A round of red morning sun rises from the eastern sky, shining in thousands of ways, and the colorful glow is thin.

In the German front-line barracks in Frogenau, the commander of the Eighth Army, General Hindenburg, was sleeping on a marching bed, the sun shining through the window, casting a bright white halo on his face. Over time, the light had moved to his eyes; Hindenburg's brows furrowed slightly, and then he slowly opened his gray-blue eyes.

Wash up and dress and enjoy breakfast. At sunset, Hindenburg, dressed in an old Prussian military uniform in sea blue, slowly appeared in front of the command post. Seeing the unrubbed debris in the corner of the army commander's eye, Ludendorff was already surprised, while Hoffman next to him had his cheeks twitching, and his eyes were full of displeasure. In order to win the final victory of the battle, he and Ludendorff, Grüttner and others stayed up in this command post for a whole day and a night; As the supreme commander of the Eighth Army, Hindenburg went back to sleep on his own at the most critical moment of the battle! Thinking that his hard work had been so cheap for the old guy in front of him, young Hoffman felt a wave of anger in his heart.

"How's the battle going?" Hindenburg walked over to the map and asked.

Ludendorff glanced at the indignant Hoffmann and said, "After the last night of fighting, we have achieved complete victory: the Russian Second Army has completely ceased to exist, and the pattern of East Prussia has been completely reversed. At that moment, he gave him a detailed account of the pattern and statistics of Hindenburg's battles after he fell asleep.

It turned out that as early as the daytime battle on the 29th, the Russian officers and soldiers who were hungry and exhausted had lost all their combat effectiveness; And at night, the whole battle became a feast for the Germans to unilaterally slaughter and capture prisoners. Victory is in hand. The only concern of the Germans was how many Russian troops escaped from their encirclement. And at this point. François, who defied General Ludendorff's orders, played a huge role: the First Army, which began to advance towards the rear of the Russian Second Army on the 27th, played a huge role. All retreats of the Russian army to the south have been completely blocked. Countless Russian officers and soldiers who described it as withered plunged headlong into the German blockade and were forced to surrender when they lost all hope. By the time the sun rose again, there was no more gunfire on the 70-kilometer-long battlefield.

When asked what the results of the battle were, Ludendorff, who was still unwavering and looked like the reincarnation of Schlieffen, could no longer hold back the joy in his heart, and the smile on his face bloomed like a chrysanthemum, and he reported to Hindenburg the amazing results of the German army in an extremely excited and excited tone. Since the attack of Mackensen's headquarters on the 26th, the Germans have almost completely annihilated the entire Russian Second Army. Of the five corps of the Russian army, only 2,000 men of the 13th Army escaped from the encirclement. Only one officer of the imprisoned 15th Army fled back to Russia, and countless Russian troops, including the two corps commanders, became prisoners of the German army. The first to retreat on the two flanks of the Russian army, the First and Sixth Armies, fared slightly better, but their survivors combined were less than a division and a half; The other 23rd Army, with only about one brigade remaining. The Germans killed more than 70,000 Russian soldiers and captured 130,000 prisoners; When the German cooking cart with gruel boiled in a large iron bucket appeared in front of the prisoner of war camp, the Russian officers and soldiers, who had not eaten for at least three days, almost broke out into a riot that the Germans could not suppress. Having no idea that there would be so many prisoners, the German soldiers had to temporarily lend their steel helmets to them as bowls. Ten days after the end of the battle, the Germans took 80 trains to take them all to the rear.

In terms of spoils of war, the Germans plundered countless quantities of supplies. Because the Russian soldiers have long been tormented by hunger and exhaustion, they have lost their fighting spirit and are desperate to flee for their lives. Littering the baggage munitions that were in the way of the obstruction made the German troops who cleaned up the battlefield very rewarding. The Russian Second Army has a total of about 600 artillery pieces. More than 450 were captured by the Germans, many of which were 122 mm and 152 mm heavy howitzers, which were regarded as treasures in the Russian army. These heavy weapons that the Russians dug into the ground and looted were originally intended to play a decisive role in the Eastern Front against Germany, but now they have cheapened the Eighth Army for no reason and become the magic blades used by the German army against them. The horses captured are still being counted, but the German soldiers drove them in groups to the hastily erected stables.

In contrast, the triumphant Germans suffered very low losses: they suffered only 13,000 casualties in the four days of fighting for them, during which they were re-freed from the robes captured by the Russians. The exhaustion of the Russians from long distances turned what had been a close battle on paper into a one-sided crush; The Germans annihilated in one fell swoop, with almost no effort the Russian Grand Army, which had a total strength of more than one corps of troops. One of the wings of the Russian pincer offensive, which had been aggressive a few days ago, had been completely broken at this moment; Now the German Eighth Army was able to extricate itself from the danger of being attacked from the flanks and concentrate on the enemy of Lenningkamp.

There is no doubt that this unprecedented victory should be attributed to Ludendorff. It was he who single-handedly formulated and directed the implementation of this breathtaking art of warfare: the German army took advantage of the spatial distance of the internal line of operations and the advantages of rail transportation to quickly transfer a large number of main forces to the predetermined battlefield; At the same time, part of the force was used as a flank to contain and lengthen the enemy's flanks, and all the elites were gathered at the end of the day, and a fatal blow was dealt to the weakest flank of the Russian army. In the face of the extreme unfavorable situation of being attacked by the enemy on the back and only half of the enemy's troops, Ludendorff was able to keenly grasp this fleeting opportunity, and instantly turned the tables and turned defeat into victory; Its strategic vision is outstanding, its organization and planning are orderly and rigorous, and its tactical skills are sharp and sharp, and it can definitely be called the top existence of the military god!

In addition to Ludendorff, this great victory in adversity was also attributed to other German generals: Lieutenant Colonel Hoffmann, deputy chief of the operations department, who made the German army, which had suffered setbacks in the Battle of Combinan, one step ahead of schedule, and took the lead in putting forward the idea of attacking the Russian Second Army first, thus laying a solid theoretical foundation and implementation conditions for Ludendorff's plan. Thanks to Hindenburg, it was his composure that infected Ludendorff, enabling him to overcome his character flaws in a precarious situation and to bring his talents to the fullest. Thanks to Grütner, the logistics minister's conscientious work, the German army was able to ensure that the supplies were sufficient and orderly, whether it was a long-distance advance or a thunderous attack, and there was never a chaotic scene like the Russian army. Ludendorff's complete victory was also due to the commander of the First Army, François, who helped Ludendorff successfully complete the breakthrough of the Russian flank and achieve a complete encirclement of the entire Russian Second Army.

In addition to the reasons of the Germans themselves, their victory was due to the enemy. Thanks to the French, it was their urging that allowed Samsonov's army to run out of strength in the continuous high-intensity march; Thanks to the incompetent logistics of Russia, it was the astonishing confusion of their supply support that left this entire army group in a state of starvation from the first day of entering the German border, which greatly accelerated the collapse of the Russian army's combat effectiveness. Thanks to Leninkamp, it was his "fear of scaring the Germans away" that kept the Germans without worries and allowed them to calmly gather almost all their forces and storm another Russian unit.

Finally, and most importantly, the Germans owes their victory to a factor they had never thought of in their previous calculations – Russian telecommunications. The Russian army, which was severely lacking in ciphers, ciphers and communication wires, either simply encrypted the messages with the primary ciphers, or simply sent the messages in plain code, and these messages had almost no secrets in front of the trained German ciphers. Ludendorff has since relied on intercepted telecommunications. His intelligence officers collect telegrams on time during the day, decipher them or translate them directly, and deliver them to his desk at 11 o'clock every night. In the event of an occasional delay, Ludendorff would be restless and would go to the Signal Soldier's room to find out the cause. Hoffman later admitted that it was the intercepted telecommunications that really won the battle. "We have an ally," he said, "and that's the enemy." We know all the plans of the enemy. ”

By the time Ludendorff had finished describing the situation on the battlefield in detail, it was already close to noon. The midday sun was dazzling, illuminating the command post. Hindenburg carried his hands on his back, and his tall and broad body stood as majestically as a mountain; He glanced at the audience, and then spoke slowly in his majestic voice, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have won a great victory that will forever go down in history. I propose that the battle be named the Battle of Tannenberg in order to pay tribute to the soldiers of the Teutonic Order who died on this battlefield 500 years ago. ”

Hoffman looked up at this, his eyes full of surprise. In 1410, there was also a great battle between 40,000 Teutonic soldiers and 50,000 Polish, Lithuanian and Russian troops. The end result, however, was very different from today, as the Teutonic Order was completely annihilated, a wound that the Germans did not want to talk about for 500 years. If the battle could be named after Tannenberg, it would undoubtedly be a shame for the ancestors to lose a bloody defeat at the hands of the Russians. Hoffmann originally had this idea, but he didn't expect to be told in advance by Hindenburg! Looking at the commander of the group army in front of him, Hoffman's eyes showed solemnity for the first time. (To be continued......)

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