Battles of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes, Aug–Sept, 1914
In August, a German army encircled Russia’s Second Army near Tannenburg, East Prussia. The maneuever was so well planned and executed that only about 10,000 of Second Army’s 150,000 men escaped and som e500 Russian artillery pieces captured; the Russian commander, Gen. Alexander Samsonov committed suicide. The following month, German forces enveloped Russian general Pavel Rennenkampf’s First Army in the Masurian Lakes area near East Prussia’s border with Russia and dealt the czar’s troops another staggering defeat. The architects of the German plans, Gen. Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, were hailed as German heroes. After Russia was knocked out of the war in 1917, they were brought to the Western Front to take command there and were given extraordinary control over nearly all aspects of German civilian life.
