Karl Freiherr von Pflanzer-Baltin was an Austro-Hungarian general who gained recognition during the World War I.
Background
Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin was born in Pecs, Hungary, on June 1,1855, the son of an auditor general. His father was raised to noble status in 1893 and when his mother's uncle, Joseph Baron von Baltin, adopted the young lad in 1898, his name officially became the familiar hyphenated form.
Education
Pflanzer graduated from the Theresa Military Academy in 1875 and attended the War Academy in 1879/1880.
Career
After a brief stint with the General Staff he was sent to the Ulans in 1889 in the grade of captain, and then returned to the General Staff as major in 1891. Pflanzer was an instructor at the War Academy in 1893/1894, and in 1896 was sent to Lemberg as chief of staff of the XII Army Corps in the grade of colonel. Next came tours of duty in Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, Transylvania, as well as in Briinn, Moravia. By October 1911, Pflanzer-Baltin was in line to receive command of an army corps but was denied this assignment owing to ill health. He was sent instead to Vienna as inspector general of Corps Officer Schools; in June 1914 he requested early retirement.
The outbreak of war found Pflanzer-Baltin in North Africa, but at the urgings of Count Istvan Tisza and General Conrad von Hotzendorf he was reactivated and on October 1, 1914, was promoted general of cavalry and given command of a hastily assembled Army Corps Pflanzer-Baltin in Transylvania. However, the unexpected rapid Russian advance into Galicia prompted Conrad to transfer this corps to the borders of the Bukovina. Pflanzer-Baltin became a master of improvisation and conducted an unorthodox campaign for much of the war in the Carpathian Mountains. When Conrad's counterattack designed to relieve the fortress at Przemysl in January and February 1915 bogged down in the deep snow, Pflanzer-Baltin s army group alone managed to advance on to Czernowitz, but even it was unable to swing north in order to reach the Third Army (Boroevic) or the German South Army (Linsingen). The result was that the great fortress at Przemysl fell on March 23, 1915, with the loss of over 170,000 soldiers.
In May 1915, Pflanzer-Baltin's forces were regrouped as the Seventh Army and they took part in heavy fighting near Chotin during the summer as well as in the bitter New Year's battle of 1915/1916. On June 4, 1916, General Aleksei Brusilov launched his powerful attack against the Dual Monarchy's forces in Galicia. After the initial breakthrough at Ocna on June 10, Brusilov rolled up the Fourth Army at Volhynia and drove Pflanzer- Baltin's Seventh Army, which formed the southern front of the Austro-Hungarian forces, out of east Galicia and the entire Bukovina until additional units hastily brought up from the Italian front halted the
Russian advance on the slopes of the Carpathians in September. Pflanzer-Baltin then had to witness the Seventh Army being placed, as Conrad put it, "under German guardianship” as General Hans von Seeckt was appointed its "supreme chief of staff. In fact, Seeckt informed German headquarters that only with German aid and under German command could the eastern front be stabilized; on September 10, 1916, Pflanzer-Baltin was relieved of command of the Seventh Army.
The new Emperor Charles recalled PflanzerBaltin as inspector general of all foot soldiers in March 1917, which meant in effect that the general was entrusted with training new recruits in rear areas. But on July 10,1918, Pflanzer-Baltin was given command of Austro-Hungarian forces in Albania, and the following month he mounted a limited counteroffensive against French and Italian units that netted him Fjeri and Berat. Cut off from communications in Albania, Pflanzer-Baltin refused to believe that the war was over, even when finally notified on November 5 that an armistice had been signed. His army group still flew the imperial-royal standard as it fought its way to the supposed safety of Cattaro. Only on November 18, 1918 convinced that his troops could no longer be relied upon and that the port did indeed belong to the Yugoslav National Committee, would Pflanzer-Baltin consent to be evacuated by sea on an Allied warship. He died in Vienna on April 8, 1925.