Meanwhile, Samsonov bedevilled by supply and communication problems, was entirely unaware that Rennenkampf had chosen to pause and lick his wounds, instead assuming that his forces were continuing their movement south-west. The German Chief of Staff recalled Prittwitz to Berlin and installed as his replacement the markedly more aggressive veteran Paul von Hindenburg, who was brought out of retirement at the age of 66. Pledged to their French allies to assume the offensive against Germany at the earliest possible date, Russia’s First Army led by General Paul von Rennenkampf assembled on the eastern frontier of East Prussia, while the Second Army under General Alexander Samsonov gathered at Warsaw.Ĭommanded by General Yakov Zhilinsky from Warsaw, the two armies initially planned to combine in assaulting Prittwitz’s Eighth Army stationed in East Prussia – Rennenkampf in a frontal attack with Samsonov engulfing Prittwitz from the rear.īut after a scrappy victory against the Germans at the Battle of Gumbinnen, Rennenkampf paused to reconsolidate his forces, while Prittwitz, shaken and fearful of encirclement, ordered a retreat to the River Vistula. The troops in East Prussia, organized into four corps, formed the Eighth Army, commanded by General Max von Prittwitz.
Some second-line troops were tasked with the defense of the Eastern Front fortresses such as Posen (Poznań), Thorn (Toruń), Danzig (Gdańsk), and Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) and to watch the Polish frontier.
The choice of France for the initial offensive was actuated chiefly by the relative slowness of Russian mobilization and by the impossibility of gaining a rapid decision against Russia owing to the great distances. On August 30, 1914, in the early days of World War I, the German forces led by Paul von Hindenburg almost completely annihilated the Russian Second Army at the Battle of Tannenberg, in modern-day Poland, all but ending Russia’s invasion of East Prussia before it had even really started.įollowing the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, the German General Staff drew up a plan which provided for quick, all-out ground offensive against France, designed to obtain a rapid and decisive victory, while taking up defensive positions in the east against Russia, until the decision had been obtained in the west.
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