Gustav Adolf Joachim Rüdiger Graf[1] von der Goltz (8 December 1865 – 4 November 1946) was a German army general during the First World War.

[4] A Major-General commanding the 1st Foot Guard Regiment in France, Goltz was transferred to Finland in March 1918 to help the nationalist government in the civil war there against the Finnish "Reds" and Soviet Russian troops.

The Inter-Allied Commission of Control insisted that the German troops remain in Latvia and Estonia to prevent the area from being re-occupied by the Soviet Red Army.

In March 1919, General von der Goltz was able to win a series of victories over the Red Army,[7] first occupying Windau (Ventspils), the major port of Courland, and then advancing south and east to retake Riga.

In June 1919, General von der Goltz ordered his troops to advance not east against the Red Army (as the Allies had been expecting), but north, against the Estonians.

The British insisted that General von der Goltz leave Latvia, and he turned his troops over to the West Russian Volunteer Army in the "Mitau mutiny' of August 1919.

[8] Count von der Goltz later claimed in his memoirs that his major strategic goal in 1919 had been to launch a campaign in cooperation with the White Russian forces to overturn the Bolshevik regime by marching on St. Petersburg (Petrograd) and to install a pro-German anti-Bolshevist government in Russia.