“Germany’s Noble Cause Must Prevail”: General August von Mackensen on the Great War's Eastern Front, 1914-17

English-language accounts and appraisals of the Western Front have long dominated the historiography of the Great War. This prevailing interpretation tends to cast a shadow over other, nonetheless critical sectors of fighting and diminish contributions made on these fronts by less well-known commanders and the men who served under them. While the Western Front boasts a rich catalog of scholarship, few popular accounts exist about those who carved out a legacy for themselves on the Eastern Front, a sector of the war that saw some of the most desperate fighting but has since been relegated to the footnotes of history. However, as the body of scholarship continues to deepen and the focus of historians shifts eastward, as yet untold stories of sacrifice and glory on the backwater battlefields of Russia, Poland, and the Balkan lands have begun to emerge. Such is the case with one of the German Empire’s most successful field armies, Heeresgruppe Mackensen, or Army Group Mackensen. This force, comprised primarily of soldiers from the Imperial German Army, but occasionally supplemented by Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman troops, sundered the Russian advance in Poland in early 1915, defeated the persistent Serbian Army later that same year, and conquered Romania in 1916 after only four months of fighting. Much of the army’s success can be attributed to its principal commander and namesake, the keen Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen, as well as his brilliant chief of staff, Hans von Seeckt. The victories they achieved bolstered the resolve of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies and contributed greatly to the closing of that front in early 1918. Comprising the second chapter of my thesis on General von Mackensen, this paper assesses the old hussar's leadership during the Russian invasion of Poland, the Galician campaign, and the conquest of Serbia and Rumania.