Friedrich Kreß von Kressenstein (General of the Artillery)

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Friedrich Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein (1916) in Ottoman uniform

Friedrich Siegmund Georg Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein (born April 24, 1870 in Nuremberg , † October 16, 1948 in Munich ) was a German artillery general . During the First World War he was a member of the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire .

Kreß von Kressenstein in a meeting with the Austrian commander Baron Lager during the Palestine War

Life

origin

Friedrich came from the old Nuremberg patrician family Kreß von Kressenstein . He was the eldest son of the judiciary and lawyer Georg Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein (1840-1911) and his wife Amalie, née Haller von Hallerstein .

Military career

Kreß graduated from a humanistic grammar school and joined the 4th field artillery regiment "King" of the Bavarian Army on August 16, 1888 as a volunteer for promotion . After his assignment to the Munich War School , he was promoted to secondary lieutenant in March 1890 . He attended the artillery and engineering school from October 1891 to March 1893 and was used as a department adjutant from October 1893. From 1895 to 1898 Kress graduated from the War Academy , which made him qualified for the general staff and the subject. At the beginning of November 1899 he was assigned to the central office of the General Staff. On September 19, 1900, Kreß was placed à la suite of his regiment and appointed adjutant to the Minister of War . In this position he was promoted to captain and appointed chamberlain on September 13, 1901 . In 1904 Kreß returned to the troop service as a battery chief in the 6th Field Artillery Regiment for two years , was then transferred to the central office of the General Staff and at the beginning of October 1908 he was assigned to the General Staff in Berlin . As a major , Kress was First General Staff Officer of the 5th Division from September 20, 1910 to October 14, 1911 and was then transferred to the War Ministry. On January 25, 1914, he was put up for disposal .

After his resignation, Kreß joined the Ottoman army as part of the German military mission commanded by Liman von Sanders with the rank of Turkish lieutenant colonel and was in command of the field artillery shooting school from February to June 1914. He then served as head of the mobilization department in the General Staff of the Ottoman Army until the outbreak of the First World War. From August 2 to September 20, 1914, Kress was chief of the operations department at the Grand Headquarters and then appointed chief of the General Staff of the 8th Turkish Army Corps. From March 1915, Kress was re-employed in the Bavarian army while remaining in the Turkish service.

After Turkey entered the First World War on the side of the Central Powers , Cemal Pasha received orders from the Turkish leader Enver Pasha to conquer or at least damage the Suez Canal . The first Suez offensive began in January 1915. Kreß, who was appointed commander of the 1st Turkish Expeditionary Force, was responsible for the march through the Sinai Desert and the development of pontoons and special boats that were to be used to cross the Suez Canal.

Although the desert march was hardly a problem, the offensive was a failure. The British troops learned of the plans and were able to prepare. After two unsuccessful attacks, the Turkish forces had to withdraw. The special boats from Kreß were not used.

It took more than a year for the Ottomans to launch a second offensive to conquer the Suez Canal. Kress carried out another offensive operation through the Sinai desert. This time the Ottoman troops could not reach their destination because they encountered a British defensive structure 25 km east of the Canal in Romani . The Turkish offensive on August 3, 1916 was a disaster and the associations withdrew to Palestine .

Now the British were planning their own offensive. They captured several Turkish fortresses in the Sinai Desert, built a rail network and water pipes through the desert and attacked the Ottoman fortress in Gaza . In addition to the Ottoman general Cemal Pascha, Kress was given command of the defensive. In the first Gaza battle in March 1917, the British attacks were repulsed. The Ottoman units also succeeded in repelling the British offensive in the Second Gaza Battle in April 1917. The victory in the second battle was mainly due to the achievements of Kress. For this he was by King Ludwig III. with effect from April 19, 1917 with the Commander's Cross of the Military Max Joseph Order .

After Erich von Falkenhayn had taken command of the troops in Palestine, Kress remained in command of the 8th Turkish Army . For his successes in Gaza he received the order Pour le Mérite on September 4, 1917 .

In November 1917, the British troops were under the command of General Allenby the Ottomans in Gaza and Beersheba ream.

In 1918 Kreß von Falkenhayn was blamed for the defeat in Gaza and transferred from the Palestinian theater of war. In June 1918 he took over command of the German Caucasus expedition in Transcaucasia and was sent with weak German units to the Democratic Republic of Georgia , which was under German protection after its independence from Soviet Russia . There he helped to prevent the Red Army from entering Abkhazia . After the Compiègne armistice , he had to leave Georgia in December 1918. Kreß was interned briefly from February 16 to June 28, 1919. After his return he came to the central office of the Bavarian General Staff.

At the same time he acted as the Bavarian commissioner for the formation of the Reichswehr Ministry . There he was appointed head of the weapons office on November 24, 1919. Within the ministry, Kress took over the post of chief of the military office on June 1, 1920 , which he headed until January 31, 1923. He was then Artillery Commander VII until March 19, 1924, was in the meantime promoted to Lieutenant General on February 22, and as such was then commander of the 7th Division and commander in Military District VII . During the Hitler putsch he was on the side of the Reichswehr leadership in Berlin and after the crackdown, as a loyal follower of the chief of the army command Hans von Seeckt, also became regional commander of Bavaria.

On January 1, 1928, while being promoted to General of the Artillery, he was appointed Commander in Chief of Group Command 2 . He gave up this command on November 30, 1929 and was retired on the same day with permission to wear the uniform of the 7th (Bavarian) Artillery Regiment .

In the following years he wrote autobiographical articles for the Bavarian War Archives, the Reich Archives and the British Royal United Services Institute . In 1937 he was accepted into the Pegnese Flower Order .

Fonts (selection)

  • With the Turks to the Suez Canal. Vanguard publisher Otto Schlegel. Berlin 1938. DNB 574474129 .
  • My mission in the Caucasus. Manuscript (PDF file; 172 kB)

Movie

In the movie The Lighthorsemen (Australia 1987), Ralph played Cotterill von Kressenstein.

literature

  • Winfried Baumgart (ed.): Friedrich Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein. Bavarian general and expert on the Orient. Memoirs, diaries and reports 1914-1946. Paderborn (Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh) 2020, ISBN 978-3-506-70344-6 , ISBN 3-506-70344-7 .
  • Othmar Hackl : The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck´sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-10490-8 , p. 502.
  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 2: HO. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2003, ISBN 3-7648-2516-2 , pp. 275-277.
  • Rudolf von Kramer, Otto Freiherr von Waldenfels: VIRTUTI PRO PATRIA. The Royal Bavarian Military Max Joseph Order. Acts of War and Book of Honor 1914-1918. Self-published by the Military Max Joseph Order, Munich 1966, pp. 247–248, pp. 344–345.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Othmar Hackl: The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck´sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-10490-8 , p. 502.
  2. ↑ Harold J. Gordon Jr .: The Reichswehr and the Weimar Republic. Defense Publishing House Bernard & Graefe. Frankfurt am Main 1959. p. 242.
  3. ↑ Harold J. Gordon Jr .: The Reichswehr and the Weimar Republic. Defense Publishing House Bernard & Graefe. Frankfurt am Main 1959. p. 246.
personal data
SURNAME Kress von Kressenstein, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kreß von Kressenstein, Friedrich Freiherr
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German general of the artillery of the Reichswehr
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1948
Place of death Munich