Oskar Emil von Hutier (27 August 1857 – 5 December 1934) was a German general during the First World War. He served in the German Army from 1875 to 1919, including war service.
During the First World War, he commanded the army that took Riga in 1917. The following year he was transferred to the Western Front to participate in Operation Michael that year. He is frequently but mistakenly credited with having created the stormtrooper tactics of small, rapid forces, which he employed to great effect during the Michael offensive. These tactics had been developed by other officers on the Western Front before he was reassigned there.
After retiring from the Army in 1919, Hutier presided over the German Officers' League until his death on 5 December 1934. He was among leaders who contended that the Army had been betrayed by enemies at home.
Biography
Oskar von Hutier was born in Erfurt on 27 August 1857, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. His family had a long tradition of military service; his grandfather served in the French Army and his father, Cölestin von Hutier, rose to the rank of colonel in the Prussian Army. Hutier was commissioned into the German Army in 1874 and attended the Prussian Military Academy beginning in 1885. There, he gained the attention of the General Staff, on which he subsequently served. He served as the Oberquartiermeister in 1911. and had three children. Their son Oskar was seriously wounded at the Battle of Verdun in 1916.
World War I
thumb|Map of German advance during [[Operation Michael, with Hutier's 18th Army, in the southern third, having the farthest advances]]
Hutier spent the first year of the First World War as a divisional commander in France. There, he commanded the 1st Guards Infantry Division in the Second Army. He commanded the unit during the First Battle of the Marne, and remained on the Western Front until April 1915, when he was transferred to the Eastern Front. There, on 4 April, he took command of the XXI Corps of the Tenth Army. He briefly commanded the Army Detachment D from 2 January to 22 April in 1917. On 22 April, he was promoted to General der Infanterie (General of the Infantry) and placed in command of the Eighth Army.
On 3 September 1917, Hutier, commanding the Eighth Army, ended the two-year siege of the Russian city of Riga. He moved his troops to an unexpected sector in the Russian lines, and using a heavy bombardment prepared by Georg Bruchmüller and a surprise crossing of the Dvina River, took the city. The tactics he employed—surprise and encirclement—were essentially standard German Army doctrine; his infantry attacked in company-strength skirmish lines after crossing the River Dvina, much as they would have done in 1914. He followed this success with Operation Albion, an amphibious assault (the only successful one of the war) that seized Russian-held islands in the Baltic Sea. Hutier was awarded the Pour le Mérite by Kaiser Wilhelm II for seizing Riga.
After arriving on the Western Front, Hutier was placed in command of the newly formed Eighteenth Army.