Otto Von Lossow - Military Career

Military Career

Lossow was born in Hof in the Kingdom of Bavaria. He entered the Bavarian Army in 1888. He served in a variety of assignments, and was trained as a general staff officer. He served with the German contingent of the relief expedition during the Boxer Rebellion.

Immediately prior to World War I, Lossow was a lieutenant colonel and a general staff officer without a specific assignment. On mobilization in August 1914, he was assigned to be the chief of the general staff of the II. Bavarian Reserve Corps. Lossow served with the corps until July 1915, when he became the German military attaché in Istanbul (then still called Constantinople in German records) in the Ottoman Empire, where he assisted the Ottoman Army and the German military mission in planning the ongoing response to Allied landings in Gallipoli. He remained in the Ottoman Empire for the rest of the war, becoming in April 1916 the "German Military Plenipotentiary at the Imperial Embassy in Constantinople." Despite the title, he was junior to many of the German officers in the Ottoman Empire serving as advisors to and commanders of Ottoman military formations.

In 1919, Lossow, now a major general (Generalmajor), was part of the transitional force which would become the Reichswehr, the 100,000-man army permitted to Germany under the Treaty of Versailles.

• From 1920 to 1923, he was the commander of the infantry school.
• On January 1, 1923, he became the commander (Befehlshaber) in Wehrkreis VII, the Reichswehr military region which covered Bavaria. He held this assignment through the attempted Beer Hall Putsch until his replacement in March 1924.
• 1935 Portrait bust Otto von Lossow by Arno Breker.
• 1938 death in Munich.