Johannes Friedrich "Hans" von Seeckt was a German military officer who served as Chief of Staff to August von Mackensen, and was a central figure in planning the victories Mackensen achieved for Germany in the east during the First World War.
Background
Seeckt was born in Schleswig on 22 April 1866 to an old Pomeranian family, which had been ennobled in the eighteenth century. Though the family had lost its estates, Seeckt was "a thorough-going aristocrat" and his father was an important general within the German Army, finishing his career as military governor of Posen.
Education
Seeckt entered the Prussian army in 1885, attended the War Academy and, after a tour of India, joined the General Staff as captain in 1899. By 1913 Lieutenant Colonel von Seeckt had risen to staff chief of the III Army Corps at Berlin, and he led this unit into the Great War.
Career
In August 1914, the III Brandenburg Corps fought the British at Mons, forced them to stand again at Le Cateau, and advanced to the banks of the Ourcq before the general retreat from the Marne. In January 1915, Seeckt defeated the enemy at Soissons and was promoted colonel as a result. He was already known as a brilliant staff officer with steady nerves; his in¬scrutable face was highlighted by steely gray-blue eyes and the inevitable monocle.
Seeckt's career changed radically in March 1915 when he was appointed chief of staff to a new Eleventh Army hastily dispatched to Galicia under General August von Mackensen to halt the Russian advance in the east. On May 2 Seeckt led the Eleventh Army's drive through the Russian line at Gorlice-Tarnow, recapturing the great fortress of Przemysl, occupying Lemberg, and clearing Galicia of all enemy troops. He was promoted major general and awarded the order Pour le mérite. At the end of August his units stormed Brest-Litovsk, and thereafter the victorious team of Seeckt and Mackensen was regrouped as Army Group Mackensen on the Serbian border. By September the Germans crossed the Danube, captured Belgrade, and advanced as far as the Greek border. Seeckt planned to pursue the Entente forces into Salonika, but General Erich von Falkenhayn vetoed this operation in favor of the planned assault against Verdun.
Despite these outstanding achievements, Seeckt was denied independent command and on July 1, 1916, was placed at the disposal of the chief of the General Staff. The incredible success of General Aleksei Brusilov's June offensive in the east (200,000 Austrian casualties), however, forced Falkenhayn to dispatch this able officer as "supreme staff chief" of General Karl Pflanzer-Baltin's Seventh Army in the Bukovina. Staff chief of Army Group Archduke Charles on the southeastern front followed after Rumania's declaration of war against Germany. The new Habsburg Emperor Charles in November 1916 agreed that Seeckt should act in the same capacity to Army Group Archduke Joseph in Transylvania. Finally, on December 2, 1917, Seeckt was sent to Constantinople as staff chief of the Turkish Army Command and as adviser to Enver Pasha, and from August to November 1918, he acted as chief of Turkish headquarters. This brilliant staff officer was rumored to be in line to succeed General Erich Ludendorff, but the appointment instead went to a south German, General Wilhelm Groener.
Returning to Germany in 1919, Seeckt in April was appointed military delegate to the Paris peace talks. In the summer of that year he replaced Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as the army's chief of staff, and in November became head of a thinly veiled general staff (Truppenamt) in the new Defense Ministry. In March 1920, Seeckt remained neutral ("troop does not fire upon troop") during the right-wing Kapp Putsch in Berlin and was promoted lieutenant general as head of the 100,000-man army. Seeckt transformed the latter into a state within a state and maintained it on a high level partly by secret maneuvers in Russia (the black Reichswehr). On November 8, 1923, he was appointed virtual military dictator of Germany in the wake of Communist uprisings in Saxony and Thuringia, and the National Socialist revolt in Bavaria. A monarchist at heart, Seeckt never felt comfortable with the Weimar Republic and when he allowed Crown Prince Wilhelm's eldest son to participate in army maneuvers, he was fired on October 9, 1926, for violating the "Locarno spirit." Colonel General von Seeckt next served in the Reichstag as delegate for the German People's party. In the early 1930s he urged friends to vote for Adolf Hitler, but by the time he returned from two military missions to Chiang Kai-Shek's China (1933, 1934/35), Seeckt harbored no illusions about the nature of the Nazi state. He died in Berlin-Spandau on December 25, 1936.
Hans von Seeckt was, along with Max Hoffmann, perhaps Germany's most brilliant staff officer. While Mackensen received the credit for Gorlice-Tarnow and the Serbian campaign, the genius behind these victories was Seeckt. Perhaps because he lacked a patron, Seeckt throughout the Great War was denied independent command. Moreover, he was shunted to relative obscurity (Transylvania, Turkey) at a time when his services would have been of immeasurable value at the western front.
Personality
The monocled, trim, well-dressed Prussian officer, whose political sympathies were monarchist, maintained a cold, impersonal attitude to the republican régime, making no real effort to reconcile himself or the officer corps to the Weimar democracy. Under von Seeckt, the army became ‘a State within a State’ with its primary loyalty to the military rather than the political leadership, acting as a bridge between the old monarchical system and an as-yet undefined future State. Neutral during the Kapp putsch of 1920, von Seeckt used the army to suppress the threat of communist risings in Saxony, Thuringia, Hamburg and the Ruhr, and generally acted behind the scenes in favour of the right wing. Nevertheless, he ordered the armed forces in Bavaria to put down Hitler’s attempted putsch in November 1923 and took steps to ensure the Republic against the Nazi movement.
Seeckt presented himself in a precise, professional manner. A small, trim man, he always wore an impeccable uniform. He appeared stern in expression and was inclined to silence. His reserved manner and thoughtful reluctance to join in conversation could be off putting. Seeckt was given the nickname the "Sphinx" during his time working with the staff of the Ottoman Empire. His education and experience were quite broad. In his early years Seeckt had traveled through Europe and large parts of Africa and India, where he became friends with Lord Kitchener. Seeckt's interests ranged far beyond the military traditions of Prussia. Fluent in French and English, he was proficient in a wide range of topics on the arts and culture. He was quite different in presentation than the overbearing Prussian officers that had run Germany's war effort during the Great War. The British ambassador, Lord Abernon, wrote in a report that Seeckt reminded him of a fox. Subsequent meetings with Seeckt convinced him otherwise. He came to view Seeckt as far too much an embarrassingly correct man to resemble a fox. The Minister added: " .. the thoughts of General Seeckt were generous and his views much more far reaching than one would expect from a man in such a tight fitting uniform and with such a pedantic exterior."