannenberg is some thirty kilometres to the west, and there was no intrinsic reason - other than the historical battle and its emotive resonance in the narrative of German Nationalism - to name for it the 1914 battle. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army.Ī series of follow-up battles destroyed the majority of the First Army as well, and kept the Russians off-balance until the spring of 1915. The Battle of Tannenberg was in August 1914 a decisive engagement between the Russian Empire and the German Empire in the first days of World War I, fought by the Russian First and Second Armies and the German Eighth Army between 23 August and 30 August 1914.
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