Allegiance German Empire Name Oskar Hutier | Battles/wars First World War Years of service 1875–1919 Service/branch German Army | |
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Awards Pour le MeriteIron Cross Similar People Robert Lee Bullard, Erich Ludendorff, Karl von Bulow, Helmuth von Moltke the Youn, Alexander von Kluck | ||
Oskar von Hutier
Oskar Emil von Hutier (27 August 1857 – 5 December 1934) was a German general during the First World War. He served in the German Army from 1875 to 1919, including war service. During the war, he commanded the army that conquered Riga in 1917 and was transferred to the Western Front in 1918 to participate in the Michael offensive that year. He is frequently but mistakenly credited with inventing the stormtroop tactics his forces employed to great effect during the Michael offensive. After retiring from the Army in 1919, he presided over the German Officers' League until his death on 5 December 1934.
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Biography
Oskar von Hutier was born in Erfurt on 27 August 1857, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. His family had a long tradition of military service; his grandfather served in the French Army and his father, Cölestin von Hutier, rose to the rank of colonel in the Prussian Army. Hutier was commissioned into the German Army in 1874 and attended the Prussian Military Academy beginning in 1885. There, he gained the attention of the General Staff, on which he subsequently served. He served as the Generalquartiermeister in 1911.
Hutier married Fanni Ludendorff, and had three children. Their son Oskar was seriously wounded at the Battle of Verdun in 1916.
World War I
Hutier spent the first year of the First World War as a divisional commander in France. There, he commanded the 1st Guards Infantry Division in the Second Army. He commanded the unit during the First Battle of the Marne, and remained on the Western Front until April 1915, when he was transferred to the Eastern Front. There, on 4 April, he took command of the XXI Corps of the Tenth Army. He briefly commanded the Army Detachment D from 2 January to 22 April in 1917. On 22 April, he was promoted to General der Infanterie (General of the Infantry) and placed in command of the Eighth Army.
On 3 September 1917, Hutier, commanding the Eighth Army, ended the two-year siege of the Russian city of Riga. Here, he moved his troops to an unexpected sector in the Russian lines, and using a heavy bombardment prepared by Georg Bruchmüller and a surprise crossing of the Dvina River, took the city. The tactics he employed—surprise and encirclement—were essentially standard German Army doctrine; indeed, his infantry attacked in company-strength skirmish lines after crossing the River Dvina, much as they would have done in 1914. He followed this success with Operation Albion, an amphibious assault (the only successful one of the war) that seized Russian-held islands in the Baltic Sea. Hutier was awarded the Pour le Mérite by Kaiser Wilhelm II for seizing Riga, and his success there also impressed General Erich Ludendorff, who transferred Hutier to the Western Front in 1918.
After arriving on the Western Front, Hutier was placed in command of the newly formed Eighteenth Army. In March 1918, during the Spring Offensive, Hutier employed the new infiltration tactics that had been developed over the preceding three years on the Western Front. A contemporary French magazine credited Hutier with inventing the tactics, though he had had no role in developing them. He hammered the British Fifth Army, advancing some 40 miles along the Somme River toward Amiens in the span of fifteen days. Hutier's forces captured around 50,000 prisoners; Hutier was awarded the Oak Leaves to accompany his Pour le Mérite for this victory.
Later in June, Hutier directed an offensive toward Noyon, which made initial gains but broke down in the face of stiff Allied resistance. For the rest of the war, Hutier's Eighteenth Army fought on the defensive while the Allies launched a strategic counter-offensive that culminated in Germany's total defeat by November.
Later life
Following the Armistice in November 1918, Hutier marched his Army back to Germany, where he was greeted as a hero. He retired from the army in 1919. Like his overall commander and cousin, Ludendorff, Hutier maintained that the German Army had not been defeated in the field, but was "stabbed in the back" by domestic enemies on the home front. Hutier served as president of the German Officers' League from 1919 to shortly before his death in Berlin on 5 December 1934, at the age of 77.