Mackensen, FM August von (1849-1945). Mackensen served as a volunteer in the Franco-Prussian war and was subsequently commissioned into the 1st Hussars. He became its regimental colonel, and even as a general often wore its uniform, with its death's-head badge on the busby. He served on the eastern front throughout WW I, first as an army, and then as an army group, commander. Ably assisted by Hans von Seeckt, his COS, he achieved the great breakthrough at Gorlice-Tarnow in May 1915, defeated Serbia, and was overall commander for the defeat and occupation of Romania in 1916.

Promoted field-marshal during the war, after it Mackensen, by then an old man, was paraded by Hitler in an effort to legitimize National Socialism. He had allegedly boasted of his Scots ancestry before WW I, but after 1939 it was suggested that his name derived from a German village called Mackenhausen. It has been suggested, without any real foundation, that he was actually Maj Gen Hector Macdonald—‘Fighting Mac’—a British hero who killed himself in 1903 rather than face court martial.

— Richard Holmes

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