MILITARY RISE
Otto Ernst Vinzent Leo von Below was born in Danzig (now Gdańsk) on January 18, 1857. At the age of eighteen, he entered the Imperial German Army. After three years at the War Academy (from 1884 to 1887), Below was appointed to the General Staff in 1889 with the rank of captain. Eight years later, he was given command of a battalion. In 1905, Below was promoted to colonel and given command of the 19th Infantry Regiment.
In 1910, Below was promoted to major-general and appointed to command the 43rd Infantry Brigade. Two years later, he rose to the rank of lieutenant-general and took command of the Second Infantry Division, based at Insterburg in East Prussia. On August 2, 1914, as the July Crisis turned into the First World War, Below was promoted to command the I Reserve Corps (part of the German Eighth Army) on the Eastern Front.
THE EASTERN FRONT
At the start of the war, the Russians launched a two pronged invasion of East Prussia. The Russian First Army (led by Pavel Rennenkampf) advanced west from Vilna, while the Russian Second Army (led by Alexei Samsonov) moved northward from Warsaw in Russian Poland. The two armies were separated by the Masurian Lakes.
Meanwhile, the German plan called for an attack on whichever of the two armies came into range first. It soon became apparent that the Russian First Army was the immediate threat. After some indecision, the Germans sent three corps eastward to meet the Cossacks. The result was the Battle of Gumbinnen on August 20, 1914.
Below’s I Reserve Corps made up the right wing of the German Eighth Army at Gumbinnen. In the first phase of the battle, he forced the Russian left to retreat momentarily. However, the German center was beaten back… and it forced the entire German Eighth Army to withdraw. In the aftermath of Gumbinnen, the German commander in East Prussia, General Maximilian von Prittwitz, decided to retreat to the Vistula River… but at the same time, he prepared to fight a second battle against the Russian Second Army.
Only the XX Corps was in place on the southern border of East Prussia. The three corps that had fought at Gumbinnen were moved west: I Corps by rail to the right (or west) of XX Corps, XVII Corps (led by August von Mackensen) and Below’s I Reserve Corps by road to their left (or east). Having set this plan in motion, Prittwitz was replaced by Paul von Hindenburg, who along with Erich Ludendorff gained most of the credit for the great victory that followed at the decisive Battle of Tannenberg (August 26-31, 1914).
The fight saw Samsonov attack I and XX Corps, both already at Tannenberg. But the Russian Second Army was hit on the right by Below and Mackensen. Soon, Samsonov and his men were surrounded, and over 120,000 Cossacks were taken prisoner.
With the Russian Second Army destroyed, the Germans then turned back north to deal with Rennenkampf’s slowly advancing Russian First Army in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 9-14, 1914). Although the victory was not as dramatic as Tannenberg, the defeat of two Russian armies in two weeks ended the immediate threat to East Prussia. For his role in the battles of Gumbinnen, Tannenberg, and First Masurian Lakes, Below was promoted to General der Infanterie.
On November 7, 1914, Below assumed command of the German Eighth Army. The Germans and Austrians developed an ambitious plan for a gigantic pincer movement, with one attack in East Prussia and one from the Carpathians. The failure of the Austrians doomed the overall plan, but the attack from East Prussia resulted in a German victory at the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (February 7-21, 1915). Below’s men effectively destroyed the Russian Tenth Army, capturing 100,000 prisoners. For his role in the battle, Below was promptly rewarded with the Pour le Mérite on February 16, 1915 “for outstanding leadership and distinguished military planning and successful operations”.
On April 27, 1915, three German cavalry and three German infantry divisions invaded Courland and Lithuania, threatening the Russian railway from Warsaw to St. Petersburg. The Cossacks were forced to respond, and the fighting slowly expanded. On May 26, 1915, with the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in full swing, Below was transferred to command the new Army of the Niemen, which slowly advanced eastward. By mid-August 1915, it had reached a line from Kovno to Riga… namely the southern reaches of the western Dvina River. By the end of September 1915, the Russian retreat from Poland was over. The reestablished Eastern Front now ran southeast from Riga before turning south to run four hundreds miles to the Rumanian border.
In December 1915, Below was returned to the German Eighth Army, second in the line, and on the right of the Army of the Niemen. It was primarily a quiet sector of the Eastern Front, as the main Russian offensives of 1916 (namely the Brusilov Offensive) took place further south in the Austrians sectors of the line.
MACEDONIA
On October 10, 1916, Below was transferred to the Balkans. Rumania had declared war on the Central Powers on August 27th… and had almost immediately come under German attack! The Army of the Danube (under August von Mackensen) attacked from Bulgaria. The only danger came from Salonika, where the British and French had maintained an armed camp since 1915. Below was given command of Army Group (Heeresgrupper) Below, made up of the German Eleventh and Bulgarian First and Second Armies.
Below successfully held off an Allied offensive at Monastir for most of November 1916. By the time the Allies had pushed Below out of Monastir, the Germans were on the verge of capturing the Rumanian capital of Bucharest. He had successfully defended the southern flank of the invasion and repulsed a renewed Allied offensive in March 1917. But soon, Below was transferred yet again, this time to the West.
FRANCE
On April 22, 1917, Below was appointed to command the German Sixth Army around Lille and Arras. He replaced General von Falkenhausen, who had been in command when the Canadians seized Vimy Ridge on the first day of Second Arras (April 9, 1917). The battle continued into May, but not at the same level of intensity. By June, the British turned their attention north to Flanders for the upcoming Third Battle of Ypres.
Five days after taking command of the German Sixth Army, Below earned another prestigious award… as oak leaves were added to his Pour le Mérite!
ITALY
On September 9, 1917, Below was moved for a fourth time. He was named commander-in-chief of the Austro-German Fourteenth Army on the Isonzo Front, which consisted of ten Austro-Hungarian divisions and seven German division. This combined force was the spearhead of the surprise attack at Caporetto on October 24th, which routed the Italians (who had no mobile reserves) and sent them into a full retreat to the southwest.
Caporetto was a demonstration of the effectiveness of German stormtroopers and infiltration tactics developed in part by Oskar von Hutier. The use of poison gas also played a key role in the collapse of the Italian Second Army. But a breakdown in German logistics brought the battle to a close on a line running along the Piave River. Thus, the Italian Front soon froze again into trench warfare.
For his role in the Battle of Caporetto, Below was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle on November 1, 1917.
THE KAISERSCHLACHT OFFENSIVE
At the start of 1918, Below was moved for a final time to the Western Front. On February 1st, he took over the German Seventeenth Army on the Arras-Cambrai front. His men made up the German right wing during the Somme Offensive (March 21-April 4, 1918). It was the first of Erich Ludendorff’s series of great thrusts during the spring and summer of 1918. Below’s role was to repeat Csporetto and strike the British defenses around Arras. However, the British Third Army was the strongest and best prepared of the BEF, and Below’s attacks made little progress.
Two months before the Kaiserschlacht Offensive (in January 1918), Below made the following revolutionary proposal to Ludendorff:
“Forget about the offensive and shorten the front lines as much as necessary; build Panzers throughout all of 1918 and, with your Panzer squadrons, break through all the way to the Channel coast in the spring of 1919.”
But by August 1918, the Kaiserschlacht Offensive had ended in failure, and the Imperisl German Army was short of manpower. The great British counterattack at Amiens on August 8th pounded the German lines south of Below’s position. One month later, the Germans had retreated back to the Hindenburg Line.
Below was then transferred to the German First Army on October 12, 1918… still holding on to part of the Hindenburg Line on the Aisne River. On November 8th, with armistice negotiations well under way, he was promoted to command Home Defense West at Kassel, partly in preparation for a possible Allied invasion if the negotiations failed. Instead, Below found himself dealing with attempted left wing revolts!
DEATH
For the first half of 1919, Otto von Below commanded XVII Corps at Danzig. However in June, Below was either dismissed or submitted his resignation after protesting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. A post-war attempt by the Allies to try him as a war criminal failed.
Otto von Below died on March 8, 1944 in Friedland, Lower Saxony at the age of eighty-seven.