Since Russo-Japanese War Japanese general staff had regarded envelopment tactics as being the most important when to attack. They classified all tactics into tree classes. First: envelopment second: break through third: frontal assault.

They thought of envelopment tactics as the best and disregarded frontal assault as ineffective because of development in fire power. As being important the envelopment is possible on any phase in war. So effective not only applicable to mobilisation and deployment but to long war such as trench. Germans always took this into account when the real war happened.

That was why Germans were successful in the light of kill-ratio during the First World War.

Then, how can army officers develop the skill of operation planning to grab envelopment tactics. They found the key in the behaviour of von Francois.

The most important factor to envelope was both to take the most crucial timing and to have troops concerned to cooperate. All the best examples were shown in the battle of Tannenberg.

It is true that the names of Hindenburg as well as Lunendorff has got decisive reputations by this battle. However, if seeing the details of the battle everything did not happen as Ludendorff expected.

It seems that mere chances made the envelopment. After the war Ludendorff compared this battle with Cannae by Hannibal. The fact that Russians made continuous attacks to the centre is possibly reminded of Cannae. But Hannibal encircled the Roman by two wings of cavalry. The cavalry constantly got touch with Roman infantry. In this light this type of encirclement should be called close envelopment.

On the other hand Germans encircled Russians with few contacts with Russians. This type is called remote envelopment. It is impossible to get infantry encircled by constant contact due to limited mobility during WW1 although few generals understood this.

In the case of Tannenberg von Francois saved this bottle neck. He simply intended to cut Samsonv's back off. He apparently wanted to destroy all of Russian 2nd army all at once. His tactics to accomplish this is to take all routes for Samsonov to escape in advance.

Japanese military servicemen with little war experience and narrow educational background jumped up to so strange a conclusion. The capacity for disobedience is important. They named this as arbitrary and disobedient action. However, unfortunately to the Japanese and to some mainland Chinese the translation for arbitrary and disobedient action does not have negative meaning in Japanese as well as in Chinese on idiographs different from in English.

Francois's Disobedience and Military Coup Attempt in 1936

And then, is it possible for Ludendorff to complete the envelopment actually happened without von Francois's disobedient act?

If Ludendorff was stick to his original plan, single close envelopment it was impossible.

However, If he thought of double remote envelopment in the first place, so to cut routes to escape he could do that. The latent aspect of this battle was that Samsonv had continued to put pressure to the German centre by 15th corps and 13th until 28, August. That depended on two faults. Firstly, Blagoveschchensky delayed his report that his corps was destroyed and 2nd army's right wing was turned. Secondly, one quarter of 1st corps was inside the border and so no participation in the battle. After two days hurricane bombardment of von Francois 1st corps was destroyed and 2nd army's left was also turned.

Old Japanese Imperial Army agreed that it generated difference in general on how to manouver whether they adopts remote envelopment or close. If a staff officer for field commander is intelligent enough on both geography and the enemy he can find the way even in Tannenberg battle. After this battle in history there happened many cases that staff officers or a dictator planned and played envelopment tactics without concerning disobedience.

Hitler successfully destroyed British Expeditionary Force in France and French Grand Army's left by single close envelopment mainly by Panther(Armoured) divisions in May 1940. MacArthur, D. annihilated the whole North-Korea Army in September 1950 by remote envelopment which was managed through amphibious warfare at Inchon. Thus continued successful envelopment tactics. However, the success attained by combination of both disobedience and chance might not happen again.

Otherwise, could Russians beaten up 8th army in East Prussia?

Even though Russian army was two times stronger than German it did not appear for them to win the battle and impossible to reach Berlin. Two times strength was not enough when fighting on the enemy's soil.

German mobilisation was quite different from most of countries. They changed not only their prospective divisions to war-time formation but also organised various territorial brigades and folk-defence troops with old or training-aimed weapons. All militarily important areas had folk-defence force. Even in Memel, far north inside East Prussia a fraction 3000-3500 of soldiers including 50s year of age and school boys and girls were allocated. On some occasions uniform was delivered to low-teenagers who volunteered to run for intelligence. In this light withdrawal from East Prussia meant to desert them. This was impossible for any sovereigns.

As French Joffre predicted East Prussia was itself ambush. Owing to highly and purposely constructed railway system German soldiers could appear whenever and wherever they liked. It really happened that Russian 6th corps was encountered by unexpected twice large force around Lake Dedey. Russians disposed unnecessarily large force for flank protection, Thorn and Koenigsberg where no meaningful German force existed.

Then, anyway not to suffer loss which actually happened?

It was also impossible for Russians to sight all fighting units in East Prussia because of German highly and unhumanistically effective war machine. Then, better to speed down while scouting toward planned directions.

Unfortunately, Russians could not do that. Russians had two objectives in this offensive. Firstly, to decrease pressure on the French. Secondly, to occupy East Prussia. In order to diminish German sharp swords upon Paris Russians sped up.

Even though it was von Moltke's fault Germans took two corps off from the western front. And Allied Victory on the Marne. In this sense Russians might attain one objective.

This picture was taken in 1924 after 10th anniversary of the battle of Tannenberg. Please pay attention that Ludendorff and von Below were not present. Von Mackenzen sat apart from von Hindenburg. Shortly after this occasion Ludendorff became a candidate for Weimar Republic presidency in the representative for NSDAP(Nazis). However, it was for von Hindenburg to become the second president. Thus, history of twentieth century was twisted.

From bottom right von Scholtz, von Hindenburg, von Francois, von Mackenzen.