![]() ![]() An estimated 50,000 Russian troops were killed in panicked fighting and 92,000 more were taken by Germany as prisoners of war. ![]() One of the few battles of maneuver from a conflict best known for static trench warfare, Tannenberg saw German forces in the east effectively destroy General Alexander Samsonovs Russian Second Army. ![]() Samsonov was in command of 150,000 men in the Russian 2nd Army and less than 10,000 made it back to Russia, says Lockenour. The Battle of Tannenberg was fought August 23-31, 1914, during World War I (1914-1918). Because of communication problems, the Russian commanders didn’t know that a major attack on their flank was underway until half a day too late.” Russian General Samsonov Kills Himself After Defeat “Imagine this Russian army as a bulge pressing into Germany and the Germans strike at a point where the bulge begins and cut off the vast majority of the Russian forces in the middle. “Then the Germans launched two flank attacks,” says Lockenour. General Alexander Samsonov, in charge of the Russian 2nd Army in the South, walked right into Ludendorff’s trap and allowed his men to be completely encircled. The Russian commanders weren’t amateurs, but they were hampered by poor communications, slow supply routes and the frustrations of moving a large army (plus heavy artillery) on foot and horseback through difficult terrain. “He was an incredibly experienced staff officer and had already won the Pour le Mérite cross, similar to the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his leadership at Liege.” “I argue that Ludendorff is the brains of the operation,” says Lockenour, who wrote a book called Dragonslayer: The Legend of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich. When Chinese Americans Were Scapegoated for Bubonic Plague Both sides suffered heavy losses and Prittwitz, envisioning a second Russian army on its way, lost his nerve. When the Germans learned that the Russians were invading East Prussia with two armies, one in the North and another in the South, they ordered Prittwitz to attack the northern Russian 1st Army at what became known as the Battle of Gumbinnen on August 20, 1914. It was a lot of reservists and garrison troops, people normally assigned to defend fixed positions.” “Also, the 8th Army was the weakest of the German armies. “What happened was the Russians mobilized a lot quicker than the Germans expected,” says Jay Lockenour, a military historian at Temple University. The lone German army dispatched to the Russian border region known as East Prussia was the 8th Army led by General Maximilian von Prittwitz. Meanwhile, Germany had committed seven of its eight armies to the West, believing that it would take at least six weeks for the sluggish Russian army to mobilize its forces and attack in the East. ![]()
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