![]() ![]() Meanwhile, Samsonov bedevilled by supply and communication problems, was entirely unaware that Rennenkampf had chosen to pause and lick his wounds, instead assuming that his forces were continuing their movement south-west. The German Chief of Staff recalled Prittwitz to Berlin and installed as his replacement the markedly more aggressive veteran Paul von Hindenburg, who was brought out of retirement at the age of 66. On this Day, in 1914: World War I broke out when Austria-Hungary declared war on SerbiaĬommanded by General Yakov Zhilinsky from Warsaw, the two armies initially planned to combine in assaulting Prittwitz’s Eighth Army stationed in East Prussia – Rennenkampf in a frontal attack with Samsonov engulfing Prittwitz from the rear.īut after a scrappy victory against the Germans at the Battle of Gumbinnen, Rennenkampf paused to reconsolidate his forces, while Prittwitz, shaken and fearful of encirclement, ordered a retreat to the river Vistula. Pledged to their French allies to assume the offensive against Germany at the earliest possible date, Russia’s First Army led by General Paul von Rennenkampf assembled on the eastern frontier of East Prussia, while the Second Army under General Alexander Samsonov gathered at Warsaw. The troops in East Prussia, organized into four corps, formed the Eighth Army, commanded by General Max von Prittwitz. Some second-line troops were tasked with the defense of the Eastern Front fortresses such as Posen (Poznań), Thorn (Toruń), Danzig (Gdańsk), and Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) and to watch the Polish frontier. ![]() The choice of France for the initial offensive was actuated chiefly by the relative slowness of Russian mobilization and by the impossibility of gaining a rapid victory against Russia owing to the great distances. To find out more about the magazine and how to subscribe, click here.On August 30, 1914, in the early days of World War I, the German forces led by Paul von Hindenburg almost completely annihilated the Russian Second Army at the Battle of Tannenberg, in modern-day Poland, all but ending Russia’s invasion of East Prussia before it had even really started.įollowing the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, the German General Staff drew up a plan which provided for quick, all-out ground offensive against France, designed to obtain a rapid and decisive victory, while taking up defensive positions in the east against Russia, until the victory had been obtained in the west. This is an article from the October 2014 issue of Military History Matters. But it was not decisive in any wider sense: Rennenkampf’s First Army fell back in good order after the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, while Germany’s Austro-Hungarian allies crashed to disastrous defeat in Galicia. Tannenberg was a decisive defensive battle in that it saved East Prussia from invasion. Both sides were aware that much en clair messaging was relatively safe. In any case, the air was alive with radio communications, and it required large numbers of trained enemy operators, fully equipped for interception work, to take full advantage. The Russian problem was lack of codebooks and trained personnel. The Germans also sent many uncoded messages during the campaign. The use of uncoded radio signals was not due to incompetence. In this respect, it represented a mix of 18th- and 20th-century technology. Beyond railhead, it moved at the speed of marching men and horse-drawn transport. The German Army, though more advanced than the Russian, was itself a hybrid. The technical arms were especially good: the Russian artillery was numerous and well-served, and there were no less than 244 military aircraft available at the outbreak of war. Part of the way through its modernisation programme, the Russian Army was a mix of tradition and modernity. The Russian ‘steamroller’ was not a uniformly primitive military machine. In consequence, the decisive battle of the war of movement in East Prussia was fought two weeks before that in the West (the Battle of the Marne). In fact, the Russians mobilised rapidly and launched an immediate offensive to relieve the pressure on their French allies in the West. German plans assumed slow Russian mobilisation. Russian prisoners being held at Tilsit station in August 1914. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |