If unfamiliar with Tannenberg, consider first scanning the relevant pages of John Keegan’s First World War. Solzhenitsyn captures all of it as only a Russian could. As a result, the outcome transcends what happened in the dense forests around those Masurian Lakes and indirectly contributed to four years of trench warfare in the west and directly to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Yet, the ill-advised and premature Russian attack on the home of the Junker class in East Prussia ultimately caused two German corps to be shifted from west to east. Russian tenacity and incredible bravery at regimental and battalion levels were consistently squandered by ill-informed, even cowardly senior commanders, exacerbated by inadequate artillery and nonexistent logistical support. Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and German corps commanders ran circles around them. Russian generals, particularly at corps level and above, owed their positions more to familiarity at court than demonstrated operational ability. Although most readers of this review are familiar with Russian performance at Tannenberg-ineffective tactical intelligence, woeful operational security (sending troop movement and position location information en clair), and lack of coordination between two massive armies-there is much more.Ĭareerism oozes from the pages.
BATTLE OF TANNENBERG 1914 SERIES
A series of follow-up battles destroyed the majority of the First Army as well, and. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army. It was fought by the Russian Second Army against the German Eighth Army between 26 August and 30 August 1914. Its great strength, however, lies in its dissection of military events at the operational level of war. The Battle of Tannenberg was an engagement between the Russian and the German Empires in the first days of World War I. The book has something for everyone, whether the reader’s interested in Russia’s tough peasant army, the seeds of revolution, or even intrigues in the Tsar’s court. The results proved that the Russians learned little from their 1905 debacle with Japan. A credible historical account of what would later become known as the Battle of Tannenberg, and Solzhenitsyn’s adroit use of the fictional Colonel Vorotyntsev give the reader marvelous insights into 19 th-century Russia’s foolhardy attempt to support a bleating ally and take on a 20 th-century army before it was ready to do so (and much earlier than von Schlieffen thought possible when he developed his famous plan). Solzhenitsyn masterfully captures the War’s opening events in East Prussia, using a blend of history and fiction to educate the reader on all levels of war: strategic, operational, and tactical.
Too often, our attention is drawn to faulty execution of Schlieffen’s plan and the ensuing stalemate a thousand miles to the west. 17 August 1914) was a career officer in the cavalry of the Imperial Russian Army and a general during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. Aleksndr Vasl’evi Samsnov 14 November O.S.
In August 1914, Alexander Solzhenitsyn provided a graphic account of the Great War’s pivotal first month on the Eastern Front. Aleksandr Vasilyevich Samsonov ( Russian:, tr.
0 kommentar(er)
