Oskar von Hutier

Oskar von Hutier (1920)

Oskar Emil von Hutier (born August 27, 1857 in Erfurt , † December 5, 1934 in Berlin ) was a Prussian infantry general in the First World War . He was considered one of the most successful and innovative German generals.

Life

Hutier joined the 2nd Nassau Infantry Regiment No. 88 of the Prussian Army on April 15, 1875 as a Second Lieutenant . There he served as a battalion adjutant from October 1, 1881, and was promoted to prime lieutenant on December 6, 1883 . From October 1, 1885 to July 21, 1888, Hutier was assigned to the War Academy and from April 1, 1889 to November 17, 1890 to the General Staff . As a captain (from September 20, 1890) he was then company commander in his main regiment and held the same position after his transfer to the Leibgarde Infantry Regiment (1st Grand Ducal Hessian) No. 115 until February 16, 1894. Hutier was then used as the first general staff officer in the general staff of the 30th division and on May 30, 1896 he was promoted to major . From October 1, 1896 to September 9, 1898, he was transferred to the General Staff and then served for two years as First General Staff Officer in the General Staff of the 1st Army Corps . Hutier was then appointed commander of the 1st Battalion of the 6th Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 95 on October 1, 1900 . He gave up the command on August 17, 1902 and changed as a department head to the General Staff, where he became a lieutenant colonel on September 12, 1902 . Shortly afterwards he was assigned to represent the Chief of the General Staff of the III. Army Corps , then with the conduct of business and finally appointed him chief on September 1, 1903. As a colonel (since September 15, 1905), he was to receive command of the Leibgarde Infantry Regiment (1st Grand Ducal Hessian) No. 115 on March 22, 1907. Three years later, Hutier took over the 74th Infantry Brigade while being promoted to major general . From February 3, 1911 until his appointment as commander of the 1st Guards Division on November 19, 1912, Hutier acted as senior quartermaster in the General Staff and at the same time was a member of the study commission of the War Academy from February 21, 1911 to December 23, 1912. In the meantime he had become lieutenant general on April 22, 1912 .

First World War

Hutier served in the first year of the war as commander of the 1st Guard Division on the Western Front in France . On April 4, 1915, he took over as commanding general of the XXI. Army Corps on the Eastern Front and conquered large parts of the Russian- held areas of Poland and Lithuania over the next two years .

On January 2, 1917 he was appointed Commander in Chief of Army Department D and in April of the 8th Army , each as successor to General of the Artillery Friedrich von Scholtz .

Hutier developed a new German combat tactic through his experience with the troops and the study of enemy tactics in order to break through the trench warfare. He referred mainly to the tactics of brief fire attacks by artillery, followed by an infantry attack, used by Brusilov in the Brusilov offensive in 1916 for purely material need. This tactic had the advantage that, unlike the usual long and massive continuous fire, the enemy was not warned of his own attack. With this tactic Brusilov achieved great success, he then received massive supplies and returned to the old, unsuccessful approach. This tactic, which Hutier first used when taking Riga in September 1917, was so successful that the French simply called it the "Hutier tactic". The expression more commonly used today is “ infiltration tactics ” or “ shock troop tactics ” as used by the storm battalions that were formed later .

In December 1917, Hutier received command of the 18th Army , which was newly established on the Western Front , with which he was involved in the 1918 spring offensive, among other things . He kept this command until the end of the war. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle 1st Class with Oak Leaves and Swords on July 23, 1918 .

Hutier tactics

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Hutier noted that the conventional type of attack, namely prolonged artillery fire along the entire front line followed by massive infantry attacks , only resulted in disastrous losses. He proposed an alternative plan consisting of three basic steps:

1. A short artillery bombardment with heavy calibers in combination with various poison gas grenades would neutralize the enemy front line, but not destroy it.
2. Assault battalions would advance under creeping artillery fire and infiltrate previously identified vulnerabilities in enemy defenses. They would avoid fighting as much as possible and would single-mindedly advance to the enemy headquarters or artillery positions and capture or destroy them.
3. After the storm battalions did their job, heavy German army units would advance with machine guns , mortars, and flamethrowers and attack targets that had not been neutralized by the storm battalions.
4. In the final phase of the attack, regular infantry would break any remaining enemy resistance.

Many other generals have developed similar tactics in the past. They date back to the American Civil War , when Army Col. Emory Upton used a similar tactic in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in 1864 . Allied formations also did this in early fighting in France. Hutier, however, was the first troop commander to bring them to the battlefield on a large scale.

See also : Trench warfare in World War I  and infiltration (military)

success

On September 3, 1917, Hutier, as Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Army , used his tactics to break through a long siege of the city of Riga . This was followed by an amphibious assault on Moonsund Islands in the Baltic Sea , the only successful amphibious assault in the entire course of the war ( Operation Albion ).

His tactics caught on, and so German troops, in support of the hard-pressed and retreating Austro-Hungarian troops, achieved a spectacular victory over the Italians in the 12th Isonzo Battle in Hutier's absence . The tactic was used equally successfully to recapture the terrain that had been conquered by the British during the Battle of Cambrai . Hutier was awarded the order Pour le Mérite by Wilhelm II on September 6, 1917 and was transferred to the Western Front in 1918 .

In March of this year Hutier again used his tactics against Allied positions, perforated the French and British lines and advanced around 65 kilometers along the Somme in the direction of Amiens (see German Spring Offensive 1918 ). The Germans took 50,000 prisoners of war, and Hutier was awarded the oak leaves to the Pour le Mérite on March 23, 1918, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Military Order of St. Henry on May 7, 1918 .

retirement

His tactic was used again in a major victory against France in June, but the Allies began to adapt and developed counter-tactics. In an advance in July 1918, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive , the American and French defenders set up deep defense systems, which the (decimated) assault battalions failed.

Despite the defeat, Hutier returned to Germany as a war hero, and after the World War, like his commander and cousin, General Erich Ludendorff , he represented the stab-in- the-back legend that enemies on the home front, demoralized by Crewe House propaganda , would have led to Germany's defeat and not losses in the field.

He was retired from the army on January 14, 1919. From December 1, 1919 until his death, he acted as chairman of the German Officers Association and in 1919 was also president of the Berlin National Club .

Oskar von Hutier was buried in the old cemetery in Darmstadt (grave site: IV C 135).

Awards

• Order of the Crown II class
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Prussian service award cross
• Commander II class of the Order of the Zähringen Lion
• Bavarian Military Merit Order II. Class with star
• Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Order of Ludwig
• Grand Cross of the Order of Philip the Magnanimous
• Commander of the Order of the Griffin
• Honorary Commander of the House and Merit Order of Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig
• Grand Cross of the Order of Albrecht
• Commander II class of the Duke of Saxony-Ernestine House Order
• Grand Cross of the Dannebrog Order
• Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
• Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau

literature

• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweig: 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. 144-145.

Web links

Commons : Oskar von Hutier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Oskar von Hutier in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Military weekly paper . No. 16 of August 6, 1918, p. 262.
2. ↑ The Royal Saxon Military St. Heinrichs-Orden 1736–1918, A Ehrenblatt of the Saxon Army , Wilhelm and Bertha von Baensch-Stiftung, Dresden 1937, p. 73.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg Army Corps for 1914 , Ed .: War Ministry . ES Mittler & Sohn . Berlin 1914, p. 49.