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Construction of Das Reichsehrenmal Tannenberg or German National Memorial at Tannenberg was begun in 1927 to honor the German regiments that fought the famous World War I battle there. Reichspräsident von Hindenburg who appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1933 was buried at Tannenberg and it provided a reason for Hitler to rebuild the memorial between 1936 and 1938 in a larger, far grander style with many more features than were originally anticipated, using money donated by the German people.

Interspersed in the text are historical pictures of the memorial, German World War I generals, Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff at the dedication of the Tannenberg Memorial in 1927, Adolf Hitler and Von Hindenburg at Tannenberg, the Hindenburg funeral, as well as line drawings or architectural details and architectural plans.

Offered on this USMBOOKS web page is an original Third Reich publication called Tannenberg, Deutsches Schicksal - Deutsche Aufgabe or “Tannenberg, German Destiny - German Duty”. The 7-3/4 x 11-1/4 inch hardcover book has 280+ glossy pages and is complete with its color frontispiece of the Tannenberg Memorial. The introduction by Adolf Hitler is dated October 1935 (a year after the death of Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg) but this is a 1939 edition with a foreword by State Secretary Hans Pfundtner of the Nazi Interior Ministry.

The book has chapters with in-depth World War I battle history of the area around Tannenberg in East Prussia (Russian attacks, General Ludendorff, Mackensen, Hindenburg, etc.), German Culture in the East Through the Centuries, the History and Construction of the Memorial.

Tannenberg, Deutsches Schicksal - Deutsche Aufgabe was published by Gerhard Stalling Verlagsbuchhandlung for the Kuratorium für das Reichsehrenmal Tannenberg headed by Hans Pfundtner. This 83+ year old hardcover example has gold embossed blocking on the black front cover and gray linen spine. The spine shows wear at the bottom but the interior pages are in good condition and the book has no odor.

Because of its out-of-the-way location in East Prussia (today it is Olsztyn in Poland, 600+ kilometers east of Berlin) and because of the constant battles that took place there from 1942 to 1945, few Germans or others were able to visit the Tannenberg Memorial. In January 1945 German troops removed the coffin of Hindenburg and his wife and destroyed most of the monument. What was left was used as building materials for the construction of the Palace of Culture in Warsaw and today only overgrown foundations remain.