BATTLE OF TANNENBERG 1914 HOW TO

Any invasion of Prussia was an important blow to German morale as well as her general strategic situation, due to Prussia (including East Prussia) being the historical heart of the German Reich (Empire). However, quite quickly, Russia was able to mobilize an invasion into East Prussia. The planning of the invasion was rushed in order to help France as quickly as possible and not well-thought out. Many soldiers were untrained, its transport service was largely ineffective and slowed down the movement of troops, its forces were spread out over a large territory and had little coordination with each other, allowing the enemy to engage each part of their army separately, like in the Battle of Tannenberg or the Battle of Stallupönen, and most importantly, its intelligence-gathering technique was greatly inferior to that of the Germans due to lack of reconnaissance units. They were confronted by the German Eighth Army, commanded by General Maximilian von Prittwitz and consisting of 14.5 infantry divisions, 1 cavalry division, 774 guns, 396 machine guns Total strength 8th Army was 209,522 men, including garrisons Īlthough outnumbering the enemy, the Russian Army had numerous problems that contributed to its defeat: Russia was not prepared for a large war at the time and its rearmament programme was not completed, as was known to the Germans.

The invasion was led by two Russian armies: the First Army, which was commanded by General Paul von Rennenkampf and consisted of 6.5 infantry divisions, 5.5 cavalry divisions, 472 guns, 254 machine guns (total strength 222,053 men, including 31,124 in the garrisons), and the Second Army under the command of General Alexander Samsonov, composed of 11 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 724 guns, 434 machine guns (total strength 280,902 men, including 40,525 in the garrisons).

BATTLE OF TANNENBERG 1914 HOW TO

As a result, every German general staff officer in East Prussia in 1914 knew how to respond to the Russian offensive. Whereas Schlieffen's predecessor's Alfred von Waldersee's idea had been to launch a spoiling attack on the Russians as they deployed and then wait for reinforcements from the west, Schlieffen foresaw a mobile operation on interior lines using railways to mass forces against one Russian army and destroy it before it could retreat. In the exercise critique Schlieffen said the Germans could easily just establish a defensive line behind the Vistula, but when the opportunity to destroy an entire Russian army was available, it should be taken.

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 the right flank of the Narew army and destroy the whole force. 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. French political pressure blocked the first option, while the second option was militarily unsound, leaving the third option as the most likely Russian course of action. According to German intelligence estimates, the railway network in Poland limited the Russians to three options: a purely defensive posture against Germany, an offensive down the Vistula straight towards Berlin or an invasion of East Prussia with two armies, one from the Narew and one from the Neman. German strategy vis-à-vis Russia was defensive from 1888 onward, when the Chief of the German General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, abandoned the concept of a decisive offensive into Russian territory and began to consider defensive options. The shock of the invasion served to assist the German war effort according to one historian, who argued that 'Outrage at the violation of national territory and Tsarist atrocities strengthened German solidarity, cemented conviction in the righteousness of the national cause, and acted as a terrible and lasting warning of the penalties of defeat'. Despite having an overwhelming superiority over the Germans in numbers, the invading Imperial Russian Army spread its forces thin and was defeated in the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, resulting in a complete strategic collapse of the Russian invasion. As well as being the natural course for the Russian Empire to take upon the declaration of war on the German Empire, it was also an attempt to focus the German Army on the Eastern Front, as opposed to the Western Front. The Russian invasion of East Prussia occurred during World War I, lasting from August to September 1914.

Battle of tannenberg 1914