Battle of Tannenberg: Annihilation of Russian 2nd Army

Five hundred years before the start of World War I, the Teutonic Knights were gravely defeated by Slavic and Lithuanian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg (otherwise known as Grunwald). In 1914, the Germans practically slaughtered the entire Russian Second Army over the course of just four days, just miles away from the site of the 1410 battle. Given this, German officials couldn’t help but name the site their historic win, “Tannenberg.”