August von mackensen biography of barack

“He was bold in front of the enemy, and only feared God,” it was said of August von Mackensen, the Kaiser’s favorite soldier and the House of Hohenzollern’s last appointed general field marshal (GFM). In response to desperate pleas the German supreme commander Erich von Falkenhayn agreed to an offensive against the Russian flank by an Austro-German Army under a German commander.

That September, he took charge during the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

In August 1915, von Mackensen commanded his men during the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive, one of the Central Powers’ most important victories of the war. After campaigning in Italy and Switzerland during the War of the Second Coalition, he fought with distinction as a divisional commander in the successful campaigns of 1805, 1806, and 1807.

So asserted the official 1938 work Prussian-German Field Marshals & Grand Admirals, published postwar in Berlin. In 1891 Mackensen was appointed to the General Staff in Berlin, bypassing the usual three-year preparation in the War Academy. As chief of staff he was assigned Hans von Seeckt, who described Mackensen as an amiable, "hands-on commander with the instincts of a hunter.” His army group, which had an overwhelming advantage in artillery, smashed through the Russian lines between Gorlice and Tarnow and then continued eastward, never giving the Russians time to establish an effective defense, retaking most of eastern Galicia by recapturing Przemyśl and Lemberg. The joint operation was a great victory for the Central Powers, they had advanced 310 km (186 mi), and soon thereafter the Russians pulled out of all of Poland.

As for the former sergeant of the Franco-Prussian War Battle of Sedan himself, when Kaiser Wilhelm II—his admiring patron—raised him to the nobility in 1899, the newly created August von Mackensen chose as his familial motto the simpler theme of “Memini initii” (“Remember the Beginning”), recalling his humble origins.

Indeed, his British critic Cyril Falls called him “One of the most over-advertised generals of the war,” after reviewing how, in August 1914, the advancing Russians had taken 6,000 of his men prisoners, before he was able to halt in his personal command car their 15-mile-long rout to the rear, at Gumbinnen.

In addition, Falls asserted: “He used to boast of his descent from a Highland chieftain, a Mackenzie.

In 1873, Mackensen was named lieutenant of the Lifeguard Hussars, three years later as adjutant to 1st Cavalry, and promoted first lieutenant in 1878, being chosen two years later for the prestigious German general staff as well.

Promoted captain in 1882, he was named to the general staff of the 14th Division in 1885, and two years later as Chief of Dragoons for Regiment No.

9. After the death of his first wife, Doris von Horn, he married Leonie von der Osten, twenty-eight years his junior.

After having accompanied the Kaiser to Palestine in 1898, Mackensen was promoted to major general in 1900, and the next year received the plum Lifeguard Hussars Brigade appointment at Danzig, where he remained until the war began in 1914.

In 1903, von Mackensen had been named lieutenant general as commander of the 36th Cavalry Division, and five years later, he was again promoted to general of cavalry and commander of the 17th Army Corps.

On July 17, 1914—at the age of sixty-five and seemingly on the verge of retirement after a most successful military career, the majority of it in peacetime—fate intervened, and August von Mackensen took his place on the martial stage as a great captain in the most stupendous conflict in all recorded history to that date.

The 17th Corps that he had already commanded for six years prior to the outbreak of World War I encompassed a pair of divisions of eight infantry regiments, one battalion of Jägers (Sharpshooters), three regiments of cavalry Hussars, the 4th Regiment of Mounted Rifles, two brigades of field artillery, Corps heavy artillery reinforced with pioneer/engineer troops, and the aerial 17th Detachment for reconnaissance.

The corps commander’s headquarters was located at Deutsch-Eylau, later relocated to Darkehmen.

On August 15, 1914, it was the Tsarist Imperial Army that surprised the world by launching an offensive into the Kaiser’s own backyard in Prussia, winning the Battle of Gumbinnen on August 20, 1914 against none other than 17th Corps Commander Gen.

von Mackensen, defeating the German emperor’s favorite horseman, thereby knocking his units into a headlong retreat.

Noted Ludendorff’s Own Story:

The infantry lost 200 officers and 8,900 men in combat, as well as 1,000 prisoners-of-war [to the victorious Russians]. His chief, the great Helmuth von Moltke, found him a "lovable character". He was recalled from the regiment to serve as an adjutant to the next chief, Alfred von Schlieffen (in office 1891–1906), whom he regarded as a great instructor on how to lead armies of millions.

He married Doris (Dorothea) von Horn, the sister of a slain comrade, in 1879. When Mackensen returned to Vienna he was honored by a dinner, a personal audience with the Emperor Franz Joseph and was decorated with the magnificently jeweled Military Service Cross 1, a unique award for a foreigner. 

Romanian Campaign

After Romania declared war on Austro-Hungary on 15 August 1916, Mackensen was given command of a multi-national army, with General Emil von Hell as chief of staff, of Bulgarians, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians and Germans which assembled in northern Bulgaria and then advanced into southern Romania.

Right off the bat, he led his men in a number of offensives, including the battles of Tannenberg and Gumbinnen. We—Germany—want to retain the use of the Cernavodă-Constanţa Railway.… Thank God Mackensen was there, or else things would not have been dealt with so summarily.”

In his multiple successful martial operations, the Black Marshal was quick to acknowledge in his postwar 1938 memoirs the services of his triad of talented Chiefs of Staff: Col.

Hans von Seeckt in his Serbian campaign, the transitional Lt Col. Richard Hentsch, followed by his permanent Romanian Campaign C of S, Lt Gen. Gerhard Tappen