Alfred von Waldersee

Alfred Heinrich Karl Ludwig Graf von Waldersee (8 April 18325 March 1904) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) who served as Chief of the Imperial German General Staff and Commander of the International Relief Force during the Boxer Rebellion.

Born into a military family, von Waldersee saw decorated service as an artillery officer, and became Prussian military attaché at the Paris embassy in 1870. This gave him insight into the French defences that would prove crucial in the upcoming Franco-Prussian War, in which he played a significant role. Later, as principal assistant to Field-Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, von Waldersee gained influence with the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, who promoted him Chief of Staff on his accession.

When the Peking legation compound was besieged by the Boxer insurgents in 1900, von Waldersee was appointed as head of an eight-nation relief force. Although he arrived too late to take part in the fighting, he conducted punitive expeditions, which succeeded in pacifying the Boxers, and allegedly took a Chinese mistress, Sai Jinhua.

Family

Alfred von Waldersee was the fifth of six children of the Prussian cavalry general Franz Heinrich von Waldersee (1791–1873) and Bertha von Hünerbein (1799–1859). Franz Heinrich von Waldersee was the son of Franz Anton von Waldersee (1763–1823), an illegitimate son of Leopold III Friedrich Franz, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817) and of Johanne Eleonore Hoffmeier (1739–1816). Nevertheless, Franz Anton was raised and educated at the ducal court and in 1786 was created a Graf, or Count.

The Waldersee family estate, Waterneverstorf, is located on the Baltic coast near Behrensdorf in the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Early years and beyond

Waldersee was born at Potsdam into a military and aristocratic family. After attending several cadet schools, in 1850 he was commissioned as a Leutnant into the Artillery Corps of the Prussian army and he soon attracted the favorable notice of his superiors. In his first major campaign, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, he served as aide-de-camp to General of Artillery Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia, with whom he was present at Königgrätz. In the course of this campaign, Count Waldersee was promoted to major and assigned to the Prussian General Staff. Thereafter, he served on the staff of X Army Corps, a new formation in the conquered kingdom of Hanover. In January 1870, he became military attaché at the Paris embassy of Prussia. At this post he was able to gather intelligence on troop strengths and other information on the French military that proved valuable in the campaigns to come.

In the Franco-Prussian War, Lieutenant Colonel Count Waldersee, recognized for his military prowess and recent analysis of the adversary's armed forces, proved a most useful assistant to the "supreme War-Lord." He was present at the great battles around Metz, assigned to the staff of General Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; and later in operations against Chanzy's army on the Loire. The grand duke was a soldier, but not a tactician of note, and the successful outcome of the western campaign was largely due to his adviser, Waldersee.

The Great General Staff

In 1882, Waldersee was chosen by Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder as his principal assistant on the General Staff at Berlin with the rank of Generalquartiermeister. With this appointment, Waldersee was already seen as the likely successor of the octogenarian field marshal. On several occasions Waldersee accompanied Prince Wilhelm, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, on trips abroad to represent the prince's grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I. Out of these trips grew a tenuous teacher-student relationship, but Waldersee was seen by Wilhelm's liberal parents Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and Victoria, Princess Royal as "anti-Semitic, narrowly zealous in religion, and reactionary... the quartermaster general was the personification of everything Wilhelm's parents most detested." The British historian John C. G. Röhl wrote that Waldersee "...seems to have suffered from some form of paranoid megalomania" as Waldersee believed in a vast Jewish world conspiracy in which the "entirety" of Jews around the world were working for the destruction of the Reich.

Chancellor Bismarck had been in power in Prussia and Germany for a generation, but by the mid-1880s the socio-political mood in Germany was changing. Socialists were gaining seats in the Reichstag, and the liberal middle-class had a friend in the crown prince. Bismarck, seeking to retain his own power, now looked to an alignment with the army, but he was weary and suspicious of Waldersee. Effectively already chief-of-staff in all but name, the count was "able but extravagantly ambitious, restlessly intriguing, [and he] more or less openly aspired to the chancellorship [himself]." In 1885, Waldersee wrote in his diary: "We have far too many enemies, the French, the Slavs, above all the Catholics [emphasis in the original], and then the entire little rabble of the dispossessed, with their supporters". Wilhelm II wanted Waldersee to command the expedition to China, which he announced to the world press had come as a result of the initiative of the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. The announcement which went had been made without consulting the other powers caused a great deal of stress for the Auswärtiges Amt who now had to convince the other powers to accept Waldersee's appointment, which was only done by threatening that Wilhelm would feel humiliated if Waldersee's command were in fact rejected by the other powers and this would strain relations with Germany, a form of blackmail that proved effective, through it damaged Germany's diplomatic standing. Ying Hu wrote that "Legend has it that in their "dragon bed" of the Empress Dowager, which Sai and Waldersee shared, she tried and sometimes succeeded in curbing the brutality of the troops." Wenxian Zhang wrote that Sai Jinhua "was credited with influencing Waldsee to moderate the harsh treatment of Beijing residents." Again at Hanover, he resumed the duties of inspector-general, which he performed almost until his death in 1904 at age 71.

Alfred von Waldersee

Family

Early years and beyond

The Great General Staff

Honours and awards

Notes

References

Further reading

External links