Featured White Papers
- Hosted CRM buyer's guide (Inside CRM)
- Enterprise PBX buyer's guide (VoIP-News)
- Webcast: Growing your business with CRM (BNET)
Content provided in partnership with
Victory myths and the battle of Tannenberg
Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Winter 2001 by Dubeski, Norman
Max Hoffmann was a German staff officer, a noted gourmand, and a dispenser of scathing anecdotes. Hoffmann saw an opportunity to defeat the 2nd Army, and he already had his plan in place by the time Ludendorff and Hindenburg arrived. Ludendorff agreed to the plan, and the battle started. However, Ludendorff started to panic and lose his nerve, thinking of the size of the gamble (Showalter:235 & 240). Not only could the 2nd Army defeat the German 8th Army on its own if things went badly for the Germans but, if the Ist Army moved forward to come to the aid of the 2nd Army, the entire German position would also be lost. It would not be the Russians that would be outflanked; it would be the Germans. Hoffmann reassured his superiors. He said that he knew a secret that would turn the battle in their favor. He told them an anecdote from his experiences as an observer in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Hoffmann said he knew that the Germans could concentrate their forces against one Russian army and then the other because the Russian generals hated each other and would not come to each other's aid. Ludendorff was reassured, the battle continued, and the Germans won.
The German 8th Army in East Prussia had suffered a crisis of confidence and then recovered. Ludendorff was known for being professional and competent, but here at Tannenberg he first manifested moments of near-hysterical rage and anxiety, a disorder which would reappear again in 1918 when he faced the prospect of impending defeat on the Western Front. Ludendorff's memoirs discreetly mentioned that he lost his nerve to such a degree that he could not later celebrate the victory (Ludendorff 1919:68).
For soldiers to fight effectively, they need a frame of reference and a stable set of cognitive assumptions (sometimes also called value-relations), and this is true for privates and generals alike. At Tannenberg, the Germans attempted to hold back the Russian centre with both regular and reserve divisions while their reinforcements arrived on the flanks. The German centre suffered considerable disarray in the severe fighting. It is vital to note the difference in responses of the regular German troops and their reserve divisions to the same unexpected situations. At Tannenberg, it was the trained regular troops who fled the enemy without orders (Showalter:254). There was also a mention of a whole elite battalion having fled in disorganization (Tuchman:338). The reserve troops were noted as willing to fight to the last man. The intensity of modern warfare was overwhelming. The regular troops, who could see that this was something beyond their expectations, felt they had acquitted themselves honorably, and so they withdrew. Their conception of honor was intact enough; it was their conception of war and their confidence in victory that were shaken. The reserve troops had not known what to expect, so they fought with fatalistic bravery. Perhaps it was this fatalism and naivete of these reserve troops that saved the entire German army at the early stage of the battle of Tannenberg. The officers had experienced a similar crisis as their troops. The German generals did not know what to expect because it was the beginning of a new kind of warfare and this was the first war that the German army had experienced since 1871. The unexpected will always happen in war, but each commander and each trooper must have consistent cognitive assumptions and keep a stable view of the world in order to deal with the unexpected and cope with all the chaos of battle.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Health
- AAACN Viewpoint
- ABNF Journal, The
- AIDS Treatment News
- AMAA Journal
- Aboriginal Nurse, The
- Adolescence
- Adolescent Psychiatry
- Advances in Skin & Wound Care
- Age and Ageing
- Alabama Nurse
- Alberta RN
- Alcohol Research & Health
- Alternative Medicine Review
- American Family Physician
- American Fitness
- Men's Fitness
- Psychology Today
- Shape
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »