Forgotten Land (11 page)
Authors: Max Egremont
Just before midday on 12 September, the people of Tilsit heard shooting. German patrols were on the edge of the city, and after about two hours of fighting the Russians left across the Queen Luise Bridge before more German troops came from Memel, taking six thousand Russian prisoners, including General von Holmsen. Lesch changed the hotel’s name again, to the Königlicher Hof. Now, he wrote, ‘Tilsit was free.’ It was only then that its people heard of what had happened at Tannenberg.
The essence of the German plan of battle for Tannenberg was to concentrate the entire force of what was now Hindenburg and Ludendorff’s Eighth Army on Samsonov’s Second Army. For this to succeed it was vital that Rennenkampf’s First Army did not move south fast enough to come to Samsonov’s aid. Tannenberg became a battle of encirclement, with Samsonov’s position made worse by slow movement, poor communications, a chaotic supply system and Rennenkampf’s inertia.
It was decided that the battle should be fought in the area of Osterode and Hohenstein, to the west of Allenstein, with the Masurian lakes as protection on one side. The staff officer
Colonel Hoffmann suggested that General von François and his I Corps, who were facing Rennenkampf, be moved south-west by rail to meet Samsonov. On 22 August, German aviators reported that Rennenkampf’s First Army had stopped; the next day only one German cavalry division faced him, all the other units having moved south where Samsonov’s Second Army had been lured on by what seemed like success. A delay in attack by François, ignoring previous orders, let the Russians stumble further into the noose, changing what Ludendorff had conceived as a mere containment of the Russian advance into a massive defeat.
Colonel Hoffmann suggested that General von François and his I Corps, who were facing Rennenkampf, be moved south-west by rail to meet Samsonov. On 22 August, German aviators reported that Rennenkampf’s First Army had stopped; the next day only one German cavalry division faced him, all the other units having moved south where Samsonov’s Second Army had been lured on by what seemed like success. A delay in attack by François, ignoring previous orders, let the Russians stumble further into the noose, changing what Ludendorff had conceived as a mere containment of the Russian advance into a massive defeat.
On 27 August the Russians were in Allenstein, the largest town in that part of East Prussia, some of them thinking that it was Berlin. Leaving Neidenburg, Knox, still disconnected from the battle which had started, heard rumours that the German cavalry was moving into the outskirts of the town; in Mlava, on the other side of the frontier, people spoke of an imminent German attack and Knox’s night at Mlava was disturbed by convoys of the wounded rumbling over the cobblestones. The next day he was back in Neidenburg, hearing that Samsonov was some miles north-east of the town. Not until the night of 28 August, two days after the start of the battle, did Gilinsky, the Russian commander, order Rennenkampf to go to the help of the Second Army.
Knox saw the warning signs – the difficult wild country, the poor communications, the slow Russian pace, the inability to read captured German documents, chaotic arrangements for the wounded, bad map reading. The roads were thick with stragglers and lost units – and eventually he found the Russian commander sitting on the ground looking at maps, surrounded by his staff. Samsonov stood suddenly, ordering the Cossacks with Knox to give up their horses. Knox started to move away but Samsonov motioned him to stay. The Russian said that he must tell his ally that ‘the position was very critical’. Samsonov must remain with the army but Knox should go back to make his report. The General emphasized to the Englishman that ‘even if the worst happened, it would not affect the ultimate result of the war.’
Knox felt that the presence of a foreigner could only increase ‘the nerve strain,’ so he said goodbye to Samsonov and his officers, who rode off north-west on the Cossack horses, towards the changing front line. ‘The enemy has luck one day,’ they said to the Colonel. ‘We will have luck another.’ After an eighteen-hour car journey, Knox, accompanied by eight or ten Russian officers, crossed the frontier, reaching Ostrolenka, where he caught an early train to Warsaw, putting up at the luxurious Bristol Hotel, which was full of rumours of huge German losses.
Knox felt that the presence of a foreigner could only increase ‘the nerve strain,’ so he said goodbye to Samsonov and his officers, who rode off north-west on the Cossack horses, towards the changing front line. ‘The enemy has luck one day,’ they said to the Colonel. ‘We will have luck another.’ After an eighteen-hour car journey, Knox, accompanied by eight or ten Russian officers, crossed the frontier, reaching Ostrolenka, where he caught an early train to Warsaw, putting up at the luxurious Bristol Hotel, which was full of rumours of huge German losses.
The next day, 30 August, brought the truth: the Russians had been defeated. The battle was devastating, not least because at the start of the campaign Rennenkampf and Samsonov had had a great numerical advantage: two armies of thirty infantry and eight cavalry divisions against one German army of eleven infantry divisions and one cavalry, a difference made greater by the larger Russian divisions and the fact that the crack German forces were mostly in the west. Because contact was so bad between the Russian armies – and their progress so slow – the Germans could take on one of them (Samsonov’s Second Army) in isolation. There had remained the possibility, terrifying to the high-strung Ludendorff, that Rennenkampf might suddenly swing south to come to his colleague’s rescue.
The image of Hindenburg and Ludendorff directing victory came to include the winter campaigns of the next year, and remained powerful not only through the war but during the years of humiliation afterwards. In one imagined scene, Hindenburg stands in the snow, a Prussian spiked helmet on his head, binoculars in one hand, the other clutching his ceremonial sword. A ruined house and staff officers behind him, he wears a long grey-blue coat with red facings – an ornamental yet solid figure – and to his right, representing action alongside calm, Ludendorff looks through a two-pronged periscope. In the background, smoke rises from the destruction let loose by the barbarous defeated invader.
Another image has survived, near what was then the German town of Hohenstein and is now the Polish Olsztynek – a chivalrous
reminder of General Samsonov stumbling through the forest, tripping over branches and undergrowth, breathless from asthma, having told his Cossack escort to look after themselves. In the autumn of 1915, his body was found enveloped in a Cossack overcoat, buried in the dry sandy ground, the face framed by a long beard. He had shot himself rather than face humiliation. The Germans put the remains of their old enemy on a train, with military honours, and he was taken back through neutral Denmark and Sweden for burial in the Samsonov family mausoleum in southern Russia. In the silent Masurian woods, however, a small stone pyramid still stands, with an inscription in German: ‘General Samsonov, der Gegner Hindenburgs, gefallen in der Schlacht bei Tannenberg, 30 August 1914’ – General Samsonov, the opponent of Hindenburg, fallen in the battle of Tannenberg, 30 August 1914.
reminder of General Samsonov stumbling through the forest, tripping over branches and undergrowth, breathless from asthma, having told his Cossack escort to look after themselves. In the autumn of 1915, his body was found enveloped in a Cossack overcoat, buried in the dry sandy ground, the face framed by a long beard. He had shot himself rather than face humiliation. The Germans put the remains of their old enemy on a train, with military honours, and he was taken back through neutral Denmark and Sweden for burial in the Samsonov family mausoleum in southern Russia. In the silent Masurian woods, however, a small stone pyramid still stands, with an inscription in German: ‘General Samsonov, der Gegner Hindenburgs, gefallen in der Schlacht bei Tannenberg, 30 August 1914’ – General Samsonov, the opponent of Hindenburg, fallen in the battle of Tannenberg, 30 August 1914.
Tannenberg seemed to be a miracle – a symbol of deliverance. Even the name given to the battle – by Hoffmann or Ludendorff or Hindenburg, each of whom claimed to have chosen it – has a mythical dimension (this time of revenge) for it was from the East Prussian village of Tannenberg (now the Polish St
bark) that the German Orders had marched to fight the Polish-Lithuanian forces at Grunwald. In 1914, little fighting took place there but the name resonated after 1918 as a reminder of the victories in the east. The Russians claimed that the invasion of East Prussia had been a great act of altruism, to relieve the pressure on their French and British allies in the west. It is, as Knox observed, ridiculous to imagine that they set out to sacrifice so many troops and guns. But German anxiety led to reinforcements being sent from the western front before Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived in the east – two army corps and a cavalry division that depleted the German invasion force in northern France which soon stalled on the Marne.
bark) that the German Orders had marched to fight the Polish-Lithuanian forces at Grunwald. In 1914, little fighting took place there but the name resonated after 1918 as a reminder of the victories in the east. The Russians claimed that the invasion of East Prussia had been a great act of altruism, to relieve the pressure on their French and British allies in the west. It is, as Knox observed, ridiculous to imagine that they set out to sacrifice so many troops and guns. But German anxiety led to reinforcements being sent from the western front before Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived in the east – two army corps and a cavalry division that depleted the German invasion force in northern France which soon stalled on the Marne.Could the Germans have taken Paris and won the war in under two months if these reinforcements had stayed in the west? It’s impossible to prove because the scenario – of a quick victory
or quick defeat in France – is based on hypothesis and illusion. But what’s certain is that Tannenberg
was
a decisive victory, an immense propaganda triumph, taking attention from the western stalemate. Some fifty thousand Russians were killed, almost a hundred thousand taken prisoner, against German losses of some twenty thousand. Russian morale began its decline into despair that German tactical and technical superiority could ever be beaten. To Solzhenitsyn, the defeat was one of the ‘nodal points’ of history, through the German withdrawal of troops from the west (preventing the defeat of the French and the British), the enormous boost to morale that led to German hubristic certainty of a final victory and a quickening of the slide towards the 1917 revolution.
or quick defeat in France – is based on hypothesis and illusion. But what’s certain is that Tannenberg
was
a decisive victory, an immense propaganda triumph, taking attention from the western stalemate. Some fifty thousand Russians were killed, almost a hundred thousand taken prisoner, against German losses of some twenty thousand. Russian morale began its decline into despair that German tactical and technical superiority could ever be beaten. To Solzhenitsyn, the defeat was one of the ‘nodal points’ of history, through the German withdrawal of troops from the west (preventing the defeat of the French and the British), the enormous boost to morale that led to German hubristic certainty of a final victory and a quickening of the slide towards the 1917 revolution.
The battle made Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Seen as the saviours of the nation, they went on to become effectively military dictators in wartime Germany, pushing the Emperor and democratic politicians aside. Hindenburg in particular became totemic, a tribal symbol, with wooden statues of him put up throughout the country, people buying nails to hammer into them as contributions to the war effort. His face and his size – the immobile features, the hair
en brosse
in Prussian military style, the thick moustache curling up at its corners as if in defiance, the small, steady eyes, the solidity – comforted many anxious hearts.
en brosse
in Prussian military style, the thick moustache curling up at its corners as if in defiance, the small, steady eyes, the solidity – comforted many anxious hearts.
After Tannenberg, the Germans hoped for another quick victory, this time against Rennenkampf’s First Army – but a stalemate in September at the battle of the Masurian Lakes let Rennenkampf retreat over the frontier. Later that month the Russians counter-attacked, pushing the Germans back to their defensive positions on the River Angerap and the wide, natural barrier of the Masurian lakeland. But East Prussia now seemed safe. The refugees began to return from the west.
The symbolic has profound importance in this land. The red-brick fortress at Malbork (until 1945 the German Marienburg) once represented the power of the Teutonic Knights and is now enfolded with its history into the new Poland after brilliant post-war restoration. Further east, the nineteenth-century Prussian forts – symbolically reassuring rather than tactically useful – encircle the cracked, stained concrete of Kaliningrad’s attempted Soviet utopia.
The train going east from Gda
sk goes past the Malbork fortress, by the River Nogat. German voices come from the corridor outside the compartment where I’m sitting and I can hear five people – two women and three men – probably in their late twenties, obviously on holiday, using the old German names, as if on trains here fifty years ago: Marienburg, Marienwerder, Allenstein, Frauenburg, Elbing, Danzig, Königsberg. Will they drop the big one, say something shocking? I think that this would fit some deep idea of how things should be.
sk goes past the Malbork fortress, by the River Nogat. German voices come from the corridor outside the compartment where I’m sitting and I can hear five people – two women and three men – probably in their late twenties, obviously on holiday, using the old German names, as if on trains here fifty years ago: Marienburg, Marienwerder, Allenstein, Frauenburg, Elbing, Danzig, Königsberg. Will they drop the big one, say something shocking? I think that this would fit some deep idea of how things should be.They enter the compartment and sit down, still talking to each other, a man nodding at me. One of the women says that she came here last year with a friend and rode on hired bicycles from Marienwerder to the flat land by the river where on the other bank you can see the castle at Mewe (the Polish Gniew). The Poles had turned it into a hotel, she thinks (the others laugh), but you could see how strategic a site the place was. A man says the Knights wanted these places to be seen, like the crusader castles in Palestine; and as for that red brick, you can’t miss it. Red for
danger, I think. They get out at what they call Mohrungen (the Polish Mor
g), where the philosopher Herder was born.
danger, I think. They get out at what they call Mohrungen (the Polish Mor
g), where the philosopher Herder was born.In June 1902, William II, the last German Emperor, spoke at Marienburg about domination, evoking, in spite of his four million Polish subjects (‘our Poles’), the sword of the Orders in the strong fist to strike out at the Poles, to lash their insolence, to exterminate them. This odd but typical speech prompts images of men in white coats striding up to the rostrum to lead the frenzied monarch away to a waiting van. But that year, and in 1910, the Poles held nationalistic celebrations at Grunwald to commemorate the defeat of the Teutonic Knights in 1410. In Kraków, in July 1910, in Austrian Poland, which was more relaxed towards the nationalities than the German or Russian parts, a Grunwald memorial, paid for by the concert pianist Paderewski, was unveiled in front of a huge crowd. The Nazi invaders knocked it down in November 1939; since 1976, a copy, rebuilt with some of the original stone, has stood in its place.
In 1960, during the post-war communist years, a Polish film of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s nationalistic historical novel
Knight of the Cross
was released. A story of opposition to the Teutonic Knights and strongly anti-German (and therefore welcomed by the Soviets), it was seen by millions. The brutal German occupation of Poland during the Second World War, of which this film could seem symbolic, is deep in Polish national memory, but the hatred has faded. In 1999 Poland joined NATO; in 2004 it became a member of the European Union, of which Germany is the largest and richest state. The country now sees itself as part of the west; flights to Germany are full, German tourists are welcome, especially in the poor north-east – the old East Prussia – although perhaps among the old a slight unease remains.
Knight of the Cross
was released. A story of opposition to the Teutonic Knights and strongly anti-German (and therefore welcomed by the Soviets), it was seen by millions. The brutal German occupation of Poland during the Second World War, of which this film could seem symbolic, is deep in Polish national memory, but the hatred has faded. In 1999 Poland joined NATO; in 2004 it became a member of the European Union, of which Germany is the largest and richest state. The country now sees itself as part of the west; flights to Germany are full, German tourists are welcome, especially in the poor north-east – the old East Prussia – although perhaps among the old a slight unease remains.
Perhaps the role of these red-brick castles and churches and civic buildings now is to be memorials to a dead past, increasingly stately and harmless. Still overwhelmingly powerful, however, is a memorial made by an East Prussian that stands hundreds of miles to the west in what seems, compared to northern Poland,
a prosperous Belgian Flanders: Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture
The Grieving Parents
, put up near where her son Peter fell in September 1914.
a prosperous Belgian Flanders: Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture
The Grieving Parents
, put up near where her son Peter fell in September 1914.
Castle of the Teutonic Knights at Marienburg, now the Polish Malbork.
I’ve been to Ypres, or the Belgian Ieper, several times, always in winter – for sunlight and a country in leaf and flower seem wrong in what should be a place of enduring darkness. Certain landscapes are overshadowed by what happened or even by what was conceived there: Hitler’s beloved Bavarian Alps; the still empty centre of Kaliningrad; the death camps – Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka; the forests of Belarus, eastern Poland and Ukraine where the Soviets and the Germans killed millions; the Wolf’s Lair near K
trzyn (Rastenburg) in the old East Prussia, the Führer’s command post.
trzyn (Rastenburg) in the old East Prussia, the Führer’s command post.Ypres – and the land that stretches down through northern France, encompassing Arras, Lille and Amiens, the towns of the Somme – is also permanently marked, particularly for the British, who seem at times to be occupying it. The town itself has
advertisements for ‘Over the Top’ trench tours, there’s a Big Ben pub, English menus outside the cafés and restaurants and a British Grenadier English bookshop that sells books on the war and trench maps reprinted from the originals. Cars with British plates are parked in the square and move slowly along the tourist routes that take in the many Commonwealth war graves. The war in Ypres is the First World War – for in 1940 Belgium was quickly overrun by the Germans, with far less loss of life than twenty-six years before. Winston Churchill even suggested, soon after 1918, that Ypres should become British and left in ruins as a memorial to what Great Britain had sacrificed for it: an eccentric idea when the immediate reason for taking up arms in 1914 had been the defence of Belgium’s territorial integrity.
advertisements for ‘Over the Top’ trench tours, there’s a Big Ben pub, English menus outside the cafés and restaurants and a British Grenadier English bookshop that sells books on the war and trench maps reprinted from the originals. Cars with British plates are parked in the square and move slowly along the tourist routes that take in the many Commonwealth war graves. The war in Ypres is the First World War – for in 1940 Belgium was quickly overrun by the Germans, with far less loss of life than twenty-six years before. Winston Churchill even suggested, soon after 1918, that Ypres should become British and left in ruins as a memorial to what Great Britain had sacrificed for it: an eccentric idea when the immediate reason for taking up arms in 1914 had been the defence of Belgium’s territorial integrity.
The town is a neat, symmetrical place that was rebuilt in the 1920s after its almost total destruction, retaining its medieval street pattern and large square in the centre, dominated by the great cloth hall. Tourism is important to the local economy. Previously a centre for textile manufacturing, Ypres now struggles against competition from the Far East and agriculture employs fewer people each year, although you can still see the large, almost deformedly muscled, pale Belgian Blue beef cattle in the flat fields near the cemeteries. House prices are among the lowest in Belgium.
What draws the British back? Very many Germans were killed here, yet only 2.5 per cent of the visitors to the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres are German. Partly this is because, for the Germans and the French, worse tragedies happened elsewhere, in Alsace or Lorraine or at Verdun, in eastern France: places that have now become sites for ceremonies of symbolic Franco-German reconciliation. For the British, Ypres has the two or three battles that bear its name and, only twenty minutes away, the worst slaughter of all, Passchendaele. Only the Somme rivals it as a place of their dead.
Usually they come in groups – often in coach tours – whereas
Germans tend to arrive on their own or in couples or with their families, not more than two families together. Piet Chielens of the In Flanders Fields Museum says that there have been a few signs of hostility to Germans, from Belgians or British, but not many. Ypres is quieter than Arras or Amiens, more given over to memory of the First World War than those larger cities. At night in winter, when you walk through its streets of gabled grey stone buildings, a cough sounds as sharp as a rifle shot, the silence allowing the memory of innocence lost or killed, of British history transformed.
Germans tend to arrive on their own or in couples or with their families, not more than two families together. Piet Chielens of the In Flanders Fields Museum says that there have been a few signs of hostility to Germans, from Belgians or British, but not many. Ypres is quieter than Arras or Amiens, more given over to memory of the First World War than those larger cities. At night in winter, when you walk through its streets of gabled grey stone buildings, a cough sounds as sharp as a rifle shot, the silence allowing the memory of innocence lost or killed, of British history transformed.
The Belgians have recognized this by letting the British build St George’s Church, just off the main square, and the New Menin Gate at one of the entrances to the old city – where the Last Post is sounded every evening at sunset. Both were designed between the wars by the architect Reginald Blomfield – the church primly classical, a little dull, reminiscent of a quiet suburb; the Gate more grandiose, also classical, with an air of conquest. The poet Siegfried Sassoon loathed the pomposity of the New Menin Gate but Hitler admired it. Blomfield’s work survived the German occupation of Belgium in the Second World War.
The cemeteries also suffered little damage while the Germans controlled the area, from 1940 until 1945. The difference in their national atmospheres is very great, partly a contrast between defeat and victory. There is a calm nostalgia in the way that the British remember their dead – an evocation of tranquil country landscapes or a garden from which anything harsh has been removed. The neat lines of headstones – usually with a tall stone cross on the edge or sometimes among the graves – surround or stretch out from a pavilion of stone or brick that contains a book of remembrance. In the larger cemeteries there may be a colonnade similar to a cloister, appropriate for contemplation or contained grief. All this gives a sense of quiet, justifiable sacrifice, without anger.
There are many British cemeteries, some vast, others with only a few graves. The dead French were often repatriated; the
Germans did not encourage this for their own dead (although some rich families brought theirs home after the war), but the British insisted that all should be buried near where they had fallen. It is this that makes the huge cemetery at Tyn Cot, near the battlefield of Passchendaele, such a devastating witness to the slaughter of the late summer and autumn of 1917. Even here, though, there’s little sense of the despair and the endless loss and suffering revealed in Käthe Kollwitz’s extraordinary sculptures
The Grieving Parents
.
Germans did not encourage this for their own dead (although some rich families brought theirs home after the war), but the British insisted that all should be buried near where they had fallen. It is this that makes the huge cemetery at Tyn Cot, near the battlefield of Passchendaele, such a devastating witness to the slaughter of the late summer and autumn of 1917. Even here, though, there’s little sense of the despair and the endless loss and suffering revealed in Käthe Kollwitz’s extraordinary sculptures
The Grieving Parents
.
The British war graves are usually in open country, as if in unashamed possession – whereas the Germans occupy more enclosed spaces, tucked away. The British cemeteries let in sunlight; the German ones are thickly planted with oaks, sometimes with rhododendrons or pollarded limes, as at Langemarck, the scene in October 1914 of many young deaths. German nostalgia was not pastoral but focused on the romanticism of heroic deeds and victories that had made a recently unified nation. At Langemarck, a line of secular verse by Heinrich Lersch has been carved over the squat red-stone pavilion:
Germany must live
And so we must die.
And so we must die.
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