Background
Kluck was born in Münster, Westphalia on 20 May 1846. He was the son of architect Karl Kluck and his wife Elisabeth, née Tiedemann.
Kluck was born in Münster, Westphalia on 20 May 1846. He was the son of architect Karl Kluck and his wife Elisabeth, née Tiedemann.
He entered the Prussian army in 1865, took part in the campaigns of 1866 and 1870/71, and was promoted colonel in 1896.
Kluck was advanced major general in 1899 and general of infantry in 1906; the family was raised into the Prussian nobility in 1909. Head of the V Army Corps in 1906, Kluck the next year commanded the I Army Corps in East Prussia. In 1913 he was appointed inspector general of the VIII Army Inspectorate in Berlin, and the following year was promoted colonel general and placed in charge of the First Army.
Kluck assembled the First Army near Aachen between August 7 and 15, 1914, as the right wing of the projected great wheeling movement through Belgium, which was thereafter to advance along the Channel coast and to swoop down upon and envelop French forces behind Paris. At first, all went according to plan. Kluck's units surrounded Brussels and defeated the British Expeditionary Force near Mons on August 23; three days later Kluck defeated the British again at Le Cateau. Obsessed with the notion of a new Sedan, the commander of the First Army abandoned the original plan of advance and wheeled inwards prematurely east of Paris, in the process exposing the German right to envelopment. Indeed, Kluck then headed toward the south and Compiègne, defeated the French near Amiens, but in the process failed to cover the flank of General Karl von Billow's Second Army and instead crossed the Marne on September 3. A thirty-mile wide gap developed between the inner flanks of the First and Second Armies and within two days the First Battle of the Marne was in full swing from Paris to Verdun.
Although his troops were plagued by hunger and exhaustion, they nevertheless defeated the French at the battle of Ourcq as Kluck successfully threw his right wing against the French Sixth Army. However, German headquarters far distant in Luxembourg feared that the French and British might exploit the gap between Kluck and Bülow, and on September 9 Colonel Richard Hentsch advised Kluck to withdraw his forces behind the Aisne River rather than risk French counterattacks against his flank. Thus the battle of the Marne was handed the French by the panic of German staff headquarters. And by Kluck's premature inward wheeling motion before Paris.
On March 28, 1915, Kluck was severely wounded in the leg by shrapnel near Vailly. He turned seventy years of age while recuperating and in October 1916 was retired; his eldest son died in Flanders. Kluck was the only German commander of the Great War who had never served in the General Staff. He died in Berlin-Grunewald on October 19, 1934, convinced that staff headquarters had deprived him of a decisive victory at the Marne in September 1914.
Von Kluck's name was mentioned in a bawdy British army song (whose lyrics were written to the tune of the traditional folk-song The Girl I Left Behind Me), which in the original ran:
"Kaiser Bill is feeling ill,
The Crown Prince he's gone barmy.
We don't give a fuck for old von Kluck
And all his bleedin' army."
It was later reported styled in censored form, that is, in less offensive but wholly inaccurate language from a historical point of view. It is unclear if "crown prince" referred to Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria or Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, both army commanders for the duration of the war, though Wilhelm generally fought opposite the French.