Tannenberg, 1410:1914

After the German Army stopped the Russian advance into East Prussia and destroyed the Russian Second Army in the last week of August 1914, a name had to be picked for the great victory. General Ludendorff suggested Tannenberg. The battle covered a massive area, had been fought around several villages only one of which was Tannenberg where the fighting had been relatively insignificant. So why Tannenberg?

Because Tannenberg was a symbol of more than five centuries of conflict between the Germans and their Polish and Lithuanian foes. It was a battle for historical memory and reputation which wouldn’t end until 1939.

Evans (designated with the rank Lieutenant General on the copyright page) gives us two concise monographs on the battles and show more their links. The first Battle of Tannenberg is covered in 52 pages, and the second takes up the rest of the book’s 163 pages of text.

In both cases, Evans sets the political and military stage for each battle, covers the battle in detail, and then provides a retrospective on the successes and deficiencies of both sides. The book is very well stocked with maps on a variety of scales. They include not only maps on the endpapers and book pages but some pullout maps.

The Teutonic Knights informally begin during the siege of Acre in 1190. They were similar in their aims and monastic rigor to the Hospitallers and Templars. In their case, they started with a tent made from a sail where they tended to sick crusaders. The Teutonic Knights weren’t officially recognized as an order until 1128, but they were already starting to concentrate on tending to crusading Germans and had received significant donations to that end. Like their fellow orders of warrior monks, they got donations of land outside of Outremer.

Around 1197, the king of Hungary invited them to guard the frontiers of his kingdom from pagan raiders. They were to receive towns and lands as donations. Once the job was done, he reneged. The raids started again, and the Teutonic Knights were brought back in 1222 with a Papal Bull sealing the deal. The Grand Master of the Order became a member of the Holy Roman Emperor’s Imperial Court, and things really took off for the Order in 1230.

In what was to become Prussia, the Knights settled with the intent of launching a crusade against the pagan Poles on the border. The Poles were to be converted. Preferably peacefully. But converted they would be. After the fall of the Crusader lands in 1291, the Teutonic Knights moved their headquarters to Marienburg and instituted a rather harsh series of laws in their Prussian lands. The Drang Nach Osten, drive to the East, was already underway with Lithuania and Poland being obstacles in the order expanding to the Gulf of Riga.

But, in the ninety years between 1320 and 1410, a series of Polish and Lithuanian leaders gradually united to counter the Knights. King Jagiello of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania along with Witold, a future Grand Duke of Lithuania, launched an invasion of Teutonic lands in 1410. On July 15, 1410, they defeated the forces of the Teutonic Knights, killing perhaps 18,000 of them including Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen. It was only Jagiello’s failure to march immediately on Marienburg that gave a temporary respite to the Order. But, in 1466, they became vassals to Jagiello’s son.

The Poles called this famed event in their national history the Battle of Grunwald.

Evans’ coverage of the second Battle of Tannenberg seems good, but it’s hardly a subject I know that much about though I’ve read about it before. There are certainly longer and more recent books on it.

Evans accounts for the Russian failure being the result of poor leadership, bad communication, and insufficient reconnaissance as well as a officers disobeying orders. The German side won through being the opposite except, curiously, the matter of obeying orders. In particular, orders to retreat were ignored at crucial times and aggressive action continued which proved decisive for the Germans.

Evans concludes with a brief, but interesting, rumination on the significance of the second Battle of Tanneberg. Did it save France on the Western Front since the Germans pulled forces from there to meet the Russians? And, if they hadn’t done that, would the war have ended sooner with a Russian threat to Berlin?

On July 15, 1910, five hundred years after the Polish victory, a magnificent bronze statue was erected in Cracow to celebrate the Battle of Grunwald. (A photo of it is in the book.) When the Germans occupied Cracow in 1939, one of the first things they did was tear the statue down, smooth over the ground it had been on, and melt it down for guns.

Evans throws in several appendices: descriptions of banners from the first battle and orders of battle for the second as well as biographical sketches of its Russian and German commanders.

Definitely recommended, especially for its coverage of the Teutonic Knights and the 1410 battle. show less