Talk:Alexander von Kluck

Fanciful or genuine etymology of the phrase "You dumb kluck!"?

I wasn't sure if the following material was a fanciful, or a genuine etymology for the phrase "You dumb kluck!" and similar expressions. I didn't post it to the main article as a result, but here it is:

=== Gentlemen, They Offer Us Their Flank ===

My friend the serious raconteur Bill Bonner tells the story of the Battle of the Marne in WWI, ... You remember the famous German general von Kluck, from whom we get the expression, “You dumb kluck”?

Von Kluck was chasing the French down the Marne in 1914. Victory appeared close at hand; the French were pulling back. Von Kluck, who had orders to attack Paris, decided instead to pursue the French army. He was convinced they were beaten.

All he had to do was keep the pressure on … and they would surrender.

Some of his field commanders, however, noted that they were picking up very few prisoners. Normally, an army that is beaten throws off many discouraged and confused soldiers. Since there were so few, the commanders reasoned that the French army was still intact; it was merely retreating in good order and could turn and surprise the Germans at any time.

The commanders were right. France’s aging general, Gallieni, who was in charge of the Paris garrison, realized that the Germans were making a fatal mistake. By pursuing the troops down the Marne, rather than attacking Paris, they exposed themselves to a counterattack from the city itself.

“Gentlemen,” he is said to have remarked to his staff, “They offer us their flank.”

The French accepted the offer: they attacked. Using thousands of taxicabs, they quickly moved troops to the Marne Valley and caught the Germans unprepared. The Battle of the Marne turned the German army around and ultimately cost them the war.

"Banzai! Banzai! Banzai" by John Mauldin posted June 8, 2013 in the blog "The Big Picture". Retrieved June 10, 2013 from http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/06/banzai-banzai-banzai/

At least one online source, Dictionary.com seems to suggect that the etymology is valid. The entry is as follows:

kluck=== [klook] ===

noun

A•le•xan•der von  [ah-le-ksahn-duhR fuhn] Show IPA, 1846–1934, German general.

Dictionary.com Unabridged

Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.

Retrieved June 10, 2013 from http://dictionary.reference.com/etymology/a.+kluck

The analysis of the military situation is interesting and succinct as well, but the actual events probably do not fall quite as neatly into such an analytic scheme as the writer implies.

FurnaldHall (talk) 02:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Trivial question about German aristocratic names

When he was given a patent of nobility (i.e. when he became von Kluck), could he have chosen Kluck von Donop (von Donop was his wife's surname) instead of von Kluck? Or were aristocratic naming conventions in Prussia/Imperial Germany generally less creative than in Austria (e.g. Franz Conrad became Conrad von Hoetzendorf)? I can only think of Count York von Wartenburg or the Krupps von Bohlen und Halbach as having that form of surname (i.e. Lastname von Something Else).C'est la vie (talk) 03:58, 30 December 2016 (UTC)