The outcome of the East Prussian Campaign left all of Europe speechless. It was simply too hard to accept; no one had expected Prussia to mount such a comeback.
Quite a few armchair experts even analyzed it with great conviction, claiming that the earlier loss of East Prussia had been a Prussian ploy to lure the enemy deep in.
Standing on the Russians' shoulders, the Kingdom of Prussia became famous in a single battle. Even Moltke, the commander-in-chief, became an overnight sensation, hailed as one of the greatest generals of the age.
Yet Moltke himself did not dare claim the credit. He could swear to God that he had never intended to abandon East Prussia.
Did they think simply retaking East Prussia was enough? One only had to look at how many people remained there to understand how grave the problem was.
After East Prussia was recovered, the population count came to less than eighty thousand. Before the war, there had been over a million people. Even adding the tens of thousands still in the army, the total was only a little over a hundred thousand.
The remaining eight or nine hundred thousand had been wiped out by the war. Whether they had died in the flames of war or gone to Austria's colonies, they were lost to the Kingdom of Prussia all the same.
Did the Kingdom of Prussia dare demand its people back from Austria now? The Vienna Government was probably still considering whether to come and demand Silesia.
Wouldn't delivering themselves to the door at a time like this be asking for trouble?
The Berlin Government had no desire to surrender the Silesian Region. Austria's support for the Russians during the war had already violated their original agreement.
But great powers were great powers—everyone knew their skins