Showalter provides an operational history of one of the most famous battles of history, and really the only battle of WWI with a clear beginning, middle, and end that was more about maneuver than attrition.
In brief, at the start of WWI in the east, the Russians invaded East Prussia. The German focus was on France and the battle in the west. The German 8th Army was meant to keep the Russians at bay until France was defeated and more forces could be brought east. Nevertheless, the German and Russian armies fought, and the Germans scored a huge victory, destroying most of the Russian 2nd Army and sending the invasion of Germany backwards. Barbara Tuchman gave a gripping (if brief) account of this battle in "The Guns of August." The battle itself is interesting because in 1914 there was an opportunity for maneuver, before the stalemate and trenches took over later.
Showalter does much to strip the battle of its halo of legend. Reconnaissance and lack of communication in this age before radio and the widespread use of radios certainly played a part. Showalter doesn't exactly make it clear, but it's hard to tell if there was any singular genius that led to the final outcome; there is no Napoleon or Montgomery here. Francois was certainly aggressive at all the right moments, but he did not oversee the entire battle like Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Too, how much Samsonov had to play in the Russian defeat isn't quite clear, either, and maybe that's the point. In the end, it often seems like these mass armies and their units were bumping into each other, or not and ending up in the right place in the right time. Showalter makes the point that the Russian soldiers were as strong and able as their German counterparts, but that Russian leadership was weaker, and perhaps more complacent in finding the enemy. The German leaders were a cut above, perhaps, but not by much. It was a stunning victory, but one that seemed to happen more by chance than design.
At the end of the book, Showalter delivers some strong chapters on the importance of the battle. In the context of WWI, the battle didn't defeat Russia; in fact, as Showalter relates, the Russians did an admirable job of saving the bulk of their army to fight later. Indeed, Showalter goes a little soft on the German failure to turn the victory into something bigger. After all, it was only after Lenin was returned to Russia that the Russians were removed; the Russians were not brought to collapse by military defeat alone. The Germans were focused on defeating France, or Great Britain, and on trying to use diplomacy to break up the Triple Entente. Tannenberg, in other words, failed to pay real dividends. Maybe that helps explains why the Germans, who in the end were defeated in WWI, needed to turn this singular victory into something larger than life. Showalter discusses the battle's importance to later German mythologizing, especially into the Third Reich era. The Germans built a totemic shrine near the battlefield. The Tannenberg motif of an army of reservists beating back the Russians from German land was used by the Germans right up to the end. Yet, it's notable that, across eras, the Germans were obsessed with these kinds of victories, but they learned only too late that stunning victories like Cannae, Sedan, Tannenberg, and even France in 1940 do not necessarily lead to a won war. In WWI and WWII, the Germans may have won themselves to defeat.
Showalter tells this story well enough. He gives a sense of what units were where, and we see the battle unfold step by step. Some colorful anecdotes from those at the front make this narrative lively at times, but not always. His diction at times is overly academic and some sentences simply ponderous. Some of the vacuous chapter headings give a sense of this; consider "Taking the Measure of Danger" or "The Province of Uncertainty," for example. The occasional foreign phrases and outre period references may indicate a desire of a young, self-conscious researcher trying to raise the subject matter of mere military history to something more scholarly and serious. In any event, the diction and overwrought prose sometimes gets in the way of clear meaning, and make the work tedious to read at times.
The maps are adequate and help follow the action, although more of them would be welcome. It seemed like a battle book like this deserved something like I'm used to seeing from Napoleonic or American Civil War battles, with troop positions at specific hours; in any event, don't expect that level of detail here. While he does an admirable historian's job of providing an even-handed account of the battle, the sources and the narrative are slightly stronger from a research standpoint for the German side. The use of German-language sources indicate a preference for sources in that language, rather than Russian. A book focused on the battle that uses more Russian-language archival sources would be interesting and provide a much-needed upgrade to this work. Who will be the David Glantz of WWI of the Eastern Front remains to be seen. Until then, Showalter's work will suffice.
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