Willy Rohr

Willy Rohr (1877 to 1930) was a German Army officer who made a major contribution to the development of infantry tactics in the First World War, above all through the system of Storm Battalions. Commissioned in 1896 and serving in the Guards Rifle Battalion by 1913, he fought on the Aisne, in Champagne and on the Hartmannsweiler Kopf before taking command of a storm detachment in August 1915. He reequipped it with machine guns and flamethrowers, introduced the steel helmet, and built tactics from front-line experience. After the Verdun offensive his unit became a teaching force: it ran a practice fort near Doncourt where thousands of German and Austrian officers were trained, and in February 1917 it was renamed Sturm-Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr). He later commanded the first German armored vehicle detachment, was promoted to major in 1918, and left the Reichswehr in the early 1920s after receiving no suitable command.