The transition from peace to war is a never-ending process of adjusting doctrine and practice to technology and methods. Strategic studies of the Tannenberg campaign frequently criticize both the Germans and the Russians for their apparently exaggerated concern with flank security. Time and again during World War I a few automatic weapons proved able to defeat or delay attacks from any direction, particularly in the crowded conditions of the western front, with its high ratio of bodies to space. But in August, 1914, neither troop commanders nor the men in the ranks had any way of knowing precisely how effective firepower was. The 45th Infantry’s machine-gun company, detached from its parent regiment to support the 3rd Brigade, dug its six Maxims into a gravel pit. For awhile they anchored part of the line. But decades of prewar training had deeply inculcated sensitivity to one’s flanks in officers. The rank-and-file infantryman of 1914 also needed time and experience before he would accept the rattle of his own machine guns as security for an exposed flank or a threatened rear. Even for veteran troops a sudden burst of fire from an unexpected direction can be disconcerting.
Even more disconcerting can be finding empty space in an ammunition pouch when reaching for a fresh clip of cartridges. The reluctance of nineteenth-century armies to adopt rapid-firing weapons on the grounds that they used too much ammunition has also been the subject of decades of ridicule. The men of the 3rd Brigade were not laughing. Under the impact of surprise, fire discipline vanished. Within minutes men, companies, and battalions were running out of ammunition, seeking supply wagons that had lost their way in the confusion, trying to borrow from more timorous or more provident neighbors. Orderly officers, sent forward now laden not with dispatches but with cartridges, often lost their way. A battalion of field howitzers from the 37th Artillery attempted to silence the Russian guns, but was itself outshot and overpowered. The regiment’s other battalion was pushed almost into the firing lines as a visible support and rallying point for the infantry. One battery became stuck in the boggy ground. The other two fired off their ammunition and then discovered the impossibility of bringing caissons forward across soft ground that the Russians by this time had perfectly ranged.
Shouts of “We’re surrounded!” and “Let’s get out!” drowned the orders and the whistles of the company officers. The brigadier rode forward to rally his command, found himself invisible and inaudible, and promptly rode back out of the melee. In the American Civil War it might have been called a skedaddle. Korean veterans would have spoken of bugout. German histories describe an “orderly retrograde movement.” In fact the 4th Grenadiers and the 44th Infantry fled for their lives to the woods north and east of Heinrichsdorf—a good mile from the first point of contact with the Russians. A good half of Falk’s division was temporarily out of action.6
The 3rd Brigade’s behavior on the morning of August 27 invites discussion of a more general point. Throughout the Tannenberg campaign, an unexpected fact recurred: active German formations, not reservists, did most of the serious running. This seems a paradox. While not composed of long-service professionals, the active regiments incorporated the cream of the German army: its youngest, fittest, best-trained rank and file. They were virgin soldiers, but so were the volunteer regiments of Dixmude and Langemarck or the British at the Somme. None of François’s regiments faced a challenge as stern as the 235th Reserve Infantry Regiment on October 21, 1914, or the Tyneside Irish Brigade on July 1, 1916. They broke under for lighter losses and far less immediate threats.
Part of the answer lies in the irrationality, at least in materialist terms, of the factors that make soldiers fight. War is essentially a network of conventionally defined actions. Even if human aggression is genetically determined, there is nothing natural about organized violence. The commitment of any soldier correspondingly depends on standards and attitudes that are cultivated and inculcated. Discipline, patriotism, comradeship, fear of alternatives—all involve arbitrary belief systems. All involve behavior undertaken for its own reasons. That behavior incorporates an implied contract. Military institutions stress the importance of honor, not for archaic, caste-determined reasons, but because ultimately any soldier will perform only to the point where his personal honor is satisfied. That point in turn depends heavily on his sense of the rules of the game, on his expectations. Completely inexperienced men, with no frame of reference for their situation, could and often did fight harder and longer than veterans because of their ignorance. Men with peacetime military service, on the other hand, had some idea of what they would be doing, which contributed to a sense of what they should be doing. When that sense was exceeded, the contract was broken and the soldiers went on strike.7
The 1st Division benefited from better luck and better management, despite the German artillery’s by now familiar tendency to drop shells on any likely looking target. One battalion escaped heavy casualties only when a bugler stood upright and walked forward into Russian rifle fire to signal the batteries of their mistake. He survived to wear his Iron Cross. Initially Russian small arms fire was heavy enough that the men in the German ranks nervously reminded each other that not every round finds a target. But Conta’s guns and the corps heavy howitzers, reinforced by an additional battalion from Thorn, made such good practice against the Russian trenches around Usdau that the infantry tended to hang back and let the gunners.
As the Germans slowly closed in on Usdau from the north and west, more and more Russian batteries, anxious for their own local security, limbered up and withdrew. The infantry followed—those who did not wave handkerchiefs or stick their bayonetted rifles in the sand as token of surrender. When the Germans entered Usdau around 11:00 a.m., they found only dead and dying Russians heaped in trenches destroyed by howitzer shells. The village was in flames, its streets littered with corpses of men and horses, their eyes bulging, then bursting from the heat. Anyone questioning the fate of Russian stragglers found his answer as the wind spread the smell of burning flesh from collapsed walls and blocked cellars.8
François’s pleasure at his victory was marred when at 10:55 a.m. he received a report of the 3rd Brigade’s retreat—a report that had been exaggerated into a rout of the whole 2nd Division. Simultaneously, the 5th Landwehr Brigade’s request for support arrived at corps headquarters. It seemed impossible to advance on Neidenburg until his flank was cleared. At 11:20 a.m., François informed 8th Army of his decision to turn the weight of his attack south and southeast. Ten minutes later Hindenburg and Ludendorff confirmed his decision.9