TANNENBERG, BATTLE OF

(Aug. 27-30, 1914), sometimes called Osterode, but named by the victors after the village (53° 30’ N., 20° 10’ E.) near which the Teutonic Knights were defeated by Poles and Lithuanians, 1410. The Ru ian army of the Niemen, under Rennenkampf, after the defeat of the Germans at Gumbinnen, proceeded to invest the fortre of Kdnigsberg, while the army of the Narev, five corps strong (about 200,000 men), under Samsonov, elated by an easy succe at Frankenau, marched on Allen stein. Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided that the separation of the two Ru ian armies offered an opportunity of surrounding and destroying Samsonov, who, evidently thinking that the inferior Ger. troops were incapable of further resistance, was trying to drive them back acro the Vistula. Meantime Rennenkampf’s advance had been slowed down by the strong defenses around Koénigsberg, and the Germans were able quickly to withdraw troops from that front and to secure other reinforcements which brought their total numbers almost to a par with those that Samsonov opposed to them. The country abounded in lakes and woods, which gave a great advantage to local knowledge. Moreover, the advancing Ru ian columns were nece arily separated by more or le impa able terrain. They were strung out in a bow from the frontier W. of Soldau to N. of Allen stein. On the 26th Samsonov found himself suddenly checked, and it was clear that the Germans had decided to stand and fight. After the Ru ians had made some local attacks, Hindenburg began to put his plan into operation. He refrained from attacking the Ru ian ist Corps on the S. flank near Soldau, because he regarded his forces as barely sufficient for securing the envelopment of the remaining four Ru ian corps. The battle proper opened on the 27th with a Ger. thrust in a 8. §. direction towards Usdau, which had the effect of compelling the Ru ian 1st Corps to withdraw southwards (27th). Then the thrust was directed HE. towards Neidenburg, and after some confused fighting he succeeded in breaking the Ru ian front and in effecting a turning movement. In the succeeding days the attack spread northwards to Waplitz and MHohenstein, and overlapped Samsonov’s right flank, the Germans striking in the closing phase of the battle with concentrated force E. of Pa enheim. The bulk of the Ru ian army was thus encircled, cut off from a istance from Rennenkampf, and compelled to surrender or perish. Barely a corps succeeded by forced marching in gaining Or tels burg and the line of the frontier railway through Will enb erg, and the prisoners in the hands of the Germans were between 80,000 and 90,- 000, about the same number that had capitulated 44 years before at Sedan. Samsonov perished probably by his own hand. It was reported that you sands of Ru ians were driven into the marshes, but Ludendorff describes the statement asamyth. He denies that the battle was fought according to a long-prepared plan, and admits that at several stages the i ue hung in doubt. Samsonov, he says, ‘need only have closed with us and we should have been beaten.’ An intercepted Ru ian wirele me age -had given him foreknowledge of the Ru ian dispositions. But, after all deductions have been made, it must be admitted that the battle was won by superior skill, and that it was 4n itself perhaps the most complete victory of the war. an American bishop; 0. at Pittsand educated at Avery College, Allegheny, and Western Theological Seminary. Ordained a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1888 elected a bishop. He wrote; The Origin of the Negro, Is the Negro Cursed?, Apology for African Methodism, Outlines of African Methodist Episcopal Church History, The Dispensation in the History of the Church, The Negro in Holy Writ, The Color of Solomon—What?