Von der Goltz takes command in Mesopotamia

On 12 December 1915 the German Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz, commander of the Ottoman Sixth Army, arrived at the headquarters of Colonel Nureddin Bey before Kut. For several days the Turks had been besieging there General Charles Townshend’s British division, which after the battle of Ctesiphon had fallen back as far as this town on the Tigris. The date is given by Lieutenant-Colonel Hans von Kiesling, a German officer on Goltz’s staff, whom the British official history cites. The day of the field marshal’s arrival in Baghdad is less certain. Some accounts, based on Turkish sources, give 21 December, which is hard to reconcile with Kiesling’s account. The British chronology of the war places his assumption of command on 24 November, when Goltz was still on his way.

A long journey

The appointment had been made much earlier. In mid-October 1915 (Turkish literature gives 13 October) the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, gave the seventy-two-year-old field marshal command of the new Sixth Army, covering all Ottoman forces from the Persian Gulf to the area of Lake Van. Goltz, who had for years reformed the Ottoman army and in December 1914 had returned to the Bosphorus as adviser to the sultan, had until then commanded the First Army in the Constantinople area. There he often quarrelled with the head of the German military mission, General Otto Liman von Sanders. According to a report by the German ambassador of October 1915, Enver had long wanted to remove him from the capital “without offending the old gentleman”.

The task was not only military. Goltz was also to direct operations in Persia: to support German agents, organise risings against the British and the Russians and create a Persian army. British intelligence reported that the field marshal left for Baghdad on 10 November. The journey took several weeks. The battle of Ctesiphon, which on 22–25 November halted the British march on Baghdad, was therefore fought by Nureddin without him. Some later accounts attribute this victory to Goltz, but wrongly.

Before Kut

When Goltz reached the front, the Turks had behind them their first failed attempts to take Kut by storm. According to Kiesling, in the night attacks of 9–10 and 10–11 December they lost about 800 men. Nureddin believed that only part of the British force had remained in the town. Goltz thought otherwise: he considered that Townshend had kept most of the division there, and decided that it was better to surround the town and starve the defenders out. He forbade further assaults. The Turks began to build siege lines around the town.

Goltz’s authority, however, had its limits. The British official history, citing German writers, notes that the field marshal had little influence on Turkish strategy in Mesopotamia. The Turks did not always take him into account. According to Kiesling, on Christmas Eve 1915 Nureddin launched a great assault on the fort at Kut against the express orders of Goltz, who had then left in the direction of Kermanshah in Persia. The attack failed.

The field marshal did not live to see the end of the siege. He died in Baghdad on 19 April 1916, officially of typhus, ten days before the capitulation of Kut.