The History Book Club discussion

This is the thread to discuss the Battles of the Masurian Lakes (1914 was the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes).

One book which discusses World War I and is a good book:

by John Keegan

Source: First World War.com

Here is the url so that you can click on all of the links referenced.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/...

Battles - The First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, 1914

Conducted between 9-14 September 1914, the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (of two, the second in February 1915) was the second victory of the war by the Germans over the Russian army, the first occurring at Tannenberg in late August.

Having successfully dealt with the Russian Second Army, commanded by Samsonov, at Tannenberg, Paul von Hindenburg's Eighth Army - comprising 21 divisions, 18 of infantry, 3 of cavalry - turned their attention to the Russian First Army, commanded by Rennenkampf. These two armies had been deployed as two arms of a pincer movement intended to snap up Hindenburg's forces in East Prussia. With one arm of the pincer broken, Hindenburg determined to neutralise the other in short order.

Hindenburg aimed to encircle Rennenkampf by breaking through a weak flank of the latter's southern corps who had belatedly moved south to support the Second Army at Tannenberg and who had become somewhat separated from the main body in the west (who had remained passive during the earlier battle).

Rennenkampf's army was presently moving through the Insterburg Gap between Konigsberg and the Masurian Lakes. However, upon receiving news of the Second Army's defeat, Rennenkampf ordered his forces to retreat to a firmer position extending from the Baltic south-east to Angerburg.

A preliminary German attack began on 7 September, lasting two days, launched from either side of the southern lakes, its aim being to push the Russians up towards the coast. Heavily outnumbered 3-to-1, the Russian forces dispersed, and the German advance continued northwards in pursuit of the main body of the Russian army.

Rennenkampf, who feared being outflanked, consequently authorised a further orderly withdrawal on 9 September, simultaneously ordering a counter-strike at the Germans by two divisions so as to hold up the German advance whilst his men pulled back.

In this Rennenkampf was successful, although with the retreat of his forces East Prussia had been cleared of all Russian troops by 13 September. Furthermore, Russian casualties during the battle were high: 125,000 compared to the German figure of at most 40,000, although the Germans could ill-afford such high losses in the east.

Yakov Zhilinski, the army group commander responsible for the Russian plan of invasion, was dismissed as a consequence of the Russian army's perceived poor performance.

The action had resulted in two defeats of the Russian army, and largely removed any threat to German forces stationed in East Prussia, although a Russian counter-attack from 25-28 September (the Battle of the Niemen) forced a German retreat back to the border and resulted in the Russian army retaking much of the ground lost in the First Masurian battle.

As a consequence of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes - although the former battle was a much clearer cut victory than the second - Hindenburg was hailed as a hero in Germany, subsequently succeeding Falkenhayn as Chief of the German Staff in late summer 1916.

Despite Hindenburg's fame at home, his Chief of Staff, Erich Ludendorff, was the chief architect of these, and future, Hindenburg victories. He followed Hindenburg to Berlin as his quartermaster general upon Hindenburg's promotion to Army Chief of Staff.

Click here and here to view maps charting the course of the battle.

First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 1914)

The First Battle of the Masurian Lakes was a German offensive in the Eastern Front during the early stages of World War I. It pushed the Russian First Army back across its entire front, eventually ejecting it from Germany in disarray. Further progress was hampered by the arrival of the Russian Tenth Army on the Germans' left flank. Although not as devastating as the Battle of Tannenberg that took place a week earlier, the battle nevertheless upset the Russian plans into the spring of 1915.

Source: Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ba...

Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (February 1915)

The Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes, also known as the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes, was the northern part of the Central Powers' offensive on the Eastern Front in the winter of 1915. The offensive was intended to advance beyond the Vistula River and perhaps knock Russia out of the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_B...

These memoirs by one of Germany's great military leaders includes descriptions of the Battles of the Masurian Lakes.

Ludendorff's Own Story: August 1914 - Novemeber 1918.

by General Erich Von Ludendorff (no photo)

Synopsis

Ludendorff's 1918-1919 account of "those deeds of the German people and their army with which my name will for all time be associated," detailing the campaigns in which he participated as Chief of the General Staff at Tannenberg, Poland, and Kovno, and in his position as the first Quartermaster-General of the German Army. The book presents essential material on how and why the Germans continued to prosecute the war, and, especially in the second volume, what happened on the battlefields in 1917 and 1918.

Thanks Jill - way to go.

Books on some of these battles are really hard to find if they exist at all.

English-language ones, at any rate. Most general histories usually mention it, though.

That's why I put up Ludendorff's book. It is mentioned in there.

by General Erich Von Ludendorff (no photo)

Battle of Masurian Lakes

The Battle of Masurian Lakes was fought in September 1914. Masurian Lakes was the second defeat for the Russian Army in World War One at the hands of the German army - the previous month had seen the destruction of the Russian Second Army at the Battle of Tannenburg.

Just as Ludendorff and Hindenburg had seen off Samsonov at Tannenburg, they wanted the second part of what had been intended as a Russian pincer movement in East Prussia defeated - Rennenkampf's Russian First Army. With Samsonov's Second Army defeated, Rennenkampf was in a much weaker position in East Prussia. If Rennenkampf's force was taken out, then Germany's eastern border was much more secure from attack and the potential existed to transfer men to the Western Front.

The battle at the Masurian Lakes was not as one-sided as Tannenburg had been. The Germans started their attack on September 7th 1914. By September 9th, Rennenkampf, his army outnumbered by 3 to 1, ordered an orderly withdrawal. Two divisions were left behind to slow down the German advance and to allow the Russians the opportunity to withdraw unhindered.

By September 13th, Rennenkampf had achieved this orderly withdrawal but Russia had pulled all of her troops out of East Prussia. However, Rennenkampf had the semblance of his army left - unlike the Russian Second Army. Despite Rennenkampf's success in withdrawing his men from Prussia, the battle at Masurian Lakes still cost the Russian First Army 125,000 men and 150 artillery guns. The Germans lost 40,000 men.

The success of the Battle of Masurian Lakes, coming so soon after Tannenburg, did a great deal to raise even further the profile of Hindenburg and Ludendorff in Germany.

Source: History Learning Site



Source: Wikipedia

Leveraging Operational Intelligence: The Battle of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes.

by Naval War College (no photo)

Synopsis:

A commander's ability to leverage operational intelligence remains a cornerstone for managing the uncertainty, fog, and friction of war in this era of seemingly endless advances in battlefield awareness and information dominance. Operational intelligence, properly understood and utilized, can become a force multiplier maximizing traditional operational art factors. The goal is information superiority thereby increasing the speed at which decisions are made, while preempting enemy choices and courses of action. The challenge for the intelligence practitioner is not new. Indeed, WWI provides insights into how contemporary military commanders resemble their counterparts from nearly a century ago.

The Battle of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes, Russia's 1914 thrust into east Prussia as an opening salvo of WWI, was a disastrous defeat for Moscow due to German masterful leveraging of operational intelligence. German exploitation of intelligence from Signals, Human, and Imagery vis-à-vis aircraft observation, enabled them to crush the Czar's forces. The story of Tannenberg is a showcase of German successes to gain intelligence about the enemy while denying the Russians the same opportunity. Moreover, German commanders remained receptive and flexible, rapidly incorporating operational intelligence into tactical decision making. The reverse was true for the Russians.

Operational intelligence, and the courage and flexibility to incorporate it into tactical and strategic plans, can help commanders manage the enigmatics of war. It worked for the German army in 1914 and can work on today's technologically advanced battlefield.

Still no regular
monograph on the Masurian lakes specifically :-(

I know, Dimitri.....books/monographs on some of the battles of World War I are sometimes difficult to find....but we keep trying!!!

Although this book gives us an overview of the Russian Army during the war, it concentrates on the terrible losses at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes.

The Russian Army in the Great War

by David R. Stone

Synopsis:

A full century later, our picture of World War I remains one of wholesale, pointless slaughter in the trenches of the Western front. Expanding our focus to the Eastern front, as David R. Stone does in this masterly work, fundamentally alters and clarifies that picture. A thorough, and thoroughly readable, history of the Russian front during the First World War, this book corrects widespread misperceptions of the Russian Army and the war in the east even as it deepens and extends our understanding of the broader conflict.
Of the four empires at war by the end of 1914 the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German, and Russian none survived. But specific political, social, and economic weaknesses shaped the way Russia collapsed and returned as a radically new Soviet regime. It is this context that Stone's work provides, that gives readers a more judicious view of Russia's war on the home front as well as on the front lines. One key and fateful difference in the Russian experience emerges here: its failure to systematically and comprehensively reorganize its society for war, while the three westernmost powers embarked on programs of total mobilization.
Context is also vital to understanding the particular rhythm of the war in the east. Drawing on recent and newly available scholarship in Russian and in English, Stone offers a nuanced account of Russia's military operations, concentrating on the uninterrupted sequence of campaigns in the first 18 months of war. The eastern empires' race to collapse underlines the critical importance of contingency in the complete story of World War I. Precisely when and how Russia lost the war was influenced by the structural strengths and weaknesses of its social and economic system, but also by the outcome of events on the battlefield. By bringing these events into focus, and putting them into context, this book corrects and enriches our picture of World War I, and of the true strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and successes of the Russian Army in the Great War."

The military life of the winner of the battle of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes

Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism

by William J. Astore (no photo)

Synopsis:

With his victory over the Russian army at the battle of Tannenberg in August 1914, Paul von Hindenburg became a war hero. By 1916 he had parlayed an exaggerated reputation for decisive victory into near dictatorial powers. After Germany’s defeat at Verdun and War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn’s dismissal in late 1916, Hindenburg, along with his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, took over strategic direction of the war. The eponymous Hindenburg Program attempted with some success to mobilize Germany’s economy for war. He also oversaw many of Germany’s most important wartime decisions, including the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, Bethmann Hollweg’s dismissal as chancellor, Russia’s defeat and negotiation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the “Ludendorff Offensives” of 1918, which sought decisive victory on the Western Front but ended in Germany’s catastrophic defeat. After the war, Hindenburg played a crucial role in creating the Dolchstosslegende (the myth that the German Army had been “stabbed in the back” by a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy on the homefront), in leading Germany as president of the Weimar Republic, and, most tragically, in acquiescing to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

Another fine volume in a series that distils a ton of academic literature into an easy-to-memorize short biography, with an appropriate focus on the Great War.

You will get a kick out of this short film, obviously made as a school project, about the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. The girls did a nice job but one of the pictures is actually of WWII soldiers.......otherwise it is simplistic and tells the tale. I hope they got a good grade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brj3j...

I tried to watch this but it wouldn't play.

Something is going on with your connection as mine are playing just fine. Are you using the app?

Good news. My connection worked today. BTW, you're right about the one picture being WWII. :)

Great discussion Jill, Betsy, Dimitri.

Jill thank you for updating the First World War threads and sparking a great back and forth.

Here is a picture of the German lines at the Battle of Masurian Lakes, in which the Russian Army was crushed with a mind boggling 300,000 casualties.



(Source: mentalfloss)

The Great War

by Paul Von Hindenberg (no photo)

Synopsis:

In August 1914, von Hindenburg defeated the Russians at Tannenburg, overcoming a much larger enemy force. He was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the German armies in the East, where he achieved a number of significant victories, most notably at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

Much of this success has been put down to the brilliance of his chief-of-staff, Erich Ludendorff, who served as von Hindenburg's deputy throughout the war. These victories on the Eastern Front caused von Hindenburg to become a cult figure in Germany, where he was seen as the perfect embodiment of Germanic strength and moral decency.

Wooden statues of von Hindenburg were built all over Germany, onto which people nailed money and cheques for war bonds. The Great War gives unparalleled insight into German military thinking during World War I, and offers the rare perspective of one of Germany's most senior military figures. This is the first edition of von Hindenburg's memoirs in more than fifty years.

About the Author:

Paul von Hindenburg, the son of Prussian aristocrats, was educated at the Wahlstatt and Berlin cadet schools, before joining the army in 1865. He fought in the Battle of Königgrätz and in the Franco-Prussian War, and was promoted to the rank of general. Von Hindenburg retired from the army in 1911, but returned to service at the outbreak of World War I. In August 1914, Von Hindenburg defeated the Russians at Tannenburg, overcoming a much larger enemy force. He was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the German armies in the East, where he achieved a number of significant victories, most notably at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Much of this success has been put down to the brilliance of his chief-of-staff, Erich Ludendorff, who served as von Hindenburg's deputy throughout the war. These victories on the Eastern Front caused von Hindenburg to become a cult figure in Germany, where he was seen as the perfect embodiment of Germanic strength and moral decency. Wooden statues of von Hindenburg were built all over Germany, onto which people nailed money and cheques for war bonds. The Great War gives unparalleled insight into German military thinking during World War I, and offers the rare perspective of one of Germany's most senior military figures. This is the first edition of von Hindenburg's memoirs in more than fifty years. --Larry Petersen