![]() fact that his windows at the school looked out over this field of battle. To find out more about the magazine and how to subscribe, click here. Hindenburg is quoted as saying that in the battle of Tannenberg alone at least. This is an article from the October 2014 issue of Military History Matters. 1410 AD Battle of Tannenberg - The Poles and the Lithuanians defeated German Knights at the Battle of Tannenberg on July 15th 1410. The real results were matters of policy and mythology. 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. The battle did not break the Russian army, nor did it drive Russia out of the war. 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 Battle of Tannenberg was a decisive engagement between the Russian Empire and the German Empire in the first days of World War I. 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. The armies were separated by the Masurian Lakes. ![]() The First Army was on the right (north) and the Second Army was on the left (further south). ![]() The Russian force in East Prussia was divided into the First Army under Paul von Rennenkampf and the Second Army under Alexander Samsonov. German plans assumed slow Russian mobilisation. The Battle of Tannenberg (August 26-30, 1914) The Two Forces. Russian prisoners being held at Tilsit station in August 1914.
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