Background
Bothmer was bom in Munich on December 10, 1852, the son of an army general; the family stemmed from Lower Saxony and dated from the twelfth century.
Bothmer was bom in Munich on December 10, 1852, the son of an army general; the family stemmed from Lower Saxony and dated from the twelfth century.
Bothmer entered the Bavarian army in 1871 and served most of his career, save a three-year stint with the General Staff in Berlin, either in the Bavarian General Staff or the War Ministry. He became battalion commander as lieutenant colonel in 1896; three years later Bothmer served as department head in the General Staff at Munich. In 1903 he was advanced to brigade commander; two years later he was promoted lieutenant general and chief of the 2nd Division; and in 1910 he became general of infantry.
On November 30, 1914, Bothmer received command of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division at Ypres, but one month later was transferred to head the II Bavarian Reserve Corps at the western front. This position, too, proved to be short-lived: on March 22, 1915, he took over a new "Corps Bothmer," entrusted with defence of the Carpathian passes at the gates of Hungary. In May 1915, following General August von Mackensen's breakthrough at Gorlice-Tarnow, Bothmer was able to descend from the mountain passes at Stryi, and in extremely heavy fighting twice managed to cross the Dniester River. But on July 6, 1915, he again exchanged commands, this time becoming head of the German South Army in Galicia, where by August he managed to drive the Russians beyond Tarnopol.
Bothmer's greatest challenge came on June 4,1916, when General Aleksei Brusilov unleashed a broad offensive around Luck. Outnumbered by almost fifty divisions, the German-Austro-Hungarian front in the south crumbled like a pastry shell: in three days alone, Brusilov took 200,000 prisoners, mostly from the Austrian Seventh Army in the Bukovina.
Further Russian attacks in the direction of Brody, Lemberg, and Kovel forced Bothmer to fall back upon Strypa at the foot of the Carpathians; his position was secured only through a clever counterstroke by General Alexander von Linsingen against the northern edge of Luck. When the fighting subsided three months later, the Central Powers had lost over 350,000 men, but Brusilov had suffered more than 1 million casualties and prisoners.
General Brusilov attempted to break the southern front a final time on July 4, 1917, with an assault in the direction of Brzezany, but this time Bothmer was ready; his counteroffensive drove the Russians back over 100 kilometers. In December the new Bolshevik government sued for an armistice, and on February 3,1918, Bothmer's South Army was dissolved.
Thereafter, Bothmer led a new Nineteenth Army in Lorraine; he was promoted colonel general in April 1918. With the collapse of the German position in France and Belgium, Bothmer on November 8 was returned to Bavaria to command the Home Defenses South in the event of a final, desperate stand on German soil against the Allies; instead, the government of Prince Max von Baden sued for peace. Bothmer retired from active service that same month. He died in Munich on March 18, 1937.