#BATTLE OF TANNENBERG QUIZLET SERIES#

The two armies would take the Germans in a pincers. The Second Army railway ran from Warsaw, Poland, to the border 165 km (103 mi) southwest of Königsberg. The First Army would use the line that ran from Vilnus, Lithuania, to the border 136 km (85 mi) southeast of Königsberg. Consequently, its armies could be transported by rail only as far as the German border and could use Prussian railways only with captured locomotives and rolling stock. The railways ended at the border, as Russian trains operated on a different rail gauge than Western Europe. The Russians would rely on two of their three railways that ran up to the border each would provision an army. Somewhat east of the center of the province was the heavily fortified peninsula on which its capital Königsberg (Kaliningrad, Russia) was located. On the north was the Baltic and on the south was the border with Poland it was about 130 km (81 mi) wide. Despite their difficulties, the Russians promised the French that they would promptly engage the armies of Austria-Hungary in the south and on day 15 would invade German East Prussia.Įast Prussia was a vulnerable salient thrust into Russian territory, extending from the Vistula River in the west to the border with Lithuania in the east, a distance of roughly 190 km (120 mi). Russia intended to have 27 divisions at the front by day 15 and 52 by day 23, but it would take 60 days before 90 divisions were in action. Getting their men to the front would itself take time because of their relatively sparse and unreliable railway network (for example, three-quarters of the Russian railways were still single-tracked. Their Russian allies in the East would have a massive army, more than 95 divisions, but their mobilization would inevitably be slower.

If the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) joined in accordance with their Allied treaty, they would fill the left flank. The French army's Plan XVII at the outbreak of World War I involved swift mobilization followed by an immediate attack to drive the Germans from Alsace and Lorraine. Consolidation of the German Eighth Army.It brought high prestige to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his rising staff-officer Erich Ludendorff. The battle is particularly notable for fast rail movements by the Germans, enabling them to concentrate against each of the two Russian armies in turn, and also for the failure of the Russians to encode their radio messages.

#BATTLE OF TANNENBERG QUIZLET SERIES#

A series of follow-up battles ( First Masurian Lakes) destroyed most of the First Army as well and kept the Russians off balance until the spring of 1915. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army and the suicide of its commanding general, Alexander Samsonov. The Battle of Tannenberg was fought between Russia and Germany from 26–30 August 1914, during the first month of World War I.

Battle of tannenberg quizlet