Ludendorff throughout his career found it difficult to grasp this point—not least because his early successes, at Liège and Tannenberg, were ultimately tactical. The concept behind his planning for the March offensives of 1918, that victory in the field would generate strategic success, was the product of four years’ belief that he never had been given quite enough resources to achieve the triumph glimmering over the horizon.53 In this sense, for all his native ability and general staff training, Ludendorff never rose beyond the level of an infantry colonel.
Nor must Falkenhayn’s concern for the western front be entirely dismissed. The allied offensives of 1915–16 bled, if they did not cripple, a German army already focussed on that theater. A reallocating of force for the benefit of the east generated corresponding risks, particularly given the complex structure of the German state. A Napoleon, a Stalin, even a Churchill or a Roosevelt, could take strategic risks impossible for a Bethmann or a Falkenhayn.
And this in turn suggests Germany’s fundamental failure in grand strategy. The German Empire had made no preparations for winning the war, as opposed to fighting it. Both Bethmann and Falkenhayn were sharply critical of what they regarded as Pan-German fantasies. They were also constrained to recognize the increasing domestic problems in concluding peace with Russia on the basis of a status quo ante helium. Austria’s weaknesses, demonstrated all too clearly in the first nine months of war, suggested to a broad spectrum of German opinion that Habsburg survival depended on tight German controclass="underline" not merely a customs union but sweeping Germanization, at least in Cisleithania. This would be accompanied by massive territorial gains for the Dual Alliance—Russian Poland and the Baltic states at a minimum. In this way the Slavic threat would be forever banished and German predominance at the heart of the continent secured.54
Germany’s diplomats spoke of “freeing Europe from Russian pressure,” and of “forming several buffer states” between Russia and her western neighbors.55 Exactly how this was to be done, no one was quite certain. From the war’s beginning the German foreign office was submerged in memoranda from people no one had ever heard of, guaranteeing revolts next week if only the Reich would pay the bills. The German embassy in Stockholm was charged with preparing an uprising in Finland. It replied that to make much impression on the Finns, the German navy must operate extensively in the eastern Baltic.56 The German consul in Lemberg reported that Ukranian nationalists were ready to set south Russia ablaze. All they needed was Germany’s moral and financial support.57
In theory the proposals were attractive, particularly in the first heady days of war. In practice they encountered snags. There were no ships available to inspire a Finnish rebellion. The German ambassador to Vienna supported the idea of a Ukranian insurrection. The only problem was that Germany had no direct contacts in that area. Any German initiatives were likely to generate friction with Austria, and the Habsburg government had its own ideas on the matter. The Ukraine, declared Berchtold, was in no way ready for autonomy.58 Revolution would create only anarchy. As for any Russian territory that might come under direct allied occupation, the Austrians proposed that they take “temporary” responsibility. After all, they had a large number of Polish and Ruthenian officials, and centuries of experience in dealing with touchy nationalities. “Naturally,” Germany could claim as much of White Russia and Russian Poland as it wished, but the issue was best settled after the fighting stopped.59
The increasing differences of opinion between the allies over what should ultimately be done with Eastern Europe precluded developing a coherent policy of what to do next month. Senior officials of the Prussian civil administration debated the merits of sending food across the prewar frontier to Russians who had worked in the Silesian mines until August. Generals said they “had no objections” to letting “Russian citizens of Polish nationality” continue to mine coal in Germany.60 It was all a far cry from both the subsequent compulsory mobilizations of labor in France and Belgium, and the cloud-castle dreams of German empires in the east. But precisely that lack of planning made the latter events possible—in the way that hot air ultimately fills a balloon.
The kinds of victories foreseen by German military and civil planners before 1914 demanded an enemy government not only willing to conclude peace, but able to enforce it as well. Lacking that, the Germans in any theater were all too likely to conquer themselves to destruction, dispersing their forces as they occupied and controlled Russian territory. The possibilities of organizing subjected territory to support a war of attrition remained undeveloped by 1918—not least because the Second Reich was not the Third. The general staff’s encouragement of revolution in Russia, culminating in the famous “trainload of plague germs,” reflected three years of failure to secure any kind of peace in the east, whether by victory or negotiation.
Epilogue
From 1914 to 1918 Tannenberg retained some links to diplomatic and military realities. Thereafter it moved increasingly into the realms of myth. This process reflected decision as well as accident. The Weimar Republic needed heroes; its critics required focal points for nostalgia. Tannenberg was one of the few points of common agreement. Most of the “battles” of 1914–18 had lasted for months, their phases distinguished only by official, artificially determined dates. Tannenberg was the only battle of World War I that could be directly compared with the great victories of history. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end, coming over a relatively short span of time. It was an undisputable victory, the only one of its kind Germany could show for four years of war.
Tannenberg as a rallying point had more practical political aspects as well. It had been won against a safe enemy—the vanished tsarist empire. Its glorification could hardly damage relations with a Soviet Russia that was already doing everything possible to separate itself from its history. Domestically the Versailles Treaty, by creating the Polish Corridor to the Baltic Sea, severed East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The Weimar Republic and the government of Prussia made corresponding efforts to reassure the inhabitants of that province that isolation did not mean abandonment. The East Prussians took pains to stress the continued importance of their roles as guardians of the Reich’s eastern border. Tannenberg became symbolic, particularly for the DNVP and the other nationalist groups that dominated postwar East Prussian politics. When Hindenburg, still in retirement, visited the province in 1922, the trip became a tour through the memories of 1914.
The Tannenberg mythology was further enhanced when Hindenburg ran for the presidency of the Weimar Republic in 1925. Whatever his feelings about the new order, his role as a symbol of German grandeur was a key feature of his campaign. The marshal was identified, not with 1915’s nameless victories in the middle of Russia, not with 1917’s stalemate in the west, or 1918’s collapse, but with the glory days of 1914—with Tannenberg.1
Such a victory needed a fitting monument. Germany’s veterans’ associations took the lead in raising funds and mobilizing support for a memorial, which they described as a symbol of defiance, an assertion of Germany’s continued presence in the east. Logically, and perhaps unfortunately, the Social Democrats and the trade unions refused to become involved in the project despite the presence on the battlefield of so many men from Social Democratic strongholds. In contrast to 1914, Tannenberg was left to the nationalists.
The design of the memorial itself was impressive. The architects, Johannes and Walter Krüger, took Stonehenge as their model. They envisaged not a monument to be observed from outside, but an enclosed space, an assembly area where rites could be performed. This owed something to ancient Nordic imagery. It also reflected the fact that the numbers involved in national celebrations were growing. The crowds to be expected on great occasions defied contemporary techniques of amplification; too many people at a traditional monument could neither hear nor see.