Background
Rüdiger von der Goltz was born in Züllichau in Brandenburg on December 8, 1865, into a noble clan that dated from the thirteenth century and stemmed from the Uckermark.
Rüdiger von der Goltz was born in Züllichau in Brandenburg on December 8, 1865, into a noble clan that dated from the thirteenth century and stemmed from the Uckermark.
Goltz entered the army in 1885, attended the War Academy, and served as captain in the General Staff. By 1906 he had been promoted major and five years later lieutenant colonel in the General Staff and then at the War Academy. Promoted colonel in 1913, Goltz in March 1914 became regimental commander.
In August 1914, Count von der Goltz led a Hamburg infantry regiment at the battle of Mons. Next came command of the Mecklenburg Thirty-fourth Infantry Regiment at the winter battle of the Masurian Lakes in February 1915; three months later he led the Fifth Guards Infantry Regiment in northern Poland. Goltz in July broke through the Russian lines south of Vilna with this unit, but in October 1915 returned to the western front near Cambrai. In May 1916, Goltz took over the First Guards Infantry Brigade in heavy fighting at the Somme, and in August of that year was promoted major general. In the spring of 1917 he fought with this outfit at the Chemin des Dames, then at the Argonne forest, and in June 1917 he was back at the Chemin des Dames this time with the Thirty-seventh Infantry Division.
Goltz's career changed dramatically on February 26, 1918, when he was given the Twelfth Landwehr Division the so-called Baltic Division for a projected invasion of Finland. Although Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling objected to this undertaking because it would expand the war still further, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg on March 12 persuaded the kaiser to launch the invasion in order to exert "healthy pressure" on the Bolshevik government at Petrograd. On April 1, Goltz moved his 12,000 men across the Baltic Sea. Two days later he landed at Hangö and, meeting with very little Russian resistance, entered Helsingfors (Helsinki) on April 13. Later, at Lahti, his Baltic Division captured 25,000 Russian soldiers. Goltz was appointed "German General in Finland" to the end of the war.
In January 1919, Goltz stood at the Czechoslovakian border, but the next month was sent to Libau as German governor in the Baltic region. His forces captured Riga and Courland from the Bolsheviks in May, a move that aroused suspicion among the Allies in Paris that Goltz might use his VI Reserve Corps to support conservative and reactionary movements in Germany as well as in Russia. Hence the Berlin government on October 3, 1919, recalled and retired Goltz. In fact, his forces (Das Baltikum) took part in the right-wing Kapp Putsch in Berlin in March 1920, and were only with great difficulty demobilized. Thereafter, Goltz became active in the youth movement and in officer clubs; in 1924 he was elected president of the United Patriotic Associations. In October 1931, Goltz participated in the right-wing Harzburger front. He died in Kinsegg in Bavaria on November 4, 1946.
He died on the Kinsegg estate, in the village of Bernbeuren, Germany, in 1946. His son of the same name, Rüdiger von der Goltz, became a lawyer.
He was married to Hannah Caroline von Hase (1873–1941), a granddaughter of Karl Hase.