On the Eastern Front, disaster loomed. The Russians had not taken the anticipated 6 weeks to mobilize…they had done it in 10 days, and began moving into East Prussia. A poorly-coordinated German counter-attack at Gumbinnen on the 20th went badly. The three German corps attacked piecemeal, and Russian heavy artillery threw the attackers back. The German 8th army commander, Maximilian von Prittwitz, panicked, ordering a general withdrawal to the Vistula River, which would leave the defenders at Konigsberg isolated. The Russian 1st Army, in the north opposite Konigsberg, was slow to take advantage of the German retreat, fearing another German attack. The Russian 2nd Army in the south, advanced unopposed westward, separated from the 1st Army by the lakes and swamps of the Masurian Lake District. German intelligence discovered some key information: Papers captured at Gumbinnen from a dead Russian officer gave the Germans the outline of the Russian plan. Furthermore, the two Russian armies were having communication difficulties. Lacking skilled telegraph operators that could encode and decode messages, and bringing insufficient wire to run landline communications, the Russians were broadcasting orders over radios in plain Russian. What few codes were used were easily broken by German crypto-linguists. Worse, the 2nd Army commander, Samsonov, and 1st Army commander, von Rennenkampf, detested each other. There was no coordination between the attacking armies! The Chief of the Imperial German Staff, von Moltke, quickly sacked Prittwitz, replacing him with Paul von Hindenburg and his Chief of Staff, Erich Ludendorff (Who had just come from the battle at Liège). He also pulled three corps and a cavalry division from the main German effort in Belgium to assist, despite Ludendorff’s opinion that they will arrive too late to help. Before Hindenburg arrived, however, Prittwitz’s operations officer, Colonel Max Hoffmann, realized that the Russian 2nd Army will threaten the proposed positions on the Vistula. Hoffmann effectively takes control of the German 8th Army, repositioning them to oppose the advancing Russian 2nd Army. The Germans know this area well, it’s one of the areas they conducted peacetime training. Hoffmann orders the one corps to set up a blocking position to halt the Russian advance, with another corps making a long trip via rail from Konigsberg to the Russian’s southern flank. Hoffmann plans to exploit known passages through the lake area and attack the Russians in the northern flank as well. This leaves Konigsberg dangerously exposed, with only a cavalry division screening the advance of the Russian 1st Army. It is a desperate gamble. Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrive, quickly endorse Hoffmann’s plan. (For reference, a German corps is around 44,000 men. By tradition, corps are numbered in Roman numerals, and so “II Corps” is called “2nd Corps” or sometimes “Two Corps”. In the US, “I Corps” is occasionally pronounced “Eye Corps” for obvious reasons) On August 26th, the trap has been set. The commander of the German I Corps was intended to strike first, but refused to advance until his artillery had arrived (Which was probably a wise decision), making only a weak probe of the Russian lines on the 26th. The initial attack, then, comes through the lakes to hit the Russians in the right rear. The Russian right flank rapidly collapses. Hermann von François, I Corps commander, finally makes his attack on the morning of the 27th, and quickly smashes the Russian left flank. Not until the evening of the 28th does Samsonov realize the danger, but too late. He had concentrated most of his forces in the center, hoping to break the single German corps opposing him, but the German center held. Now, François’ I Corps has cut off his line of retreat, and XVII Corps from the north has linked up with them, completing the encirclement of three Russian Corps, a total of 150,000 men. Only two badly mauled corps, on the far left and right, have escaped the encirclement and retreat in disarray. Of the encircled men, only about 10,000 manage to break out. The Germans take around 90,000 Russian soldiers prisoner, the rest are killed or wounded. As a fighting force, the Russian 2nd Army is annihilated. The Russians learned some valuable lessons in logistics as well. Advancing into Germany, the rail gauge changes (a fact that would also hamper the Germans in WWII). Once past the Russian rail heads, supplies are moved primarily by horse-drawn wagon. Russian artillery in this battle would consume as many as 40,000 shells in a single day. By the end of the battle, Russian guns were so low on ammo they were not effective. An added problem: The Russian armaments industry was only putting out 30,000 shells a month. Belatedly, the Russian 1st Army sent one corps to assist the beleaguered 2nd Army, but the German cavalry harassed and delayed them, and they got no closer than 40 miles to the battle. Worse, 1st Army was strung out and disorganized. Again using the rail system, most of the German 8th Army redeployed north, assisted by two new corps arriving late from the western front. XVII and I Corps move east through the lakes. The single Russian corps that had advanced to aid Samsonov, now separated from the Russian main body, puts up a spirited defense against the German advance through the lakes, but is eventually routed, leaving Rennenkampf’s right flank exposed. Rennenkampf orders a general retreat out of German territory. Russian troops would not enter Germany again. The victory, for the Germans, was not as great as it might have been. First, like the Russians moving west, German advances east were hampered by the change in rail gauge, as well as the destruction of both German and Russian rail by the retreating Russian army. Second, the three corps sent from the western front would be sorely missed at the Battle of the Marne. Most importantly, however, while the Germans were defeating the Russian attack in the north, the Austrian Army’s advance into Russian Poland had been smashed by the Russians. Austria suffered 324,000 casualties, 130,000 men captured, and lost most of their experienced officers. Many Slavic soldiers under Austrian command simply surrendered. Russian counterattacks captured nearly the entire Austrian province of Galacia all the way to the Carpathian Mountains, beginning a 133 day siege of Przemyśl. The Austrian Army would never recover.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 11:15:23 +0000
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