Dedicated by Hindenburg in 1924, on the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Tannenberg near Hohenstein (now Olsztynek, Poland), the structure, which was financed by donations, was built by the architects Johannes and Walter Krüger of Berlin, and completed in 1927.

The octagonal layout with eight towers, each 20 metres high, was influenced by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II's Castel del Monte and Stonehenge.

A line of veterans, ten kilometers long and resplendent in Imperial uniforms, paid homage to Hindenburg and the 20 unknown German soldiers from the 1914 battle who were interred at the memorial.

To add to the theatre, the government of the Reich again called upon the architectural firm of Krüger in Berlin and using the Stonehenge parallel again; above the entrance, a giant stone (symbolically from Königsberg) was placed, with the Field Marshal's name inscribed upon it.

On 2 October 1935, the anniversary of Hindenburg's birthday, the President's bronze coffin was relocated to a new, sombre chamber where he was joined by his wife Gertrud, who was moved from the family plot in Hanover.

To create an entrance to the crypt, Hindenburg and the 20 unknown German soldiers from the 1914 battle were temporarily disinterred, and the level of the plaza was lowered by 8 feet (2.4 m), with stone steps surrounding it on all sides.

[12] Plans were drawn up to install busts of the commanders and politicians involved in the Polish campaign with tablets inscribed with the Führer's speeches and a full-length statue of Adolf Hitler, but these never came about.

In January 1945, as Soviet forces advanced into East Prussia, Hitler ordered that the lead coffins of Hindenburg and his wife be disinterred and along with some of the regimental standards in the tomb, removed to safety.

[3] The four coffins were hastily marked to indicate their contents using red crayon, and interred behind a 6-foot-thick (1.8 m) masonry wall in a deep recess of the 14-mile (23 km) mine complex, 1,800 feet (550 m) underground.

In August 1946, 20 months after being removed from the Tannenberg Memorial, Hindenburg and his wife were finally laid to rest by the American army at St. Elizabeth's, the church of his Teutonic ancestors in Marburg, where they remain today.

In the spring of 1949, the Communist Polish government ordered the dismantling of the very substantial remains of the monument; removal of the ruins continued until the 1980s, by which time virtually all traces of the memorial had gone.

A perfectly preserved sculpted lion, which once topped an eight-metre pyramid at another war memorial about 300 m beside the monument, is now displayed in the town square in nearby Olsztynek.

[14] Architect Dietrich Zlomke, born in Heiligenbeil near Königsberg, was commissioned to design a memorial to the dead of East and West Prussia in the two world wars, which was dedicated at Oberschleißheim near Munich in 1995.