In a series of running battles in the forest, Varus' army, consisting of three Roman Legions (XVII, XVIII and XIX) and several thousand auxiliaries - a total of roughly 20,000 men - was destroyed. With the arrival of September, the time soon came for the Roman troops to return to their stations along the Rhine and as they marched westwards through the almost impenetrable Teutoburg Forest, Arminius sprang his trap. ![]() Throughout AD 8 and the early part of AD 9, Arminius used his position under the governor of Germania Inferior well, ostensibly promoting Rome whilst in reality welding the tribes together in an anti-Roman alliance, agreeing with his confederates that they would wait until the Roman garrison had moved to their summer quarters and then rise up against the invaders. Arminius, a young member of the Cheruscan tribe under the Roman Empire felt that Rome could be beaten in battle and that such a victory would guarantee the freedom of the Germans as a confederation of independent tribes, led by the Cheruscans, who would - in turn - be led by him. Casualties for the Germans stood at 14,000, while Russian casualties reached an estimated 122 to 170,000, including 50,000 killed in action and 92,000 made prisoners of war, making the Battle of Tannenberg, a bloody opening salvo in a war that would ultimately take the lives of 20 million people before its end.Osprey's study of one of the most important battles of the long-elasting Germanic Wars (113 BC - 439 AD). ![]() The Battle of Tannenberg would prove to be the biggest victory for Germany during the First World War, resulting in the near destruction of Russia’s 1st and 2nd armies. Realizing his army was in total collapse, Samsonov walked away from his field staff into a nearby forest, ending his life with a lone bullet to his head. The morning would prove to be a wholesale slaughter of trapped Russian forces, as they attempted to flee across open fields without sufficient ammunition. Russian RetreatĪfter three days of punishing assaults in sweltering summer heat, Samsonov gave the order for an all-out retreat from Prussia, running headlong into flanking German forces in the early hours of August 30th. Fought some 19 miles from the village of Tannenberg-a place where the Poles had defeated the Teutonic Knights some 500 years earlier-from August 26th to the 30th, German artillery pounded the Russian 2nd Army, mainly due to the Russian’s lack of ciphered communications between their 1st and 2nd armies. Instead, Eighth Army replacement commanders Paul von Hindenburg and his second in command, Erich Ludendorff set out to “annihilate” the Russian’s 2nd Army, which had advanced well in front of its communications and supply lines. In the middle of August, 1914, much sooner than the German’s anticipated, the Russian 1st Army led by Paul von Rennenkampf advanced into the northeastern corner of Prussia, while the Russian 2nd Army commanded by Alexander Samsonov advanced into southwestern Prussia, with plans to meet up for a combined flanking maneuver against the German eighth. During the opening weeks of World War One, Germany had amassed most of her forces along the Western Front-in accordance with Germany’s Schlieffen Plan to attack France-while Germany’s Eighth Army was tasked with defending the Eastern Front from an anticipated Russian invasion into Prussia.
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