Tannenberg
Reserve Division was to be taken from Angerberg to the Allen-stein-Hohenstein front to reinforce the 20th Army Corps.
The line of lakes from Nikolaiken to Lotzen, which was only slightly fortified, was in our hands; only weak enemy forces had approached it.
General von Scholtz, commanding the 20th Army Corps, was in charge on the southern frontier of East Prussia, In the course of continuous engagements with the Russian Narew Army, under Samsonoff, he had concentrated around and to the east of Gilgenburg, his own divisions, the 7oth Landwehr Brigade (which was still under his command) and part of the garrisons of Thorn and the other Vistula fortresses. The enemy was pressing him very heavily.
We had to reckon with an advance of the two enemy armies on both sides of the chain of lakes. General von Moltke informed me that the 8th Army was proposing to evacuate the whole country east of the Vistula; only the fortresses were to retain their war garrisons and be defended. The 8th Army had no doubt adopted this plan in the expectation of a speedy decision in the West, when East Prussia could be reconquered with the help of reinforcements from the West and the invading Army driven back. This scheme had often been practised by Count von Schlieffen in strategical war-games. If the assumption was correct, the decision of the 8th Army to spare itself for later operations was sound.
It did not allow for the realities of war, nor did it take into account the immense responsibility of exposing part of one's country to invasion. The amount of suffering inflicted on countries that form the actual theatre of operations, even under the most humane conditions of warfare, has once more been brought home to humanity by this world war.
As events were shaping, retreat behind the Vistula would have spelt ruin. We should not have been able to hold the Vistula line against the numerically superior forces of the Russians, and it would certainly have been impossible for us to give direct help to the Austrians in September. Their collapse would certainly have followed. The situation, as I found it,
45