TANNENBERG MEMORIAL TODAY SERIES

“Imagine this Russian army as a bulge pressing into Germany and the Germans strike at a point where the bulge begins and cut off the vast majority of the Russian forces in the middle.

“Then the Germans launched two flank attacks,” says Lockenour. General Alexander Samsonov, in charge of the Russian 2nd Army in the South, walked right into Ludendorff’s trap and allowed his men to be completely encircled. The Russian commanders weren’t amateurs, but they were hampered by poor communications, slow supply routes and the frustrations of moving a large army (plus heavy artillery) on foot and horseback through difficult terrain. “He was an incredibly experienced staff officer and had already won the Pour le Mérite cross, similar to the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his leadership at Liege.” “I argue that Ludendorff is the brains of the operation,” says Lockenour, who wrote a book called Dragonslayer: The Legend of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich. How the Battle of Stalingrad Marked a Turning Point in WWII Both sides suffered heavy losses and Prittwitz, envisioning a second Russian army on its way, lost his nerve. When the Germans learned that the Russians were invading East Prussia with two armies, one in the North and another in the South, they ordered Prittwitz to attack the northern Russian 1st Army at what became known as the Battle of Gumbinnen on August 20, 1914. It was a lot of reservists and garrison troops, people normally assigned to defend fixed positions.” “Also, the 8th Army was the weakest of the German armies. “What happened was the Russians mobilized a lot quicker than the Germans expected,” says Jay Lockenour, a military historian at Temple University. The lone German army dispatched to the Russian border region known as East Prussia was the 8th Army led by General Maximilian von Prittwitz.

New York: Holmes & Meyer.Meanwhile, Germany had committed seven of its eight armies to the West, believing that it would take at least six weeks for the sluggish Russian army to mobilize its forces and attack in the East. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts. Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Adolf Hitler: A Psychological Interpretation of His Views on Architecture, Art and Music, p. 76. Shooting wrapped in the fall of 2002 in France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Filming also included the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Treblinka and Majdanek extermination camps. The following year the crew was granted unprecedented access to both Auschwitz and Birkenau, where cameras captured the entire complex inside and out. In August 1999 the crew discovered several lost sites in Poland such as the ruins of the Tannenberg Memorial and Hindenburg's Neudeck estate as well as several well-known locations like Ordensburg Marienberg ( Malbork Castle). Two years later filming resumed in northern Germany, the Atlantic coast and France.

TANNENBERG MEMORIAL TODAY SERIES

Production of the Ruins series began in Berlin, Munich and Berchtesgaden in May 1993. Part 4 - the five D-Day landing beaches, Erwin Rommel's western front headquarters, Wolfsschlucht II, the Wolf's Lair, Malmedy, Bastogne, Remagen bridge, Ordensburg Vogelsang, Bendlerblock, Plötzensee Prison, Gestapo headquarters, Berlin and inside the Reich Chancellery Bunker as it appears today. Part 3 - Warsaw Ghetto, Gestapo headquarters, Pawiak Prison, Palmiry massacre site, Oskar Schindler's Deutsche Emalia Fabrika, Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Fermont, Immerhof and Hackenberg on the Maginot Line, Compiègne, tomb of Napoleon and the German submarine pens and Cross-Channel guns in Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais.

Part 2 - Nazi party rally grounds, Albert Speer's Zeppelinfield grandstands, Congress Hall, Hitler Youth Stadium, war memorial on the Luitpold Field, Hitler's Munich headquarters, site of the Munich Agreement as well as the assassination site of Reinhard Heydrich and his grave at Invaliden cemetery, Berlin. Part 1 - Munich's Feldherrnhalle, scene of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the Hotel Hanslbauer, site of the ' Night of the Long Knives', Paul von Hindenburg's Neudeck estate, the Tannenberg Memorial, the Obersalzberg retreat including Hitler's Berghof, the small Teehaus on the Mooslahnerkopf, the Platterhof Hotel, Martin Bormann's guest house, the Gutsof, Hermann Göring's Alpine chalet, Albert Speer's architectural design studio, the SS Barracks and Kehlsteinhaus, more commonly known as the Eagle's Nest. The four-part series with its 'then and now' format blends first generation archival film with current HD footage of the buildings, monuments and bunkers as they were during the Third Reich and as they appear today.

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