page_title: Paul von Hindenburg
section_title: Tannenberg
hierarchical_section_title: Paul von Hindenburg / World War I / 1914 / Tannenberg
caption_attribution_description: Paul von Hindenburg (left) and Erich Ludendorff. Painting by Professor Hugo Vogel.
context_page_description: Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, typically known simply as Paul von Hindenburg, was a German general and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany from 1925 until his death during the Weimar Republic. During his presidency, he played a key role in the Nazi Machtergreifung in January 1933 when, under pressure from advisers, he appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.
  Paul von Hindenburg was born on 2 October 1847 to a family of minor Prussian nobility in the province of Posen. Upon completing his education as a cadet, he enlisted in the Third Regiment of Foot Guards as a second lieutenant. Hindenburg thereafter saw combat during the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. In 1873, he was admitted to the prestigious Kriegsakademie in Berlin where he studied for 3 years before being appointed to the Army's General Staff Corps. Later in 1885, he was promoted to the rank of major and became a member of the Great General Staff. Following a five-year teaching stint at the Kriesgsacademie, Hindenburg steadily rose through the army's ranks to become a lieutenant-general by 1900.
context_section_description: Upon arriving at Marienberg in 23 August, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were met by members of the 8th Army's staff led by Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffmann, an expert on the Russian army. Hoffman informed them of his plans to shift part of the 8th Army south to attack the exposed left flank of the advancing Russian Second Army. Agreeing with Hoffman's strategy, Hindenburg authorized Ludendorff to transfer most of the 8th Army south while leaving only two cavalry brigades to face the Russian First Army in the north. In Hindenburg's words the line of soldiers defending Germany's border against was "thin, but not weak", because the men were defending their homes. If pushed too hard by the Second Army, he believed they would cede ground only gradually as German reinforcements continued to mass on the invading Russians' flanks before ultimately encircling and annihilating them. On the eve of the ensuing battle, Hindenburg reportedly strolled close to the decaying walls of the fortress of the Knights of Prussia, recalling how the Knights of Prussia were defeated by the Slavs in 1410 at nearby Tannenberg.
  On the night of 25 August Hindenburg told his staff, "Gentlemen, our preparations are so well in hand that we can sleep soundly tonight”. On the day of the battle, Hindenburg reportedly watched from a hilltop as his forces' weak center gradually gave ground until the sudden roar of German guns to his right heralded the surprise attack on the Russians' flanks. Ultimately, the battle resulted in the destruction of the Russian 2nd Army, with 92,000 Russians captured together with four hundred guns. while German casualties numbered only 14,000. According to British Field Marshal Edmund Ironside it was the "greatest defeat suffered by any of the combatants during the war". Recognizing the victory's propaganda value, Hindenburg suggested naming the battle "Tannenberg" as a way of "avenging" the defeat inflicted on the Order of the Teutonic Knights by the Polish and Lithuanian knights in 1410, even though it was fought nowhere near the field of Tannenberg.
  After this decisive victory Hindenburg repositioned the Eighth Army to face the Russian First Army. Hindenburg's tactics spurned head-on attacks all along the front in favor of schwerpunkts, sharp, localized hammer blows. Two schwerpunkts struck in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, from these breakthrough points two columns drove east to pocket the Russians led by General Paul von Rennenkampf, who managed to retreat 100 km (62 mi) with heavy losses. In the first six weeks of the war the Russians had lost more than 310,000 men. Eight hundred thousand refugees were able to return to their East Prussian homes, thanks to victories that strikingly contrasted with the bloody deadlock that characterized the Western Front following the failure of the Schlieffen Plan.
caption: Depiction of Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff at the battle of Tannenberg (painting by Hugo Vogel).
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