6/14/2023 0 Comments World war 1 battle of tannenbergThe Germans, on the other hand, were mobilized much more quickly and efficiently than the Russians. In addition, the Russian high command was not fully prepared to arm, equip, clothe, feed and move the huge number of men needed to fill the army’s ranks. The effect was that upon the outbreak of war in 1914 Russia’s army was slow to mobilize due to crippling logistical delays and bottlenecks. Russia lagged behind western Europe, especially Germany, in this regard due to its immense size and sluggish industrial progress. Other nations, Russia included, also began developing mobilization plans which included railway timetables. The employment of trains to move its army convinced the Germans to expand their rail network and integrate railway timetables into their mobilization plans. In fact, Prussia had made extensive use of the railroad in 18 during the Wars of German Unification. However, railroads had already in military use since the American Civil War and factored into pre-war plans. Thus, armies had much more room to move about on the battlefield.Īrmies still moved on foot in 1914, although the internal combustion engine was being gradually introduced to provide faster and more efficient transportation for infantry. In 1914, it was also sparsely populated and agrarian in nature. Relative to France, western Russia is an area of open plains and gradually undulating hills. On the eastern front, geography also influenced tactics. Soldiers on both sides dug themselves into the earth and relied on the protection of dirt, lumber and concrete to shield them from enemy artillery. The geography of northern France often impeded mobility and led, in part, to the development of trench warfare. In the west, opposing armies, largely French, British and German, maneuvered in areas occupied by towns, cities and forests. Most of the western front fighting took place in France while eastern battles were contested largely on Russian soil. The struggle in Europe occurred on two primary fronts, east and west. It was also a war punctuated by numerous huge battles which proved to be strategically inconclusive. Like all wars, WWI left millions of people dead, maimed, orphaned and homeless. This titanic conflict, which involved over 35 countries and four continents, brought about mayhem and slaughter on a prodigious scale and was the first industrialized war of the twentieth century. World War I, the so-called “war to end all wars,” began one hundred years ago this summer. Mournful, forsaken, they look at us through the barbed wire…”īy 30 August, more than 90,000 Russians had been captured about 30,000 had been killed or wounded barely 10,000 escaped.Image courtesy of University of Virginia The Legacy of Tannenberg Here the prisoners are strewn about on the bare earth, lying, sitting, clasping their heads, standing, walking, exhausted, some with their arms in slings, some bandaged, some unbandaged, some bruised, some with open wounds and others, for some reason, in nothing but their underwear some are barefoot and none of them, of course, have been fed. “For other prisoners it is even worse: they are not allowed to march away but are harnessed instead of horses to their own Russian guns, which are now trophies of war, and have to drag them, pull them and push them up to where the victors are patrolling the main road in armoured cars, with armed cyclists and machine-gunners ready to open fire…The column of men on foot is led into a cage for people, fenced in with barbed wire, so makeshift as to be little more than symbolic, on temporary poles stuck into the ground. The Russian forces, many abandoning their weapons, fled in disorder, with huge numbers taken prisoner by the encircling Germans. The following day, the 2nd Army’s commander, General Alexander Samsonov, recognised that his force was completely surrounded and gave the order to withdraw – too late. The fast-moving Germans, helped by the planning of Colonel Maximilian Hoffman and by the capture of two unencrypted messages revealing the Russians’ intentions, were able to encircle the 2nd Army before it could link up with the 1st.Ī huge German artillery assault on 27 August (14 August in the Russian calendar) was a major turning-point. The Russians launched a vast two-pronged attack on East Prussia using its 1st and 2nd Armies, but lacked the competence to complete it. The Battle of Tannenberg, less than a month into the war, was one of Russia’s greatest military disasters.
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