This episode again reveals the advantages and the disadvantages of the German insistence on individual initiative. Max Hoffmann was convinced that if the division had gone forward it would have enveloped the right flank of XV Corps without interference from XIII Corps. Walter Elze similarly blames Morgen for thwarting Hindenburg’s offensive designs in the north as François had in the south.47 On the other hand, by late afternoon of August 26, XIII Corps had reached Stabigotten and Allenstein. XV Corps extended its right as far as Grieslienen and Hohenstein.48 Had the 3rd Reserve Division followed orders it might indeed have walked into a trap. Under the best circumstances an encounter battle against superior forces in the broken, wooded country around Hohenstein would have been a risky business. Morgen preferred a solid shoulder to a broken neck. His decision, like François’, would be justified in the next twenty-four hours.
By the end of August 26 8th Army’s staff, Ludendorff in particular, was badly on edge. The army’s command post had been established east of Löbau, but its communications center remained in the larger town of Rastenburg. This reflected a problem that would recur time and again during World War I. Communications networks were just sufficiently developed to be frustrating. Like its Russian adversary, 8th Army was still heavily dependant on the ordinary peacetime telephone network, kept operating by civilian officials. Air reconnaissance and radio intelligence provided more strain than reassurance. A pilot from the army’s air detachment had reported around noon that strong Russian reinforcements were still detraining in Soldau and Mlawa. An intercepted radio message from that sector mentioned the arrival of a regiment of the Russian Guard. Perhaps this was the 3rd Guard Division, the other half of XXIII Corps. But perhaps it was the vanguard of the Russian Guard Corps, reported by German agents to have been sent to the Warsaw area. Not only had I Corps gained no ground, it seemed entirely possible that François’s delay had given the Russians a chance to start a flank attack of their own with some of the best troops in their army. The advance of XX Corps had gone well enough, but its units were badly mixed up and the men were tired. No reports at all had been received from the 3rd Reserve Division. Of XVII Corps and I Reserve Corps, army headquarters knew only that they were engaged in battle, and that Rennenkampf’s forward units had reached Gerdauen and Drengfurth in their rear—too close for comfort.49
The staff ate its evening meal in dead silence. Ludendorff had a habit of rolling bread crumbs at the table when he was concentrating or worrying. That night his hands never stopped. Suddenly he stood up and asked to speak privately with Hindenburg. The men left the room to a sudden buzz of speculation. All available intelligence indicated that Russians were advancing against the rear of both of 8th Army’s flanks. Two-o-clock-in-the-morning courage might be important for a field commander. For the 8th Army’s staff, the crucial time was early evening, when orders for the next day had to be issued. Should the army strengthen its rear against Rennenkampf and turn a flank guard towards Soldau? Should it abandon the hope of destroying the 2nd Army in order to save itself from possible destruction?
As Hindenburg’s memoirs grandiloquently put it, “Misgivings fill every heart; firm resolution yields to vacillation; doubts creep in where clear vision had hitherto prevailed.” It was generally accepted among the staff and command of 8th Army that these words were an oblique reference to Ludendorff’s temporary loss of confidence, leading to his urging that François’s attack, at least, be abandoned. Ludendorff’s reminiscences are silent on the subject. Hindenburg says only, “We overcame the inward crisis, adhered to our original intention, and turned in full strength to effect its realization.” Whether in public or in private, Hindenburg to the end of his life insisted that the commitment to continue the operations as they were originally conceived was a joint decision.50
This stand was complicated by the appearance in 1928 of Walter Elze’s Tannenberg. Elze, professor of military history at the University of Berlin, was a distinguished civilian scholar of operational history. His account of events at army headquarters implied that the chief of staff virtually collapsed in panic on the night of the 26th and had to be brought to reality by a stiff dose of Hindenburg’s common sense. Elze’s statement that Hindenburg had affirmed the accuracy of his interpretation in a personal conversation is credible given the close relationship between them, but was only written four months after Hindenburg’s death, and remains correspondingly unverifiable.51
Ludendorff reacted by denouncing Elze, Hindenburg, and anyone else remotely connected with the issue. Writing to Friedrich Wilhelm Förster, director of the Military Archives, he insisted that Elze’s book showed that the “establishment” was out to destroy his reputation. Ludendorff dismissed Förster’s explanation that Elze had no official standing as “the most unheard-of calumnies under the mask of good will,” and accused Elze of falsifying history under the influence of “Freemasons and unknown sources.”52
The best that can be ascertained from the tangle of charges and countercharges is that the original plan was left intact. It strains no possibilities to suggest that Ludendorff, a nervous and highly strung man, may have been temporarily overcome by stress. It is equally logical that Hindenburg was able to talk him out of it with limited effort. That, after all, was one of his functions as army commander. But at 8:30 p.m. an even better nerve tonic arrived at army headquarters—the day’s first message from Ostgruppe, the name given to the operational grouping of XVII and I Reserve Corps.
On August 25th Mackensen, senior officer of the two corps, had telegraphed Ludendorff requesting clarification of his mission. At 5:00 p.m. Ludendorff telephoned that a Russian corps was advancing on Bischofsburg. Ostgruppe was to attack at once.53 But it was first necessary to get to Bischofsburg. Both of Mackensen’s corps had been faced with increasing numbers of frightened civilians—too many to halt; too many to avoid. I Reserve Corps marched thirty kilometers on the 25th, much of it on sandy side roads. Its horses were beginning to drop in the traces from sickness and overwork. On the same day XVII Corps’s 36th Division had been forced by detours into a fifty-kilometer march over secondary roads in burning heat. The 35th Division had had an even longer march; both units were almost exhausted by nightfall. The German army’s company officers, like their counterparts everywhere in Europe, were expected to inspect their men’s feet regularly. This, however, was the kind of task all too easily neglected, whether by haughty Junkers contemptuous of such tasks or, more prosaically, by tired young men in shoulder straps overwhelmed with more obviously urgent burdens of command. The results could be seen limping along far into the night, trying to overtake their units while avoiding the field police.
In the 1st Battalion of the 36th Division’s 175th Infantry, three companies suffered an average loss of between one hundred and 120 stragglers—well over 50 percent of the men who began the march. The fourth did not report a single man falling out of ranks. This feat was credited to its captain, who manifested an unaristocratic concern for such mundane problems as blisters and soft corns.54
In the course of the 25th Mackensen and Below had arranged to cooperate in dealing with any Russians to their front. While Mackensen struck the enemy right, I Reserve Corps and the 6th Landwehr Brigade, which had joined Ostgruppe during the march south, would attack the left. Lake Dadey and Gross-Lautern Lake formed an effective geographic boundary between the corps sectors.