Tannenberg 1914: Samsonov's Uncoded Radio and the Frögenau Cauldron

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In August 1914 Germany's Schlieffen Plan sent most of its army west and left only the Eighth Army to guard East Prussia, on the assumption that Russia would need months to mobilize. Russia instead invaded by day 15 to honor its pledge to France, but its speed hid fatal weaknesses. Its wider railway gauge stopped trains at the German border, so troops marched on foot through sandy tracks while thousands of horses ate about ten times a soldier's ration. A shortage of copper telephone wire forced General Alexander Samsonov of the Second Army to rely on radio, and because too few new codebooks had been issued, he broadcast his orders in the clear. After a German attack at Gumbinnen failed, Maximilian von Prittwitz proposed retreating to the Vistula and was relieved by Helmuth von Moltke.

Paul von Hindenburg, called out of retirement, and Erich Ludendorff met on the train east and joined staff officer Max Hoffmann. Intercepts confirmed that Paul von Rennenkampf's First Army and Samsonov's army were drifting apart, so the Germans left a screen facing Rennenkampf and shifted a corps more than 150 kilometers south by rail. Front commander Yakov Zhilinsky forced Samsonov to split his forces, Hermann von François smashed the Russian left once his artillery arrived, and by August 29 the Russians were trapped in a pocket near Frögenau. Samsonov, cut off from his radio, walked into the woods at night and took his own life.

• Hoffmann claimed Rennenkampf and Samsonov had hated each other since the Russo-Japanese War and would not help one another.
• German trains ran every 30 minutes day and night, and troops had 25 minutes to unload and clear each platform.
• François refused Ludendorff's order to attack until his heavy guns were off the trains.
• The fighting centered near Frögenau and Allenstein, about 30 kilometers from Tannenberg, a name Hindenburg chose to avenge the Teutonic defeat of 1410.
• Hindenburg later said Ludendorff panicked on the eve of battle and had to be steadied behind a hedge.