How Pancho Villa Lost His Aura Of Invincibility

The two battles of Celaya in April 1915 were the turning point of the Mexican Civil War

Legend has it that Col. Maximillian Kloss, an Austrian-born German immigrant to Mexico, offered his services to Pancho Villa in an El Paso hotel bar in 1913 as the teetotaling warlord sipped a strawberry soda, his favorite. In exchange for his military expertise, Kloss wanted Germany to have basing rights in Mexico. The offer never came to fruition, and perhaps history hinged on Villa’s failure to follow up. For when the two men met again in 1915, Kloss was serving Villa’s enemy, who put his expertise to use and shattered the army that Villa brought to bear.

Villa’s command style was flamboyant, emphasizing massed artillery fire and massed cavalry charges. It worked well in the conditions of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1915, when his enemy was a demoralized and tactically feeble Federal Army. In the two battles at Celaya in April 1915, the first of the new Mexican Civil War, however, Villa’s habits leaned right into the defensive mode of warfare that Kloss knew from Imperial German Army doctrinal manuals. Villa understood attrition, but what Gen. Álvaro Obregón had in mind for him was annihilation. He understood Villa well, indeed perhaps better than Villa understood himself. Obregón counted on his enemy to stay true to form and was not disappointed.

“The two battles of Celaya did not bring the warring to an end, but they foretold Villa’s ultimate defeat”, Charles Cumberland writes.¹ While Villa had lost many thousands of men, Obregón was suddenly overwhelmed with recruits and defectors after Celaya. The battles “proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Villa was not invincible in the field. Obregón still had great respect for Villa’s ability to raise armies and undertake audacious attacks, but the Villa myth had died”, Cumberland concludes. It was the beginning of the rise of Obregón and the ultimate victory of the Carranza government. “After Celaya the Constitutionalists had the momentum, and Villa’s empire gradually collapsed.”

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