The World Crisis by Winston S. Churchill

Author:Winston S. Churchill [Winston, Churchill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-3154-1
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2013-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

After all these perturbations, alarums and excursions among the Germans, we must now return to the Russian side.

Rennenkampf and his Generals had been staggered by the Battle of Gumbinnen. They had felt the grip as it seemed of a terrible foe closing upon them. Suddenly, for no reason which they could perceive the grip had relaxed. The Germans had retreated; they had vanished completely away; they had abandoned the field leaving their dead and wounded behind. Where had they gone? That might be found out later. Why had they gone? There, was the mystery. But there was one explanation; an explanation gratifying to Russian sentiment, comforting to their highest hopes. The repulse, the heavy losses of Mackensen’s corps had communicated a panic to the German army. They knew they were beaten. They had accepted the fact that they were absolutely outnumbered by the might of Russia. They were retreating with all speed and preserving their forces for a struggle far inside their own country. A surge of intense relief and elation rose in the Russian Command. Henceforth they had beaten troops in front of them; troops who had not merely lost a battle, but thrown away a victory almost in their grasp; troops obeying an inexorable strategic compulsion to retreat.

Let us then sum up the consequences of Gumbinnen. It induced Prittwitz to break off the battle and propose a retirement to the Vistula. It provoked Moltke to supersede Prittwitz. It inspired Moltke to appoint Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and thereby set in motion the measureless consequences that followed from that decision. It procured from Hoffmann and the staff of the Eighth Army the swift and brilliant combination of movements which dictated the Battle of Tannenberg. It imparted to the Russian Command a confidence which was in no way justified. It gave them an utterly false conception of the character, condition and intentions of their enemy. It lured Jilinski to spur on Samsonov’s marching army. It lured Samsonov to deflect his advance more to the West and less to the North, i.e. farther away from Rennenkampf, in the hopes of a greater scoop-up of the defeated Germans. It persuaded Rennenkampf to dawdle for nearly three days on the battlefield in order to let Samsonov’s more ambitious movement gain its greatest effect, and it led Jilinski to acquiesce in his strategic inertia.

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