As the various forces mobilized, Samsonov was
named as one of the commanders of the antiquated and
ill-equipped Russian army. The war quickly broke down
to two fronts: the western front, in eastern France, where
the Allies of Britain and France quickly became bogged
down against the Germans; and the eastern front, where
Russia fought a series of bloody battles with Germany.
In an attempt to force more German troops to the
eastern front to relieve the Allied forces on the western
front, Samsonov pushed his army into eastern Prussia.
There, his unprepared forces were confronted by the far
superior German forces led by Paul von hindenburg
at Tannenberg (24–31 August 1914), about 110 miles
northwest of present-day Warsaw. Historian George
Bruce writes of this battle:
The Russians invaded East Prussia in August
1914 at the request of the French, and drove the
Germans from Gumbinnen and Insterburg, in
the north. General Heinrich von Prittwitz was
superceded by General Hindenburg. Meantime,
a gap had grown between General [Paul] ren-
nenkamPf’s 1st Russian Army in the north and
General Samsonov’s in the south. The Germans
moved their force southwest by rail to exploit this
by attacking General Samsonov’s force, whose
exact dispositions they had learned through un-
coded radio messages. General [Hermann] von
François encircled the Russian left on August
28, [Karl] von Bülow defeated the open flank
at Allenstein and [August] von Mackensen at-
tacked Samsonov’s VI Corps. The sole escape for
the Russians was through a narrow strip of land
between the marshes leading to Ortelsburg and
here they were decimated. Some 30,000 were
killed or wounded, over 90,000 prisoners taken.Faced with this horrific disaster in his first major field
command, Samsonov took his own life as his army re-
treated, shooting himself in the head on 29 August.
Samsonov’s massive inexperience—until World War
I, he had served mainly as a bureaucrat, never holding
a command appointment before Tannenberg—and his
nation’s failure to prepare for war led to the debacle at
Tannenberg, and he can be only partially blamed for the
defeat. The rout gave the Germans the ability to quickly
defeat the Russian forces commanded by Rennenkampf
at Masurian Lakes (9–14 September 1914), leaving the
eastern front dominated by the Germans and allowing
them to increase their effort on the western front.References: Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, August 1914 (New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972); Bruce, George,
“Tannenberg,” in Collins Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow,
Scotland: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), 243; Bon-
gard, David L., “Samsonov, Aleksandr Vasilievich,” in
The Encyclopedia of Military Biography, edited by Trevor
N. Dupuy, Curt Johnson, and David L. Bongard (Lon-
don: I. B. Taurus, 1992), 655–656.Santa Anna, Antonio López de (1794–1876)
Mexican general and president
Antonio López de Santa Anna was born in Jalapa,
in Veracruz (also known as Vera Cruz), Mexico, on
21 February 1794, the son of a minor civil service of-
ficial. Spain then controlled Mexico (until 1822), and
Santa Anna began his military career as a cadet in the
Spanish colonial army starting in 1810, when he was
just 16. He spent much of the next several years on the
northern border, fighting Indians and so-called “border
ruffians” who invaded Mexico for thievery. In 1813, fol-
lowing the Battle of Medina (in what is now the U.S.
state of Texas), he was cited for bravery in battle.
In 1821, Santa Anna rose to a leadership position
when he supported the “Plan de Iguala,” which set out
a course for Mexican independence. He was also a sup-
porter of the Mexican politician Agustín de Iturbide,
one of the leaders of the independence movement.
When Mexico became independent of Spain in May
1822, however, Iturbide declared himself emperor, and
Santa Anna soon turned against him and announced
his “Plan of Casa Mata,” which called for a Mexican
republic. He served for a short period as the military
governor of Yucatán, then as the civil governor of Vera-
cruz, his home province. In 1823, after just two years
in power, Iturbide was forcibly removed as emperor of
Mexico by an insurrection that Santa Anna had assisted.
As a leading military officer, Santa Anna tried to install
a pro-Mexican government in Cuba, then controlled by
Spain, by launching an ill-fated revolution from the Yu-
catan peninsula. In 1828, he backed Vincente Guerrero
as president of Mexico but within a year tired of him
and once again forced a change in administrations. That
same year, 1829, a Spanish army invaded Mexico, and
Santa Anna was placed in charge of blocking the incur-SAntA AnnA, Antonio lópez De 0