This Day in World War 1 History: AUGUST 26, 1914 : BATTLE OF TANNENBERG BEGINS

On August 26, 1914, the German 8th Army, under the leadership of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, strikes with lethal force against the advancing Russian 2nd Army, led by General Aleksandr Samsonov, in East Prussia during the opening weeks of the First World War.

In the middle of August 1914, much sooner than had been anticipated, Russia sent two armies into East Prussia, while Germany, according to its war strategy, had the bulk of its forces concentrated to the west, against France. The Russian 1st Army, under General Pavel Rennenkampf, advanced to the northeastern corner of East Prussia, while Samsonov’s 2nd Army made headway into the southwest, planning to join with Rennenkampf’s men and pin the outnumbered German 8th Army between them. After a Russian victory in the Battle of Gumbinnen on August 20, however, Rennenkampf paused to regroup his forces.

Meanwhile, change was afoot behind the German lines: Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff, chose to replace the previous leader, Maximilian von Prittwitz, after the latter issued a misguided order for a German retreat to the River Vistula, against the advice of his corps commanders. Hindenburg, a retired general of great stature, and Ludendorff, who had just led the German capture of the Belgian fortress of Liege, arrived in East Prussia and immediately authorized an aggressive counter-action against the Russians, previously planned by a senior staff officer in the region, Colonel Max Hoffmann.

Separated by the great Masurian Lakes, the two Russian armies were unable to effectively communicate with each other as to their movements, a circumstance that would prove deadly. Though Ludendorff succumbed to nerves initially, delaying the start of the German attack by one day, Hindenburg was able to calm his subordinate—not for the last time in what would become a fabled partnership. On August 26, after intercepting uuencoded wireless messages from both Samsonov and Rennenkampf, the Germans were able to take Samsonov’s army by surprise with the force of their attack near the village of Tannenberg, to the southwest of the Masurian Lakes. The delay in starting the attack had given Samsonov’s forces more time to advance deeper into the sack formed by the German divisions enveloping them from both sides, the strength of which Samsonov consistently underestimated. After three days of battering by German artillery, Samsonov’s troops began their retreat; more German forces cut off their path and a massive slaughter ensued. In the first hours of August 30, confronting the reality of his army’s collapse, Samsonov went into the forest, away from his staff, and shot himself.

In total, over 50,000 Russian soldiers were killed and some 92,000 taken as prisoners in the Battle of Tannenberg—named thus by the Germans in vengeful remembrance of the village, where in 1410 the Poles had defeated the Teutonic Knights. By the end of August, Russia’s ambitious advance in East Prussia in August 1914 had achieved at least one of its goals, albeit at a tremendous cost: two German corps had been removed from the Western to the Eastern Front in order to confront the Russian menace. Though the two corps had not arrived in time to play a role in the Battle of Tannenberg—which would remain the greatest German triumph of the war against Russia on the Eastern Front— they would also be unable to aid their comrades at the Battle of the Marne in early September, when German forces advancing towards Paris were decisively defeated by British and French troops in a crucial victory for the Allies.

Article Details:

August 26, 1914 : Battle of Tannenberg begins

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  August 26, 1914 : Battle of Tannenberg begins

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-tannenberg-begins

• Access Date

  August 26, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: AUGUST 25, 1914 : GERMANS BURN BELGIAN TOWN OF LOUVAIN

Over the course of five days, beginning August 25, 1914, German troops stationed in the Belgian village of Louvain during the opening month of World War I burn and loot much of the town, executing hundreds of civilians.

Located between Liege, the fortress town that saw heavy fighting during the first weeks of the German invasion, and the Belgian capital of Brussels, Louvain became the symbol, in the eyes of international public opinion, of the shockingly brutal nature of the German war machine. From the first days they crossed into Belgium, violating that small country’s neutrality on the way to invade France, German forces looted and destroyed much of the countryside and villages in their path, killing significant numbers of civilians, including women and children. These brutal actions, the Germans claimed, were in response to what they saw as an illegal civilian resistance to the German occupation, organized and promoted by the Belgian government and other community leaders—especially the Catholic Church—and carried out by irregular combatants or franc-tireurs (snipers, or free shooters) of the type that had participated in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71.

In reality this type of civilian resistance—despite being sanctioned by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which the Germans objected to—did not exist to any significant degree in Belgium during the German invasion, but was used as an excuse to justify the German pursuit of a theory of terror previously articulated by the enormously influential 19th-century Prussian military philosopher Karl von Clausewitz. According to Clausewitz, the civilian population of an enemy country should not be exempted from war, but in fact should be made to feel its effects, and be forced to put pressure on their government to surrender.

The burning of Louvain came on the heels of a massacre in the village of Dinant, near Liege, on August 23, in which the German soldiers had killed some 674 civilians on the orders of their corps commander. Two days later, the small but hardy Belgian army made a sudden sharp attack on the rear lines of the German 1st Army, commanded by General Alexander von Kluck, forcing the Germans to retreat in disorder to Louvain. In the confusion that followed, they would later claim, civilians had fired on the German soldiers or had fired from the village’s rooftops to send a signal to the Belgian army, or even to approaching French or British troops. The Belgians, by contrast, would claim the Germans had mistakenly fired on each other in the dark. Whatever happened did not matter: the Germans burned Louvain not to punish specific Belgian acts but to provide an example, before the world, of what happened to those who resisted mighty Germany.

Over the next five days, as Louvain and its buildings—including its renowned university and library, founded in 1426—burned, a great outcry grew in the international community, with refugees pouring out of the village and eyewitness accounts filling the foreign press. Richard Harding Davis, an American correspondent in Belgium, arrived at Louvain by troop train on August 27; his report later appeared in the New York Tribune under the headline GERMANS SACK LOUVAIN; WOMEN AND CLERGY SHOT. A wireless statement from Berlin issued by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the incidents, stating that “Louvain was punished by the destruction of the city.” The Allied press went crazy, with British editorials proclaiming “Treason to Civilization” and insisting the Germans had proved themselves descendants not of the great author Goethe but of the bloodthirsty Attila the Hun.

By war’s end, the Germans would kill some 5,521 civilians in Belgium (and 896 in France). Above all, German actions in Belgium were intended to demonstrate to the Allies that the German empire was a formidable power that should be submitted to, and that those resisting that power—whether soldier or civilian, belligerent or neutral—would be met with a force of total destruction. Ironically, for many in the Allied countries, and in the rest of the world as well, a different conclusion emerged from the flames of Louvain: Germany must be defeated at all costs, without compromise or settlement, because a German victory would mean the defeat of civilisation.

Article Details:

August 25, 1914 : Germans burn Belgian town of Louvain

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  August 25, 1914 : Germans burn Belgian town of Louvain

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-burn-belgian-town-of-louvain

• Access Date

  August 25, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: AUGUST 24, 1914 : POET ALAN SEEGER VOLUNTEERS IN FRENCH ARMY

On this day in 1914, the American poet Alan Seeger volunteers for service in the French Foreign Legion during the First World War.

Born in New York City in 1888, Seeger attended Harvard University, where his illustrious classmates in the Class of 1910 included the poet John Reed and the journalist Walter Lippmann. After living in New York writing poetry and working on the staff of the magazine American, edited by Reed, Seeger moved to Paris in 1912, where he lived on the Left Bank among a set of American expatriates until the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914.

On August 24 of that year, Seeger volunteered to serve as a private in the Foreign Legion of the French army. After training at Toulouse, his regiment was sent to the trenches of northern France, where to Seeger’s dismay they saw little actual combat. In a letter to theNew York Sunwritten in December 1914, Seeger voices his frustration with life in the trenches: “This style of warfare is extremely modern and for the artillerymen is doubtless very interesting, but for the poor common soldier it is anything but romantic. His role is simply to dig himself a hole in the ground and to keep hidden in it as tightly as possible. Continually under the fire of the opposing batteries, he is yet never allowed to get a glimpse of the enemy. Exposed to all the dangers of war, but with none of its enthusiasms or splendid élan [spirit], he is condemned to sit like an animal in its burrow and hear the shells whistle over his head and take their little daily toll from his comrades.”

Seeger finally got his chance in September 1915, with the launch of a major new Allied offensive in Champagne, France. While awaiting orders to go forward, Seeger wrote home of his uncontainable excitement: “I expect to march right up the Aisne borne on an irresistible élan. It will be the greatest moment of my life.” Although the offensive ultimately failed, Seeger’s dedication to the French army continued. His unit spent much of the rest of 1915 and early 1916 on reserve, and bronchitis kept him out of service for several months. During that period he wrote what would become his most famous poem, “Rendezvous with Death,” with its oft-quoted lines: I have a rendezvous with death/On some scarred slope or battered hill/When Spring comes round again this year/And the first meadow-flowers appear.

On July 5, 1916, Alan Seeger died during the massive Allied attack at the Somme River, after being mortally wounded by a barrage of six German machine guns during his unit’s costly but successful assault on the heavily fortified village of Belloy-en-Santerre, France.

Article Details:

August 24, 1914 : Poet Alan Seeger volunteers in French army

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  August 24, 1914 : Poet Alan Seeger volunteers in French army

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/poet-alan-seeger-volunteers-in-french-army

• Access Date

  August 24, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks