When the Russians come, not defense only, but offensive, offensive, offensive.

General Oberst Helmut von Moltke, chief of the General Staff Imperial German Army, pre-war, 1914.

Hey folks, welcome to the battles of the First World War podcasts and Tannenberg, part one, Eastern Promises.

We're venturing away from the Western Front and out to the Eastern Front.

This has been a generally new area for me, so there is a lot to learn and discuss.

So let's talk to Hannanburg.

If you are like me and your knowledge of the Eastern Front is fairly rudimentary,

you probably know that the Battle of Tannenberg was the first big battle between the Russians and the Germans,

and that the Germans won a smashing victory.

If you know a little about Tannenberg, you likely believe the same things

I've gone around believing for years. The Russian army, an army of an unlimited number of illiterate

peasants, was led by two field army commanders who hated each other, and they went to war with artillery wanting for shells.

The Russian First and Second armies were both routed by the German Eighth Army,

which was made up of super soldiers who were literally defending their homes.

The above, of course, is not entirely true,

and as usual, the truth is much more nuanced.

So let's get our hobnailed boots on the ground

out in German East Prussia,

Russian Poland, and Imperial Russia itself.

The weeks after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28th,

1914, saw the July crisis first simmer and then begin to rapidly boil before it all spilled over into the bloodshed of August.

In Tsar Nicholas's Russia, the imperial government was more focused on its own ever-roiling problems and internal discontent

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