This was remarkable because the German intercept service hardly existed, but signals intelligence gave Hindenburg a decisive advantage just by listening to Russian radio traffic. The battle was to prove the first military engagement where the emerging radio technology would play a decisive role. He appointed von Ludendorff as his chief of staff and made plans to fight the battle in a place called Tannenberg. A further telegraph message to 66-year-old General von Hindenburg brought him out of retirement to lead the Eighth Army he famously replied ‘Am Ready’ and immediately took command. A few years earlier it would have taken a messenger on horseback a week to deliver the news by a written despatch. Prittwitz was immediately sacked by telephone. The telephone network that the German government had installed a few years before was going to repay them handsomely. After the battle, Prittwitz exuded defeat and talked of retreat to Berlin in long telephone calls to his superior General von Moltke in his headquarters in Koblenz, over 1,000km away. Prittwitz had earlier fought the indecisive Battle of Gumbinnen against the advancing Russians, the outcome of which was to position the armies in a way that would decide the course of the future campaign. It was said that these two officers disliked each other but, for whatever reason, the fact is that they did not work well together. The Russians were divided into two armies: the First Army with 210,000 men was commanded by General von Rennenkampf and the Second Army with 206,000 men by cavalry General Samsonov. The Imperial Russian Army had 416,000 men and almost 1,300 guns in the field, twice the size of the German Eighth Army facing them, which mustered 166,000 men and 846 artillery pieces, commanded by General von Prittwitz und Gaffron. There would not have been the dreadful slaughter and suffering of the next four years and it is even possible that the Second World War would not have happened. An early Russian victory could have knocked Germany out of the war within weeks and the implications of this opportunity were immense if the Imperial Russian Army had advanced on Berlin then Germany would have had to admit defeat. They crossed the border and advanced well into East Prussia within days of war being declared and the way to Berlin was open. The High Command estimated that the Russians would need about six weeks to mobilise their immense army, but the Russians surprised everyone by going into action sooner than expected. The German strategy was to hold back the Imperial Russian Army using defensive tactics while seeking a swift decision over the French and British in the west. The majority of Germany’s troops were committed to the Schlieffen Plan, an offensive formulated by General Schlieffen, which planned to attack France by passing through Belgium. The German High Command’s nightmare was to be involved in a war on two fronts, but that is precisely what happened in 1914: they faced the Russians on their borders in the east and the French and British in the west. A German communications squad behind the Western front, setting up using a tandem bicycle power generator to power a light radio station, much later than the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg, in September of 1917.
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