Background
Krafft von Dellmensingen was born into a lower ranking Bavarian noble family in Laufen, Upper Bavaria. His father was a royal notary.
Krafft von Dellmensingen was born into a lower ranking Bavarian noble family in Laufen, Upper Bavaria. His father was a royal notary.
Krafft entered the Bavarian army in 1881, attended the War Academy, and was assigned to the General Staff. Next came various regimental and divisional commands as well as further duty in the Bavarian General Staff.
In 1912 Krafft was promoted major general and appointed chief of the Bavarian General Staff, which would according to the treaty of 1871, yield to its Prussian counterpart in time of war.
In August 1914, Krafft was assigned chief of staff of the German Sixth Army commanded by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. Along with the Seventh Army of General Josias von Heeringen, Rupprecht was supposed to conduct a yielding and "enticing" defensive on the German southern flank, according to the Schlieffen plan. General Helmuth von Moltke, however, not only doubled the size of his forces in Alsace-Lorraine, but even diverted six reserve divisions to Lorraine that should have been attached to the right wing marching through Belgium. This tactic only brought confusion, and Krafft and Rupprecht were left without clear orders; their attack against the French line Morhange-Sarrebourg on August 20 was sufficiently strong to force a French withdrawal, but too weak to envelop the French right flank. Krafft initially demurred when ordered by German headquarters to pursue the fleeing French; his forebodings proved correct when the French fought the Germans to a standstill at Nancy-Epinal in mid-September.
Next came a bewildering plethora of commands. At the end of September Krafft was assigned staff chief to a new Sixth Army, first at the Somme, then at Arras and Lille, and finally at Ypres; by December 1914, he stood with the Sixth Army in Flanders. This force fought in March 1915 at Neuve Chapelle and in May at La Bassee and Arras. Thereafter Krafft was appointed commander of the German Alpine Corps and sent to the Serbian border. In October 1915, Krafft accompanied Field Marshal August von Mackensen into Serbia, reaching the Greek frontier by March 1916. Reassignment to the western front in the Champagne followed in the spring, and for much of the summer he fought before Verdun.
In the fall of 1916 Krafft returned to the Balkan theater after Rumania had declared war against the Central Powers. His Alpine Corps was placed under General Erich von Falkenhayn's Ninth Army and fought at the battle of Hermannstadt. From October 17 to November 27, it forced the passes through the Transylvanian mountains; this allowed the Germans to storm Targu Jiu in Wallachia, to cross the Arges, and to occupy Bucharest on December 6, 1916. In March 1917, Krafft was briefly assigned yet again to the western front as chief of staff to Army Group Duke Albrecht of Württemberg at Strassburg, but in August was ordered to the Italian front.
General Erich Ludendorff had sent Krafft, his expert in mountain warfare, to scout the Julian Alps near Tolmino and Flitsch, and he recommended an assault by six German and nine Austrian divisions (the hastily formed German Fourteenth Army) at Tolmino. General Otto von Below was formally in command, while General Svetozar Boroevic led two Austrian armies on the lower ground near the Adriatic shore. The Germans had brought their troops and supplies up the Julian Alps by night and on pack animals to attain the utmost surprise, and they were greatly aided in this when the Italian commander, Count Luigi Cadorna, refused to believe reports of the impending attack. On October 24, 1917, Lieutenant General Krafft attained a smashing victory as the mixed German-Austro-Hungarian forces broke the Italian line at Caporetto (Tolmein-Flitsch) and forced Cadorna to retreat, first behind the Tagliamento and finally behind the Piave; the Italian Second Army was utterly destroyed and Rome lost nearly 600,000 men. Only with British and French reinforcements were the Italians able to stabilize their northern frontier.
Krafft on February 1,1918, became chief of staff of the Seventeenth Army in Artois. On March 21-23 he fought the battle of Monchy-Cambrai and on March 25 he defeated the French at Bapaume; however, early in April Krafft failed to advance at Scarpe and his sector of the front degenerated into trench warfare along the line Arras-Albert. On April 19 Krafft became commander of the II Bavarian Army Corps;
on August 8 he was promoted general of artillery. The Allied advance on August 26 forced Krafft to abandon Arras and his units rapidly fell back upon Cambrai and St. Quentin, finally reaching the Hermann portion of the Hindenburg line. At the end of August, following the collapse of the Austro- Hungarian front, Krafft was rushed to the Bavarian-Tyrolean sector in order to keep the Italians out of southern Germany; instead, the Germans concluded an armistice on November 11, 1918. Krafft retired from the army on December 4, 1918; he died at Seeshaupt in Upper Bavaria on February 22, 1953.
In 1902 he married Helene Zöhrer in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. They would have two sons and one daughter