In The Woods South of Willenberg – The Search For Alexander Samsonov’s Suicide (Part One)

I buy way too many books, books that I will never have the time to read from cover to cover. As I get older and the list of unread books on my shelves grows, I have learned to read specific chapters of a book to find what intrigues me the most. This works rather well, except for the fact that I find myself skipping from one subject to the next without any logical plan. Curiosity often gets the better of me as I bound from the medieval to the modern, from the Balkans to the Black Sea, from eastern Germany to eastern Ukraine, from Byzantium or the Baltic. This is the kind of curiosity that easily goes off-kilter. The power of perusal provides a window into disparate regions, subjects, and time periods. Working my way into books with this method comes at the expense of thoroughness. It is the only way I can manage to keep from being overwhelmed. Surrounding myself with stacks of books means I am something of a bibliophile, an obsession defined by the title of an excellent book about the subject, “A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion For Books” by Nicholas Basbanes. It may be gentle, but it is madness all the same. 

A Single Shot - The Final Moment

I do not own my books as much as they own me. Besieged by books would be an apt description of my current status. Sometimes I will stare at specific books packed on the shelves and wonder when I will finally get around to reading at least a page or two of each one. The best chance for cracking a neglected books is to use it as a reference work. To be completely honest, this was the reason I bought most of these books. I realized this invaluable aspect once again when I went in search of books to answer a specific question about the Battle of Tannenberg on the Eastern Front at the beginning of World War I. The book I grabbed, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires by Dennis Showalter, has a well-deserved reputation for density. It certainly does not disappoint in that regard. There are over 400 pages filled with an infinite number of details that interpret the battle. Showalter does a fine job of explaining the strategy, tactics, and outcome of Tannenberg. The book would prove useful for me since I needed to find out more details concerning the suicide of General Alexander Samsonov, the commander of the Russian 2nd Army which was destroyed in the battle.

Samsonov went to battle with 180,000 men, by the time it was done, over 90% of them had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Only an estimated 10,000 Russian soldiers escaped, Samsonov was not one of them. Showalter provided a succinct description of the suicide. Once Samsonov knew the battle was lost, he along with his other staff officers scrambled through the woods on foot in the darkness. Sometime after midnight on August 30th, “Weight and asthma slowed the general’s movement and further lamed his spirit. Again and again, Samsonov repeated that the disgrace was more than he could bear: ‘The Emperor trusted me.’ Finally, he slipped aside in the dark. Minutes later a single pistol shot crashed out of the underbrush. Samsonov would never be called upon to explain the fate of his army.” I remember this story well. Showalter’s footnote to the narrative shows that he used Major General Sir Alfred Knox, the British Military Attache who was with the Russians during the campaign as his source. 

Further Misfortune – From Bad To Worse

Samsonov’s suicide story was not really what I was looking for when I referenced Showalter’s book, instead I wanted to find the spot where it occurred. Finding clues to the exact location where Samsonov took his life would be the first step to possibly visiting the place on a trip to Poland I have planned for later this spring. I do not know why the Samsonov suicide fascinates me, but this has been the case for me going all the way back to high school. My fascination with the First World War began in Mr. Johnson’s freshman Western Civilization class in high school. I can still see him madly drawing a diagram of the street layout in Sarajevo as he laid out the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This led me to the school library where I found the ultimate reference work for the war, the Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia of World War I. In the encyclopedia I first learned about the Battle of Tannenberg. Then through the years there were further narratives of the battle that lodged in my memory. These included Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and an even more bracing description in one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's least known works, August 1914.

Perhaps Samsonov’s suicide feeds into my obsession with decisive moments in history. Those points of no return where reality can no longer be avoided. It is not often in history that a leader will openly admit they are responsible for a disaster. Of course, there was a lot more to the Russian defeat at Tannenberg than Samsonov’s command decisions. The Germans were better organized, their commanders had a clear plan of action, Russian communications were compromised, and the 1st Russian Army failed to provide the expected support. This does not absolve Samsonov of responsibility, but he took it upon himself to shoulder the blame and it broke him. Tannenberg was the start of an endless succession of disasters for the Russian Army in the war, the cumulative weight of which would lead to the Bolshevik revolution and further misfortune. Russia has never been the same. 

End Result - A Soldier’s Death

Perhaps Samsonov saw what was coming, for himself and the empire he represented. Perhaps Samsonov could not see beyond himself or beyond the Tsar’s disappointment. Perhaps Samsonov felt just as trapped as his army had been. He saw no other way out except to die a soldier’s death deep in the woods of East Prussia. There was just a single shot and then the blood rushing out of the hole in his head staining the sandy soil in the forest. No one will ever know what Samsonov’s thoughts were just before the suicide. That moment is lost in time. The place is not. You cannot go back in time, but you can go back to the same spot and imagine what it was like. The beginning of that process started for me with books followed by internet searches. The first clue I came across said the suicide happened "in the woods south of Willenberg."