A personal and political rupture with Field Marshall Hindenburg during the 10 th anniversary of the Battle led to repressive measures against the “ Tannenbergbund” by the government. Ousted from the narrative and mythology of the event because of his involvement in the Nazi Party and the Beer Hall Putsch and his quarrels with the Bavarian Generals, Ludendorff tried to unite all paramilitary organizations under the “ Tannenbergbund”. The “völkisch” movement, in which General Ludendorff was heavily involved, made use of the symbolic capital acquired by way of the Battle of Tannenberg. East Prussia, cut off from the rest of the country by the Treaty of Versailles (which the Germans regarded as humiliating), became the embodiment of revanchist ideas and a symbol of the victorious military experience of 1914. Economic and political crises, the republican state’s lack of legitimacy, and the difficulty of establishing a democratic political culture led to the revival of military authoritarianism. Moreover, it gave birth to the fundamental concepts used by the enemies of Weimar democracy: the “ Dolchstosslegende” ('stab-in-the-back' myth), the concept of the 'Golden Age' of the Empire, and the desire for authoritarian state structures and military vengeance.The Tannenberg myth also had great significance for the ideological integration of German society during the Weimar Republic. Nonetheless, the use of the myth’s symbolic capital for political ends allowed for the preservation of the military values of Wilhelmian society during the transition to a republican form of government. The advent of the cult of Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) – who had been named together with Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) as head of the Third High Command in 1916 – contributed to the removal of Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859-1941) from the summit of political power and the establishment of a military dictatorship. In the context of World War One, Tannenberg was compensation for Germany’s defeat in the Battle of the Marne and the basis for the stabilization of the previously broken-down civil peace. Even though the Russian armies stood in East Prussia in August 1914, the Battle of Tannenberg avenged the German army of the old trauma and restored the legacy of the Teutons. In 1410 the Teutonic Order suffered a decisive defeat at Tannenberg against the alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Topographically closer to Allenstein, the battle was given its name for symbolic reasons. In the German Empire, the mythologizing of the events in East Prussia was aimed at forming the interconnected concepts of the Russian occupation and the triumph of German arms. It is this interpretation that has taken hold in contemporary Russian cultural memory, thanks to literary works and their nostalgia for a 'Lost Russia.' Tannenberg Myth in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich ↑ This end was served by mythologizing the old Russian army and the self-sacrificing heroism of the Russians in East Prussia in the name of their duty to the allied cause. After being defeated twice in WWI and the Civil War, the symbolic and conceptual world of the Russian officer class had been shaken and in need of a group identity in an alien cultural environment. The reinterpretation of the negative experience in East Prussia took on particular significance for the military personnel in the Russian émigré community. The leadership talent of the German generals was not considered a factor, the generals’ only achievement being the ability to exploit the situation on the ground. Military theorists doubted the independence of the decision-making of the Russian command, which had agreed to take on the thankless task of diverting the Germans from the French theatre of military action. Soviet military literature attributed the defeat on the Eastern Front not to the success of German armaments, but rather to the mediocrity of the Russian senior military leadership. In Soviet Russia, military theorists, particularly former imperial army officers serving the Bolsheviks or so-called 'war specialists,' studied the Battle of Tannenberg up until the eve of the Second World War in preparation for a new conflict.

The Tannenberg Myth in Soviet Russia and the Russian Émigré Community ↑

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