Rüdiger, count von der Goltz

Rüdiger, count von der Goltz (born Dec. 8, 1865, Züllichau, Brandenburg, Prussia [now Sulechów, Pol.]—died Nov. 4, 1946, Kinsegg, Allgäu, W.Ger.) was a German army officer who, at the end of World War I, tried unsuccessfully to build a German-controlled Baltikum in Latvia, in order to prevent domination of that country by Soviet Russia.

A general commanding an infantry division in France, Goltz was transferred to Finland in March 1918 to help the Finnish national army against the Finnish-Russian Red Army. Entering Helsinki on April 13, his division held the city until after the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918. In January 1919 the German high command appointed him “governor” of Liepāja (Libau), Latvia, where Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis’ Latvian government had taken refuge from the Red Army occupying Riga. Arriving at Liepāja on February 3, he took command of the German-Latvian VI Reserve Corps, which, on May 22, captured Riga, where he attempted to set up a pro-German civil government. In a battle near Cesis (Wenden) on June 19–22, however, he was defeated by an Estonian-Latvian force under Estonian General Johan Laidoner and forced to abandon Riga, to which the Ulmanis government returned.

On July 19, British General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough, head of the Allied military mission to the Baltic countries, ordered Goltz and his troops to return to Germany. For five months Goltz declined to obey, using such stratagems as the pretense that his army comprised anti-Communist White Russians rather than Germans. Finally, on Dec. 18, 1919, he retreated into East Prussia.