Walter was elated by events in Europe. There was every prospect of a short war and a quick victory for Germany. He could be reunited with Maud by Christmas.
Unless he died, of course. But, if that happened, he would die happy.
He shuddered with joy whenever he remembered the night they had spent together. They had not wasted precious moments sleeping. They had made love three times. The initial, heartbreaking difficulty had in the end only intensified their euphoria. In between lovemaking they had lain side by side, talking and idly caressing one another. It was a conversation unlike any other. Anything Walter could say to himself, he could say to Maud. Never had he felt so close to another person.
Around dawn they had eaten all the fruit in the bowl and all the chocolates in the box. Then, at last, they had had to leave: Maud to sneak back into Fitz’s house, pretending to the servants that she had been out for an early walk; Walter to his flat, to change his clothes, pack a bag, and leave his valet instructions to ship the rest of his possessions home to Berlin.
In the cab on the short ride from Knightsbridge to Mayfair they had held hands tightly and said little. Walter had stopped the driver around the corner from Fitz’s house. Maud had kissed him once more, her tongue finding his in desperate passion, then she had gone, leaving him wondering if he would ever see her again.
The war had begun well. The German army was storming through Belgium. Farther south the French-led by sentiment rather than strategy-had invaded Lorraine, only to be mown down by German artillery. Now they were in full retreat.
Japan had sided with the French and British allies, which unfortunately freed up Russian soldiers in the far east to be switched to the European battlefield. But the Americans had confirmed their neutrality, to Walter’s great relief. How small the world had become, he reflected: Japan was about as far east as you could go, and America as far west. This war encircled the globe.
According to German intelligence, the French had sent a stream of telegrams to St. Petersburg, begging the tsar to attack, in the hope that the Germans might be distracted. And the Russians had moved faster than anyone expected. Their First Army had astonished the world by marching across the German border a mere twelve days after mobilization began. Meanwhile the Second Army invaded farther south, from the railhead at Ostrolenka, on a trajectory that would close the teeth of the pincers near a town called Tannenberg. Both armies were unopposed.
The uncharacteristic German torpor that allowed this to happen soon came to an end. The commander in chief in the region, General Prittwitz, known as der Dicke, the Fat One, was smartly fired by the high command and replaced by the duo of Paul von Hindenburg, summoned out of retirement, and Erich Ludendorff, one of the few senior military men without an aristocratic “von” to his name. At forty-nine, Ludendorff was also among the younger generals. Walter admired him for having risen so high purely on merit, and was pleased to be his intelligence liaison.
On the way from Belgium to Prussia they stopped briefly on Sunday, August 23, in Berlin, where Walter had a few moments with his mother on the station platform. Her sharp nose was reddened by a summer cold. She hugged him hard, shaking with emotion. “You are safe,” she said.
“Yes, Mother, I’m safe.”
“I’m terribly worried about Zumwald. The Russians are so close!” Zumwald was the von Ulrichs’ country estate in the east.
“I’m sure it will be all right.”
She was not so easily fobbed off. “I have spoken to the kaiserin.” She knew the kaiser’s wife well. “Several other ladies have done the same.”
“You should not bother the royal family,” Walter reproved her. “They already have so many worries.”
She sniffed. “We cannot abandon our estates to the Russian army!”
Walter sympathized. He, too, hated the thought of primitive Russian peasants and their barbaric knout-wielding lords overrunning the well-kept pastures and orchards of the von Ulrich inheritance. Those hardworking German farmers, with their muscular wives and scrubbed children and fat cattle, deserved to be protected. Was that not what the war was about? And he planned to take Maud to Zumwald one day, and show the place off to his wife. “Ludendorff is going to stop the Russian advance, Mother,” he said. He hoped it was true.
Before she could respond the whistle blew, and Walter kissed her and boarded the train.
Walter felt the sting of personal responsibility for the German reverses on the eastern front. He was one of the intelligence experts who had forecast that the Russians could not attack so soon after ordering mobilization. He was mortified with shame whenever he thought of it. But he suspected he had not been entirely wrong, and the Russians were sending ill-prepared troops forward with inadequate supplies.
This suspicion was reinforced, when he arrived in East Prussia later that Sunday with Ludendorff’s entourage, by reports that the Russian First Army, in the north, had halted. They were only a few miles inside German territory, and military logic dictated that they should press forward. What were they waiting for? Walter guessed they were running out of food.
But the southern arm of the pincer was still advancing, and Ludendorff’s priority was to stop it.
The following morning, Monday, August 24, Walter brought Ludendorff two priceless reports. Both were Russian wireless messages, intercepted and translated by German intelligence.
The first, sent at five thirty that morning by General Rennenkampf, gave marching orders for the Russian First Army. At last Rennenkampf was on the move again-but instead of turning south to close the pincers by meeting up with the Second Army, he was inexplicably heading west on a line that did not threaten any German forces.
The second message had been sent half an hour later by General Samsonov, the commander of the Russian Second Army. He ordered his 13 and 15 Corps to go after the German XX Corps, which he believed to be in retreat.
“This is astonishing!” said Ludendorff. “How did we get this information?” He looked suspicious, as if Walter might have been deceiving him. Walter had a feeling Ludendorff mistrusted him as a member of the old military aristocracy. “Do we know their codes?” Ludendorff demanded.
“They don’t use codes,” Walter told him.
“They send orders in clear? For heaven’s sake, why?”
“Russian soldiers aren’t sufficiently educated to deal with codes,” Walter explained. “Our prewar intelligence estimates suggested that there are hardly enough literate men to operate the wireless transmitters.”
“Then why don’t they use field telephones? A phone call can’t be intercepted.”
“I think they have probably run out of telephone wire.”
Ludendorff had a downturned mouth and a thrusting chin, and he always looked as if he were frowning aggressively. “This couldn’t be a trick, could it?”
Walter shook his head. “The idea is inconceivable, sir. The Russians are barely able to organize normal communications. The use of phony wireless signals to deceive the enemy is as far beyond them as flying to the moon.”
Ludendorff bent his balding head over the map on the table in front of him. He was a tireless worker, but he was often afflicted by terrible doubts, and Walter guessed he was driven by fear of failure. Ludendorff put his finger on the map. “Samsonov’s 13 and 15 Corps form the center of the Russian line,” he said. “If they move forward… ”
Walter saw immediately what Ludendorff was thinking: the Russians could be drawn into an envelope trap, surrounded on three sides.
Ludendorff said: “On our right we have von Francois and his I Corps. At our center, Scholtz and the XX Corps, who have fallen back but are not on the run, contrary to what the Russians seem to think. And on our left, but fifty kilometers to the north, we have Mackensen and the XVII Corps. Mackensen is keeping an eye on the northern arm of the Russian pincer, but if those Russians are heading the wrong way perhaps we can ignore them, for the moment, and turn Mackensen south.”
“A classic maneuver,” Walter said. It was simple, but he himself had not seen it until Ludendorff pointed it out. That, he thought admiringly, was why Ludendorff was the general.
Ludendorff said: “But it will work only if Rennenkampf and the Russian First Army continue in the wrong
