The Fighting in the East
The Great "What If" of 1914
Hermann von Staabs calculated that the twenty-one army corps sent east at the start of the war could all have been in position on 16 August 1914. (Of these, five corps would have been mobilized in, or near, East Prussia. The other sixteen formations would have traveled, invariably by train, from other parts of the German Empire.) Thus, on 17 August 1914, when the Russians arrived at the German border, they would have been outnumbered by more than two to one.
Because of this numerical advantage, the German victory in East Prussia would not have depended, as it did in the real world, upon the clever generalship of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. (Indeed, it is probable that, in a world without the German defeat at Gumbinnen and the subsequent miracle of Tannenberg, both of those gentlemen would have spent their lives in relative obscurity.)
After dealing the two Russian armies along the German frontier, the German forces in East Prussia would have found themselves in the rear areas of the Russian armies invading the territory of the Hapsburg Empire. Thus, whether or not the Russian forces defeated, as they did in actuality, the Austro-Hungarian formations in front of them, they would have been in a very awkward position.
It is thus likely that, before the end of September of 1914, Russia would have suffered a catastrophic defeat. For one thing, it would have been driven out of that part of Poland (then known as “Congress Poland”) that it had occupied for a hundred years. For another, it would have lost much of its peacetime army.
At this point, the Czar would have been well advised to sue for peace. Brokered, perhaps, by Sir Edward Grey, the resulting settlement would have left the Russian Empire intact. Indeed, as the last thing that German statesmen wanted was an increase in the Polish-speaking population of the Reich, Russia might even have recovered some of the territory it had lost in the course of operations.
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Yes, but.... Germany lost the War when it was defeated on the Marne. It should have said oops and done a deal. But it was too late to stop.