Willy Martin Ernst Rohr was born on May 19, 1877 in Metz, Alsace-Lorraine (then a part of the German Empire). He attended military schools in Bensberg and Karlsruhe… and was later transferred to the Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt (Central Officer’s Training School) in Lichterfelde, Berlin.
In 1896, Rohr joined the Third Magdeburg Infantry Regiment Number 66 as a second lieutenant. From 1899 to 1903, he was assigned to NCO school in Potsdam. Rohr first became a battalion adjutant… and later a regimental adjutant. In 1906, he was promoted as a first lieutenant.
After working as a teacher in the infantry shooting school in Wünsdorf from 1911 to 1912, Rohr was transferred to the Tenth Rhineland Infantry Regiment Number 161 in Trier and was promoted to captain. At his request in 1913, Rohr was transferred to the Guards Rifle Battalion in Gross-Lichterfelde. He served as the commander of the Third Company.
With the onset of the Grear War, Rohr fought in Third Company on the Aisne, in Champagne, and on the Hartmannsweiler Kopf. In 1915, he was transferred to the Major Calsow detachment and formed the Loretto Front with two unsuccessful pioneer companies. Thus, the battalions were renamed the Sturmabteilung Calsow… and their leadership found other employment in the Armeeabteilung Gaede. The decimated storm detachment was recalled to the Kaiserstuhl. By command of General Erich von Falkenhayn, the captain (who had been brought in from the Guards Rifle Battalion) was temporarily entrusted with command on August 30, 1915. The previously unused Kaiserstuhl became a training center.
The effectiveness of the shock troop detachment was improved by reequipping it with machine guns and flamethrowers. Rohr introduced the steel helmet (already used by the enemy) to his storm battalions. In addition, his newly-developed tactics were based on personal experience at the front, and it made a great contribution to the development of assault team tactics. Major Reddemann was the first to designate the existing flamethrower squads as shock troops. Both he and Willy Rohr are regarded as originators of the concept of shock troops.
But the latter neglected the tactical training of the army up until the pivotal Battle of Verdun. The successful testing of the new methods was carried out by Infantry Regiment Number 187 west of Colmar in the Vosges. The Sturmabteilung Rohr was committed to the re-conquest of the Hartmannsweiler Kopf in December 1915. When its next deployment (the attack on the Hirzstein) failed, the Sturmabteilung Rohr withdrew to carry out more intensive preparations. Upon completion, the place was eventually captured with the help of two relatively inexperienced regiments (Numbers 188 and 189) in January 1916.
By successfully employing the storm detachment in various sectors of the front, Army Detachment Gaede trained itself and the stationary troops. Late in 1915, the first training course was held in the general’s presence on the Schlossberg at Achkarren. As a result of its success, the detachment was moved to the German Fifth Army (under Crown Prince Wilhelm) to take part in the Verdun offensive in February 1916.
Because of high losses resulting from lack of cooperation between the units, the detachment had to be quickly withdrawn. On March 13, 1916, Captain Rohr spoke at the command post of General-Commando 3 in Nouillon-Pont with General von Lochow, Chief of Staff Colonel Wetzell, and Major von Stülpnagel as his audience. When asked about the failure of the daily attacks, Rohr attributed it primarily to the infantry’s inexperience with hand-to-hand fighting. For example, hand grenades had been left lying in the woods. The infantry refused to touch the grenades, because the men had not been trained in their use.
Rohr also considered the cooperation between the infantry and their accompanying weapons (i.e. machine guns and light mortars) to be insufficient. As a result, he was ordered to repeat his comments as soon as possible to the Army High Command (AOK 5). Rohr was promptly given the task of training the army divisions in “modern close combat”.
After an inspection by the Crown Prince and by order of the War Ministry, the storm detachment was expanded to a battalion. For teaching purposes, it built a practice fort in the forest near the ruined village of Doncourt, where thousands of German and Austrian officers were trained until the end of the war. Besides its use for a teaching force, the battalion was repeatedly sent to hotspots on the Western Front. Rohr made a direct report to Wilhelm II on the storming of the Souville Gorge on September 3, 1916. The battalion was designated a favorite of the Kaiser. At the request of the Crown Prince Army Group, the battalion received the designation of Sturm-Bataillon Number 5 (Rohr) from the War Ministry on February 7, 1917. At the same time, Willy Rohr became chief training officer.
In January 1918, Rohr was assigned command of the first Deutsche Sturm-Panzer-Kraftwagen-Abteilung (German Armored Vehicle Detachment), a tank unit. Both the slowness and clumsiness of the vehicles were regarded as defects. On March 11, 1918, Rohr went to AOK 18 (18th Army HQ) in Leschelle to make preparations for a major assault that later materialized as Operation Michael. His battalion arrived two days before the initial strike.
In April 1918, Rohr was promoted to major. Under secret marching orders, his battalion was sent to Spa later that autumn. It was assigned to guard the Große Hauptquartier and Oberste Heeresleitung (Supreme Army Headquarters). When the Kaiser fled to Holland in November, Major Rohr obtained approval from OHL to leave Spa and return to Germany. A large part of the battalion was demobilized in Schwelm.
Two years later, Rohr was assigned to Infantry Regiment 29 of the provisional Reichswehr. With the formation of the 100,000-man army in 1921, he was dismissed and put at its disposition under the rank of lieutenant colonel. Since a major received no suitable command and thus had to take a staff supply job, Rohr resigned. As a result, the Reichswehr deprived itself of one of its most capable soldiers.
Willy Rohr found a new home in Lübeck, where he died on March 8, 1930 as director of the Lübecker Getreidebank. He was fifty-two years old.