![]() ![]() ![]() Mournful, forsaken, they look at us through the barbed wire…”īy 30 August, more than 90,000 Russians had been captured about 30,000 had been killed or wounded barely 10,000 escaped. Here the prisoners are strewn about on the bare earth, lying, sitting, clasping their heads, standing, walking, exhausted, some with their arms in slings, some bandaged, some unbandaged, some bruised, some with open wounds and others, for some reason, in nothing but their underwear some are barefoot and none of them, of course, have been fed. ![]() “For other prisoners it is even worse: they are not allowed to march away but are harnessed instead of horses to their own Russian guns, which are now trophies of war, and have to drag them, pull them and push them up to where the victors are patrolling the main road in armoured cars, with armed cyclists and machine-gunners ready to open fire…The column of men on foot is led into a cage for people, fenced in with barbed wire, so makeshift as to be little more than symbolic, on temporary poles stuck into the ground. The Russian forces, many abandoning their weapons, fled in disorder, with huge numbers taken prisoner by the encircling Germans. Explore the Eastern Front battle that resulted in one of the greatest defeats of World War I, in which an entire Russian army was annihilated by German arms. Striking the Knights in the flank and rear, they began to drive them back. The battle began to turn in Jagiello and Vytautus' favor when the Lithuanian troops that had fled rallied and began to return to the field. Samsonov, his forces spread out along a front 60 miles long, was gradually pushing Scholtz back toward the AllensteinOsterode (OlsztynOstrda) line. The progress of the battle was as follows. The following day, the 2nd Army’s commander, General Alexander Samsonov, recognised that his force was completely surrounded and gave the order to withdraw – too late. As the battle raged, Jagiello's headquarters was attacked and he was nearly killed. The history of imperial Russia’s unfortunate participation in World War I is epitomized in the ignominious outcome of the Battle of Tannenberg. The fast-moving Germans, helped by the planning of Colonel Maximilian Hoffman and by the capture of two unencrypted messages revealing the Russians’ intentions, were able to encircle the 2nd Army before it could link up with the 1st.Ī huge German artillery assault on 27 August (14 August in the Russian calendar) was a major turning-point. The Russians launched a vast two-pronged attack on East Prussia using its 1st and 2nd Armies, but lacked the competence to complete it. The Battle of Tannenberg, less than a month into the war, was one of Russia’s greatest military disasters. ![]()
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