The Last Prussian

by Messenger, Charles;

  The staff of an army corps was responsible for mobilisation, manoeuvres and firing practice and, once again, Gerd tackled his duties with his accustomed enthusiasm and capacity for hard work. The fact that he was back with his parent army corps helped in that he knew the formations and regiments and many of the key personalities. It was, however, considered important that staff officers did return to regimental duty from time to time and in September 1912 von Rundstedt was appointed to command No 6 Company of the 2nd Upper Alsatian (171st) Infantry Regiment at Colmar on the west bank of the Rhine between Strasbourg and Mulhouse.

  Colmar was one of the so-called frontier garrisons. These had a notorious reputation because of their isolation and claustrophobic atmosphere. A great furore had been created some years earlier by the publication of a novel, Life in a Garrison Town, written by a serving officer, Lieutenant Oswald Fritz Bilse,23 which revealed exactly what life in the garrison of Forbach, west of Saarbrücken, was supposed to be like. The picture he portrayed was one of indolence among the officers, marital infidelity and injustice to inferiors. Perhaps worst, at least in the eyes of the authorities, was the corruption of the Code of Honour. In one incident an officer was forced to fight a duel with one of his fellows who had run off with his wife, even though the victim had become fed up with her infidelities and wished to have no more to do with her. If the officer had not fought he would have shown himself to be dishonourable and would have been arraigned before a Court of Honour. Bilse himself was court-martialled at Metz in November 1903 for publishing his book without permission. In his defence he stated:

  ‘I entered the Army, for I felt that to be my vocation, and in the beginning I was quite happy. Later, when I was transferred to Lorraine, I recognised the great difference between life in the frontier garrison towns and the other garrisons of the empire. I observed evils and abuses which took away all my illusions. These I noticed especially in my garrison of Forbach. There have been innumerable complaints about the condition of the frontier towns, and so I thought that another voice raised in protest would do no harm.’24

  Questions were asked in the Reichstag and the Minister of War admitted that there was much truth in what the book said, but this did not prevent Bilse being sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and all copies of the book being destroyed. Unfortunately, he had fallen into the error of drawing his fictional characters too close to his real-life brother officers. Von Rundstedt would have doubtless known of this saga when he was at the Kriegsakademie. Indeed, he may even have known Bilse, who was stationed at Kassel before being posted to Forbach. If he hoped that conditions had improved during the past few years, he was to be disappointed.

  At root was the fact that Alsace and Lorraine were occupied territories. Their people might be German-speaking, but their hearts were with France; not for nothing had the first singing of the Marseillaise taken place in Strasbourg. In the years since 1870, the German civil administration had worked hard to give the province a degree of self-autonomy, but the German Army continued to see itself as an occupation force whose purpose was to ensure that the province was thoroughly Germanised, viewing every easing of restrictions as playing into the hands of the French. The fact that the ratio of soldiers to civilians in Alsace-Lorraine was four times higher than anywhere else in the German Empire did not help and increasing enmity had developed between the two, thereby aggravating the isolation of the garrisons. A series of incidents came to a head in 1913. In Colmar itself an attempt was made by HQ XV Corps to remove the Mayor on the grounds that he was a spy. He had been visiting his wife in hospital in Paris when he could have put her in just as good a hospital in Germany. But this was a minor event compared with what became known as the Zabern Affair.

  On 28 October 1913, Lieutenant Freiherr von Forstner and Sgt Höflich of the 99th Infantry Regiment, which, like von Rundstedt’s regiment, was in XV Corps, although in the other division, were lecturing recruits on local civil-military relations at the Regiment’s barracks in Zabern. Turning to one of the recruits, who had been charged with knifing a local, von Forstner assured him that he would reward him with money if he knifed another Alsatian and the Sergeant supported him. A few days later the local press got hold of the story and printed it, demanding that the officer and NCO be punished. The regimental commander refused, saying that they were merely referring to rowdy elements, and was supported in this by HQ XV Corps. Demonstrations followed in the town and the corps commander, in an effort to cool things down, ordered the regimental commander to confine von Fostner to his rooms and to place the NCO under close arrest. Colonel Reuter, the regimental commander, who had fallen out with the chief local civil official, the Kreisdirektor, now asked for sick leave. When a removal van was seen outside his quarters, the local people assumed that he had been removed from his command. In the meantime, von Forstner, who seems to have been a very arrogant young man, made further inflammatory remarks to his soldiers, which also reached the ears of the press. The matter now came to the attention of the Kaiser, whose military advisers told him that not to reinstate Reuter would mean loss of face. Reuter therefore returned to his command, secure in the thought that he had the Kaiser’s personal backing, and began a witch hunt among both the Alsatian soldiers in his regiment and the local populace over the press leaks. The climax came on 28 November, when Reuter’s troops arrested 28 civilians and, totally illegally, had them up before a military court. Alsatian deputies now asked questions in the Reichstag and a day long debate followed, at the end of which the government suffered a severe defeat. It was thus decided to move 99th Regiment to a manoeuvre area in order to allow matters to quieten down and to court-martial those directly involved. Some soldiers were given short terms of military imprisonment, but Reuter, von Forstner, who had seriously injured a lame civilian who had allegedly laughed at him, and another officer were eventually acquitted, although posted to other regiments. Indeed the Kaiser even rewarded Reuter with the Order of the Red Eagle 3rd Class. The affair rumbled on, with the 99th finally returning to an icy homecoming in Zabern in April 1914. That same month it was laid down that Alsatian conscripts were no longer to be allowed to do their military service in their homeland, but would be posted to other parts of the Reich. The net result was that military-civil enmity increased not just in the region but between France and Germany as well.

  History does not record what von Rundstedt thought of all this. The atmosphere cannot have made life particularly pleasurable when compared to that in Kassel. Judging from his character, it is likely that he went through one of his introverted periods, concentrating on his company and family. The former, especially, would have kept him busy. Every 1 October, the year’s new recruits joined and during the autumn and winter underwent their basic training in drill and weapon training. The spring and summer would then be devoted to field training, beginning with group/section and platoon drills and culminating with formation manoeuvres. The time-expired men were then discharged. September was taken up with supervising the annual two weeks’ training of the first-line reservists and then the year began again. Under this system, if war came it should ideally do so in the late summer, when all those serving with the colours were fully trained. This, of course, is what happened in 1914. Certainly, in the eyes of his peers, Gerd made a success of his company, as he had his previous posts. His commanding officer noted how well trained No 6 Company was and also its good spirit. His divisional commander, Freiherr von Matter, wrote that von Rundstedt maintained his company in ‘highest discipline and order’ (Zucht und Ordnung, a very Prussian expression) and both he and the corps commander recommended Gerd for further general staff employment.25 It was thus inevitable, and Gerd probably knew it, that, however hard he had worked during the past year to make No 6 Company ready for war in all respects, he was not destined to lead it in battle. His training and expertise as a staff officer were too valuable, especially since mobilisation was about to double the size of the German Army. Thus, at the end of July 1914, he was ordered to
hand over his company to another officer and to return to the staff.

  2

  The First World War

  ON 30 JULY 1914, Captain von Rundstedt joined the staff of 22nd Reserve Infantry Division as the 1a (Chief of Operations). This division formed part of IV Reserve Corps and was commanded by Lieutenant General von Riemann. IV Reserve Corps itself was to be part of Alexander von Kluck’s First Army, which also included II, III, IV Corps and III Reserve Corps. The German armies were only formed on mobilisation, although their headquarters were in place in peacetime as inspections. These, however, did not necessarily have responsibility for the same corps as they would command in wartime. Thus, First Army set up its headquarters at Stettin, while Inspection No 1 had its peacetime headquarters at Danzig, and von Kluck drew one standing corps (II) from Inspection No 8 based in Berlin and III Corps from Inspection No 4 based at Munich, which also controlled the three first line Bavarian corps, and IV Corps from Inspection No 6 based at Stuttgart. In terms of the peacetime areas of responsibility of the three corps, II Corps covered Pomerania, III Corps Brandenburg and IV Corps Prussian Saxony. The two Reserve corps in First Army drew their men from the same area as the standing corps, but not necessarily those of the same title number. Thus von Rundstedt’s corps, IV Reserve, formed in both IV and XI Corps areas of responsibility. His own division drew on the latter, which, of course, von Rundstedt knew well from his days as a subaltern in 83rd Infantry Regiment and his staff tour with HQ XI Corps. 22nd Reserve Div-ision’s two infantry brigades, 43rd and 44th Reserve, each consisted of two regiments each of three battalions. Both regiments in 44th Reserve Brigade were reserve formations of 22nd Infantry division, while the two 43rd Reserve Brigade regiments represented units in 22nd Infantry Division’s sister division, 38th, in the first line XI Corps. The reservists who made up the rank and file of 22nd Reserve Division were not more than five years away from their two years’ conscripted duty with the colours. This meant that the men of von Rundstedt’s division were in the 21–26 age bracket. The officers and senior NCOs were older and some would have been known to von Rundstedt, the main reason why he would have received this posting.

  Von Kluck’s First Army was to play the key role in the invasion of Belgium and France, being the right flanking formation and the one that would have to march the furthest in the great von Schlieffen ‘wheel’, as modified by von Moltke. Crucial, of course, to the German plan was the quick deployment of the armies to the frontiers, both East and West. This had been the main problem on which the Grosse Generalstab in Berlin had been working for the past decade, and the reason why its Railway Section was considered the most prestigious. That it had done its planning well, was demonstrated during the next two weeks as the troop trains rolled endlessly to the West and East. First Army began its move from its mobilisation areas to the Belgian frontier on 7 August. Six days later, and fully assembled, its advance to the first main objective, the River Meuse, began. By this time, IX Corps had also been placed under von Kluck’s command and his army advanced on three routes, II, III and IV Corps leading, and the other three corps following. IV Reserve Corps marched behind IV Corps. Each route was controlled by a general, but the most difficult challenge was the fact that all three routes passed through Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen). Nevertheless, some 200,000 men successfully negotiated the town in little more than 24 hours, an impressive demonstration of the precision of the German staff work. The depth corps followed a day’s march behind the leading ones, with IV Reserve Corps initially on the centre route, which took it through Tongres. Once through St Trond, it switched to the left-hand route until west of Tirlemont, when it returned to the centre route, arriving at Louvain on 21 August. Von Rundstedt’s corps next entered the Belgian capital, which had been evacuated by the withdrawing Belgian Army two days earlier. During this time, IV Reserve Corps had been the Army reserve and so it was hardly surprising that it should be ordered to detach two battalions and then the whole of 43rd Reserve Brigade to temporarily garrison Brussels until they could be relieved. It was a loss that von Riemann would come to sorely miss in the days to come. At the time, though, there was no chance to ponder the implications of this. The remainder of the corps had no time to enjoy the delights of occupying the enemy’s capital, but now began to swing south-west towards what most believed to be their ultimate objective, Paris.

  MAP 1. Imperial German Corps Boundaries up until November 1918.

  The drama being played out during those hot August days was on a vast canvas and only at the very top, at theatre command level, was there a reasonable picture of exactly what was happening. Even then, the further the armies advanced, the more difficult it became to accurately gauge the situation. As one moved down through the command levels, so did the area of the canvas which could be seen with any clarity become smaller. Thus von Rundstedt, besides conducting the operational affairs of his own division, would have had a good idea of how his sister division, 7th Reserve, was faring and a reasonable idea of what the other corps in First Army were doing, but otherwise his information would have been sketchy at best. He would have probably known that First Army was conforming to the movements of the right-hand corps of Second Army, von Kluck’s immediate left-hand neighbour, but he would have had only very vague news of the fierce fighting that had been taking place further south. This was the Battle of the Frontiers, which saw the French put their Plan XVII into action against the German armies in Alsace and Lorraine, only to be bloodily repulsed. In the meantime, for First Army there were problems and frustrations.

  Having secured Brussels, von Kluck’s task was to cover Antwerp and guard the right flank of the German wheel against the Belgian Army and British Expeditionary Force (BEF). He therefore decided to advance south-west, keeping west of Mauberge, but maintaining contact with the right-hand corps of Second Army on his immediate left. Von Bülow, commanding the Second Army, saw matters rather differently and believed that von Kluck should conform much more closely to his movements than the latter wished to do. Von Kluck complained, but it was to no avail. The German High Command, von Moltke’s Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL), placed him under von Bülow’s temporary command in order to rein him in and ensure that he fulfilled his primary role of guarding Second Army’s right flank. Von Kluck thus found himself advancing south and not south-west. The upshot of this came on the 23rd. While the German Second Army engaged the French Fifth Army across the Sambre, von Kluck came up against the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) positioned along the Mons-Condée Canal. This marked the first significant engagement that First Army had had in the campaign this far. Von Kluck attacked with four corps in line and they were bloodily repulsed by the British infantry, who were trained to fire fifteen aimed shots per minute. IV Reserve Corps, and hence von Rundstedt’s division, was not, however, involved and was still a long way north, marching on the road from Brussels to Hal when the battle opened. By evening the British were still firm in their positions, but Lanrezac, commanding the French Fifth Army on their right, had not been so successful and the Germans were across the Sambre in several places. Accordingly, he began to withdraw and the BEF was forced to conform; otherwise it would have been cut off.

  Now began the great retreat as the British and French fell back towards the Aisne and then the Marne. Von Kluck pursued the BEF while von Bülow followed the French Fifth Army. On the 25th, the British fought a fierce rearguard action at Landrecies and on the following day Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps turned on its pursuers at Le Cateau before resuming its march south-west. It was here that IV Reserve Corps began to take a more active part in the campaign. Von Kluck ordered it to get round the left flank of Smith-Dorrien’s position. While 7th Reserve Division, assisted by elements of von der Marwitz’s Cavalry Corps, attacked the British 4th Division and forced it to give some ground before a temporary stalemate ensued, von Rundstedt’s division, still less one of its two brigades, tried to work its way round the British flank, but ran up against and was held by a French Territorial divisio
n. Sordet’s French Cavalry Corps then enabled both British and French to break contact and withdraw in the evening.

  Exhaustion increased by the day both for pursued and pursuer. Walter Bloem, a company commander in III Corps:

  ‘For three whole weeks, ever since we detrained at Elsdorf on August 10th, we had had not a single rest-day, nor even a suggestion of one. Day after day onwards without ceasing…. And how the men’s feet suffered! From time to time we had to examine them; and it was no pleasure to look at the inflamed heels, soles, and toes of my wretched young lads, whole patches of skin rubbed off to the raw flesh. Many a morning we company commanders would ride up to the battalion commander: “Major, could you explain to the higher command the need for a rest-day? The men literally can go on no further and if we were asked to stand and fight any day now we could not be responsible for their conduct under present conditions …”’1

  The march had to be continued, though, especially since von Kluck now believed that he was in a position to cut the BEF from its base, which he mistakenly thought was Calais. Consequently, his orders for the 27th specified a change of direction. First Army would now advance south-west in order to cut the British lines of communications and its next task would be to force crossings over the Somme. He was supported in this by OHL, which released him from von Bülow’s command. Thus, as the BEF, covered by French cavalry and a group of French Territorial divisions (Groupe d’Amade), continued to withdraw southwards, First Army, with four corps in line (reading west-to-east II, IV Reserve, IV, III), pressed forward. On the 28th, they reached the Somme, but not before two divisions from Groupe d’Amade had surprised some of von der Marwitz’s cavalry in their billets. It took part of II Corps and the whole of IV Reserve Corps to drive them off. The result of this was that II Corps reached the river opposite the crossings allocated to IV Reserve Corps, which now found itself following in the former’s wake. In the meantime, on orders of the French commander-in-Chief, Joffre, Lanrezac had halted on the River Oise and was preparing to launch a counter-stroke into the flank of the German First and Second Armies. This took place on the following day, the 29th. A series of uncoordinated actions resulted in a stalemate. Simultaneously with the Battle of Guise, as this action was called, First Army crossed the Somme. Von Kluck himself considered that his priority now was the French rather than the British and he wanted to find their flank in order to drive them away from Paris. OHL saw the situation slightly differently. They believed that there was a danger that the Allies would concentrate fresh forces on the Aisne or lower Seine and their orders to First Army on the evening of the 28th had been to ‘march west of the Oise towards the lower Seine. It must be prepared to co-operate in the fighting of the Second Army. It will also be responsible for the protection of the right flank of the Armies, and will take steps to prevent any new enemy concentration in its zone of operations.’2 Von Kluck interpreted this as meaning that he was expected to continue to advance south-west for the time being, but was to be prepared to swing south. As it happened, fresh forces, in the shape of Maunoury’s newly formed Sixth Army, were gathering south of Amiens and First Army was now advancing towards them. Von Rundstedt’s corps, however, had now been deployed on the open flank, to guard both it and the Army’s communications. It entered Albert on the evening of the 29th, after a day of skirmishing with elements of Groupe d’Amade.