Tannenberg also created heroes. A German military historian once said that it would be possible to fill a room with generals who claimed the credit, particularly after 1918 when there was so little credit to go around.17 Even Prittwitz suggested that he was the real architect of victory by his decision to break off the retreat and turn south against Samsonov.18
A few candidates stand out from the pack. Winston Churchill’s history of the “unknown war” in the east was long a standard English account. He especially admired François as a man who knew how to win battles the wrong way while his superiors were losing them the right way. According to Churchill “the glory of Tannenberg must forever go to François” for his “rare combination” of prudence and audacity in his operations in the south. François showed “true soldierly genius” in twice acting on his justly founded convictions and defying Ludendorff to win a victory against orders.19 The validity of the conclusion is, however, called into question by substituting “Churchill” for “François” and “Gallipoli” for “Tannenberg.” The result is an autobiographical statement influenced by wish-fulfillment, as opposed to a detached historian’s analysis.
Max Hoffmann admired himself. He began modestly, proud that some of his ideas had found approval in the new operations plan. On September 9, 1914, he expressed surprise at getting the Iron Cross for his humble role behind a desk. One year later he was affirming that he deserved all the credit for the victory. By 1919 he told the English journalist Sefton Delmer that he was the sole initiator of the battle, and the savior of East Prussia. He was quoted as saying that after hearing people say that Hindenburg had won the battle of Tannenberg, he had ceased believing in the existence of Caesar and Hannibal. Another time, showing Hindenburg’s bed to some visitors to army headquarters, he allegedly said, “There is where the Field Marshal slept before the battle, that is where he slept after the battle, and that, my friends, is where he slept during the battle.”20
Max Hoffmann was always good copy. But his aphorisms do not deny the fact that Tannenberg produced only two real public figures. Ludendorff, with an Iron Cross to add to his Blue Max, reinforced his image as an archetype of the army’s “new man.” In general staff circles he was regarded from the beginning as the brains and the driving force behind Hindenburg. To junior staff officers like Adolf Tappen and Max Bauer, Ludendorff was something more. He was a man who understood not only modern war but modern society. Given a chance he could run Germany as efficiently as he did the 8th Army, and dispatch the Socialists as easily as the Russians. To many of his supporters Ludendorff’s image was of a man destined by intellect, character, and personality to a place outside the spotlight, but as the real wielder of power. Twenty years later his successors in uniform would dream of playing similar roles to Adolf Hitler.21
To some historians of Tannenberg, the battle would have been won had Paul von Hindenburg never been born. Critics suggested that his only contributions were the signing of the orders and the announcing of the victory. Because he was the “official” commander, he received an undeserved share of the glory. Hindenburg, not noted for his sharp wit, nevertheless provided the best answer. Since the battle was won, he once declared, many had won it, but “if it had been lost, I would have lost it alone.”22
The German people seemed to agree. Newly promoted to field marshal, decorated with the Pour le Mérite, Hindenburg became the subject of a wartime cottage industry. His photo dominated the illustrated press. His moustache was copied in hundreds of barber shops. War loans were promoted by allowing subscribers to drive nails into his wooden statue. The navy named a new battle cruiser after him. The Silesian industrial city of Zabrze was rebaptized in his name, becoming Hindenburg. So much Hindenburg memorabilia found its way onto the market that it remains possible for collectors to specialize in the category.
Hindenburg’s role as a public figure in part reflected the frustrations of the empire’s war correspondents and the newspapers employing them. The movements of journalists at the front were closely restricted, their reports rigidly and ponderously censored. The army had learned to distrust the press over the previous two decades, but had not yet developed a systematic interest in techniques of manipulating and controlling news. From the chief of staff down, the soldiers’ optimal approach to publicity involved telling the civilians when the war began, when it ended, and who won.23
As much to the point, World War I proved from its first days at least as confusing to its reporters as to its directors. Since the Crimea, the war correspondent had been an increasingly familiar part of the world’s battlefields. Men like William Howard Russell became public figures by virtue of their eyewitness analyses. The battles and campaigns they reported were on a scale small enough to facilitate overview and observation. One person, if energetic and assertive, could conceivably make sense of what was happening. The pace of events, even in South Africa or Manchuria, was slow enough to enable digestion and absorption.24 In 1914, battles followed each other so rapidly as to be indistinguishable. Casualty lists that would have meant the climax of a campaign became part of the weekly routine. Particularly on the western front, events that would in earlier wars have inspired poets were lost in the shuffle: the heroic and hopeless charge of a Bavarian cavalry brigade in Lorraine, or the hard-won victory of XVIII Reserve Corps over crack French colonial troops at Rossignol.
Tannenberg, on the contrary, was a natural publicity event. It had a suitably-heroic theme: defense of the homeland against heavy odds. It had a central figure who could be fleeted up to public recognition. And since 8th Army headquarters had no correspondents attached to it during the critical days of August, 1914, the process was not handicapped by any direct knowledge of awkward or uncomfortable facts.
For the first time in its history, Imperial Germany had a popular hero independent of the royal house. In any industrialized country the executive performs an important representational role. Individual or collective, president or first secretary, anointed monarch or revolutionary jefe, the leaders function as tribal totems, tutelary deities, symbols of what subjects, citizens, and followers wish to be, wish to see, and can be convinced or constrained to accept. Historically this role in the German states had been played by princes—not least because the small size of most of the traditional sovereign territories offered little scope for rival public figures. The foundation of the empire brought no significant change in this respect. Bismarck or Moltke may have symbolized the new Reich in foreign eyes. Domestically, however, that function was performed by William I, whose projected images of homely virtues and grandfatherly attitudes provided welcome relief to good citizens bewildered and often not a little alienated by the complexities of their new existence. William’s position was further reinforced, not so much by constitutional guarantees of his authority as by Moltke’s and Bismarck’s acceptance and internalization of their roles as the emperor’s faithful servants.