It is difficult to understand how a serious-minded military leader can stoop to employ, in a supposedly serious work, methods fit for the yellow press, such as accusing Russian generals of treason, etc., etc. These memoirs, as a whole, were met at the time of their publication by sharp and adverse criticism in the foreign, and even the German, press. Ludendorf's memoirs are especially misleading in the part describing the first Russian advance in East Prussia, the advance that played such a decisive role in the defeat which the Germans suffered on the Marne. It should never be forgotten that this event proved fatal and brought about the final defeat of the Germans in this sonov.[2] Russia's Sacrifice Ludendorf commences his recital of events on the Russian front with the statement that in 1914, in East Prussia, with a force of only two German corps, he destroyed 250,000 Russians--six army corps--under the command of General Samsonov, and that General Rennenkampf, who was only within two or three days' march from Samsonov, had designedly failed to aid Samsonov. This statement by General Ludendorf is absolutely false from beginning to end. It can be very easily proven that Ludendorf attacked Samsonov not with two army corps, but with more than 240,000 German troops. With this army he attacked not 250,000 Russians, but only two Russian army corps, i. e., 80,000 men--the 1st and the 6th Russian Army Corps. Thus, Ludendorf had a force three times larger than his adversary. It may be easily seen from this that while Ludendorf gives Samsonov twice as many men as he had in reality, he, at the same time, credits Rennenkampf with three times the number he actually had. His own force Ludendorf puts, on paper, at one-third of what he had in fact. Rennenkampf knew nothing about the events on the Samsonov front until August 30, whereas the latter was surrounded on August 28. (See Gurko's book, "War and Revolution.") The cause of the Russian defeat in that battle was not the "genius" of Ludendorf, but lay rather in the fact that the Russian Army, _in its eagerness to relieve Paris, advanced too quickly, with not fully mobilized and insufficient forces, and in two separate Armies_, coupled with the difficulty of reconnoitering and obtaining information about the enemy in a country where the entire population was in a state of armed belligerency. The death of Samsonov and of a part of his staff and the disruption of liaison were other causes.[3] In her haste to aid her Allies, Russia risked much, and she lost a battle on account of the precariousness of the operation, insufficiency of forces and an unfortunate accident. But she succeeded in diverting several German corps from France, and the Russian blood shed at Tannenberg thus helped win the First Battle of the Marne.