memoir · by a contemporary

My Three Years in a German Prison

Henri Béland (1869–1935)

Named on the page for Battle of Tannenberg (1914).

draft Matched to the battle automatically; not yet reviewed.

Passages that name the battle; the whole book is at Project Gutenberg.

26–30 August 1914

Battle of Tannenberg (1914)

CHAPTER XXIX
We all know that Hindenburg accomplished this task victoriously and acquired for himself, particularly as the result of the famous battle of Tannenberg, a fame which surpassed that of any other Prussian general. Pressure was then brought to bear on the Emperor by his entourage with the object of placing Hindenburg at the head of the general staff; and, as a matter of fact, by a movement of the hand, Emperor William dismissed Von Falkenhayn, who was at that time chief of the general staff, and replaced him by Hindenburg.

CHAPTER XXIX
The victory of Tannenberg was followed by several others, including that of Rumania, and then it was that the population of Berlin, no longer able to restrain their enthusiasm for Hindenburg, decided to erect in his honor a colossal monument on one of the public squares. The testimony of popular admiration took the shape of a wooden statue, forty-one feet in height, built at the end of Victory avenue, at the foot of the immense column known as the Victory Column, erected after the war of 1871 to commemorate the victory of the Germans over the French.

Public domain. Text from Project Gutenberg.