What Was the Battle of Gumbinnen?
The Battle of Gumbinnen, fought on 20 August 1914, was the first major engagement of the Russian Imperial Army on the Eastern Front in the First World War. Near the East Prussian town of Gumbinnen (now Gusev in the Kaliningrad exclave), the Russian First Army under General Paul von Rennenkampf attacked the German Eighth Army commanded by General Maximilian von Prittwitz. The battle ended as a clear Russian tactical victory: the Germans were forced to abandon Gumbinnen and fall back.
The Russian success was, however, short-lived. Three days later, the German Eighth Army turned on the slower-moving Russian Second Army at Tannenberg, surrounded it, and effectively destroyed it. Together, Gumbinnen and Tannenberg set the pattern for the opening campaign in East Prussia: a tactical Russian success nullified by strategic failure.
Background
When the First World War opened in August 1914, the Russian Empire honoured its commitment to its French ally by invading East Prussia almost at once, even though the bulk of its forces were still mobilising. The invasion was carried out by two armies. The First Army, under the German-Baltic general Paul von Rennenkampf, was advancing from the east. The Second Army, under General Alexander Samsonov, was pushing south from East Prussia into the rear of the German forces.
The German Eighth Army under General Maximilian von Prittwitz was heavily outnumbered, with only about 150,000 men against the two Russian armies totalling some 250,000. The German command in East Prussia, already shaken by the news from the Western Front, was considering withdrawal behind the Vistula.
The battle
Rennenkampf attacked the German positions around Gumbinnen on the morning of 20 August. The German right was broken in hard fighting through the day, and by evening Prittwitz had ordered a general withdrawal. Russian casualties were heavier than the German — about 9,000 killed and wounded against some 5,000 — but the Germans had lost the field and abandoned Gumbinnen.
Rennenkampf was, however, slow to pursue. He halted his army for several days, partly to bring up supplies and partly through his own caution. The pause gave the German high command the chance to make a decision that would transform the campaign.
From Gumbinnen to Tannenberg
The day after the battle, the German high command replaced Prittwitz with the more aggressive Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. The new commanders, recognising that the Russian Second Army under Samsonov was now advancing into the southern part of East Prussia largely unsupported, ordered the German Eighth Army to turn on Samsonov and leave only a screening force facing Rennenkampf.
The result was the Battle of Tannenberg, 26-30 August 1914, in which Samsonov’s Second Army was surrounded and effectively destroyed. Samsonov, blaming himself for the disaster, killed himself on 30 August. The Russians lost some 30,000 dead and wounded and 90,000 captured, and the Second Army ceased to exist as a fighting force. Rennenkampf’s First Army was forced to retreat from East Prussia altogether.
The twin battles of Gumbinnen and Tannenberg together showed both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Russian Imperial Army in 1914. The Russian soldier fought well at the tactical level. The Russian high command, divided between two armies that could not cooperate effectively and led by generals of uneven ability, was unable to convert tactical success into strategic result.
The legacy of Gumbinnen
Gumbinnen is often overshadowed by Tannenberg, but it was the engagement that showed the Russian army of 1914 at its best: willing to attack, capable of taking heavy losses, and able to defeat a German army in the field. The lessons of 1914 — and the disasters of 1915 — were not learned in time to save the empire.
The town of Gumbinnen itself was renamed Gusev when the northern part of East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945, and is today in the Russian Kaliningrad exclave.