Erich Ludendorff

Erich Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as Erich von Ludendorff) (April 9, 1865 – December 20, 1937, Tutzing, Bavaria, Germany) was a German Army officer, noted as a general during World War I.

Early years

Ludendorff was born in Kruszewnia near Posen, Prussia (now Poznań, Poland). Though, strictly speaking, not a Junker himself, Ludendorff was loosely connected to the privileged class through his mother, Klara von Tempelhoff. He grew up on a small family farm and received his early schooling from his maternal aunt. His acceptance into cadet school at Plön was largely due to his excellence in mathematics and extraordinary work ethic that he would carry with him throughout his life. Ludendorff and Heinz Guderian attended the same cadet school, which produced many well trained German officers.

Rise in the military

Commissioned as an officer at 18, he began what appeared to be a promising military career. He was appointed to the German General Staff in 1894, serving as head of the deployment section in 1908. Ludendorff was involved in testing the minute details regarding the Schlieffen Plan, scoping out the fortifications in the Belgian fortress city of Liege. Most importantly, he valiantly attempted to prepare the German army for the war he saw coming, a proposition that many dismissed. Consequently, the Social Democrats in the Reichstag seldom approved army expenditures, the building up of its reserves or the funding of advanced weaponry such as Krupp's siege cannons. What finances were given to the military went directly towards the Kaiserliche Marine. Due to his adamant position, Ludendorff was dismissed from the General Staff and harshly demoted to the head of a Fusiliers division as the army betrayed Ludendorff, succumbing to outside pressures. Ludendorff was convinced that his prospects in the military were a thing of the past, but dutifully took to the helm of his mildly important position.

World War I

In World War I, Ludendorff was first appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to Germany's Second Army under Karl von Bülow. His assignment was largely due to his knowledge previous work investigating the forts of Liege. This assault, previously considered to be a possible scenario relating to the Schlieffen Plan, gained him national recognition. However, at the same time, the Russians were advancing towards Koenigsberg in East Prussia. Russia had prepared for and was waging war more effectively than the Schlieffen Plan allowed for, but most importantly, Germany failed to seal a decisive victory in the West. As the situation in East Prussia became grim, Ludendorff received an urgent personal message from the Kaiser requesting his acceptance of duty in the East. He was quickly sent there with Paul von Hindenburg to replace Commander Maximilian von Prittwitz, who proposed abandoning East Prussia altogether. Ludendorff would serve as Hindenburg's Chief of Staff. However, Hindenburg relied heavily upon Ludendorff and Hoffmann in crafting his victories in the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes.

In August of 1916, when Falkenhayn resigned as Chief of the General Staff — the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL or "Supreme Army Command"), Hindenburg took his place with Ludendorff as his First Generalquartiermeister — his Deputy Chief of Staff. Ludendorff was the chief manager of the German war effort throughout this time, with Hindenburg his pliant front man. Ludendorff advocated unrestricted submarine warfare, which was ultimately an important factor responsible for bringing the USA into the war.

Their so-called Third Supreme Command, or "Third OHL", was effectively a military-industrial dictatorship, which largely relegated Kaiser Wilhelm II to the periphery. They meddled with domestic politics to the point of forcing the resignation of government ministers, including the Chancellor himself three times in a row; they then held an effective veto over appointments in the state hierarchy.

Russia withdrew from the war in 1917 and Ludendorff participated in the meetings held between German and the new Bolshevik leadership. After much deliberation, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1918. That same year, as commander-in-chief on the Western Front, Ludendorff planned and organized Germany's final offensive, known as Operation Michael. This final push to win the war fell short and as the German war effort collapsed, Ludendorff's tenure of war-time leadership ended. On September 29, the Prussian kingship assumed its pre-war authority, which lasted until Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication. Ludendorff fled Germany for Sweden.

Reflections on the war, a look to the future

In exile, he wrote numerous books and articles about the German military's conduct of the war while forming the foundation for the Dolchstoßlegende, which he was also largely responsible for. Ludendorff was convinced that Germany had fought a defensive war and in his opinion, Kaiser Wilhelm II had failed to organize a proper counter-propaganda campaign or provide efficient leadership.

Ludendorff was also extremely suspicous of the Socialist Democrats and leftists, who appeared to sell out Germany through the Versailles Treaty. Ludendorff also claimed that he paid close attention to the business element (especially the Jews), and saw them turn their backs on the war effort by letting profit dictate production and financing rather than patriotism. Again focusing on the left, Ludendorff was appalled by the strikes that took place towards the end of the war and saw the homefront collapse before the front, with the former poisoning the morale of the soldier on temporary leave. Most importantly, Ludendorff felt that the German people as a whole had underestimated what was at stake in the war: he was convinced the Entente had started the war and was determined to dismantle Germany completely. In what has proven to be somewhat prophetic, Ludendorff wrote:

My War Memories, 1914-1918

Political career

Ludendorff eventually returned to Germany in 1920. The Weimar Republic planned to send him and several other noted German generals (von Mackensen, et al) to reform the National Revolutionary Army of China, but this was cancelled due to the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles and the image problems with selling such a noted general out as a mercenary. Throughout his life, Ludendorff maintained a strong distaste for politicians and found most of them to be lacking an energetic national spirit. However, Ludendorff's political philosophy and outlook on the war brought him into right-wing politics as a German nationalist and won his support that helped to pioneer the Nazi party. Early on, Ludendorff also held Hitler in the highest regard. In Fritz Thyssen's 1941 book, I Paid Hitler, Thyssen recalled a conversation he had with Ludendorff in 1923:

At the urging of Adolf Hitler, Ludendorff took part in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The plot failed but Ludendorff was acquitted in the trial that followed. In 1924, he was elected to the Reichstag as a representative of the Nazi party, serving until 1928. He ran in the 1925 presidential election against former commander Paul von Hindenburg and received just 285,793 votes. Ludendorff's reputation may have been damaged by the Putsch, but he conducted very little campaigning of his own and remained aloof, relying almost entirely on his lasting image as a war hero, an attribute which Hindenburg also possessed.

His last years

After 1928, Ludendorff went into retirement, having fallen out with the Nazi party. He no longer approved of Hitler and began to regard him as just another manipulative politician — perhaps worse. After learning that Hitler had been appointed chancellor of Germany, an aging Ludendorff reportedly sent a telegram to President von Hindenburg:

Although the original copy of the telegram has yet to be found, one of the first sources to mention the memo was Hans Frank, who served as Reichsminister and Generalgoverner of Poland during the Nazi Era. He wrote about the note in his memoirs, appearing shortly before his execution as a war criminal. Perhaps a more reliable account was that of Captain Wilhelm Breuker, a close associate of Ludendorff's. When Breuker wrote his memoirs in 1953, he also attested to the existence of the telegram.

Nevertheless, in his later years, Ludendorff went into a relative seclusion with his second wife, Matthilde von Kemnitz, authoring several books. He concluded that the world's problems were the result of Christians, Jews, and Freemasons; together with Matthilde, he founded the "Bund für Gotteserkenntnis" (Society for the Knowledge of God), a small and rather obscure esoterical society that survives to this day.

In an attempt to regain Ludendorff's favor, Hitler paid Ludendorff an unannounced visit in 1935 and offered to make him a field marshal. Infuriated, Ludendorff thundered back: "a field marshal is born, not made." When Ludendorff died in 1937, he was given a state funeral attended by Hitler, who declined to speak.

External links

Erich Ludendorff Firstworldwar.com Who's Who
Ludendorff by H. L. Mencken published in the June 1917 edition of the Atlantic Monthly
Biography of Erich Ludendorff From Spartacus Educational

Bibliography

General Erich Ludendorff, My War Memoirs, 1914-1918. 2v. ("Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914-1918", written in Sweden, 1919).
Donald James Goodspeed, Ludendorff: Genius Of World War I, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
John Lee, The Warlords: Hindenburg And Ludendorff (Great Commanders S.)
Robert B Asprey, The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the First World War, Time Warner, 1994.

German World War I people | 1865 births | 1937 deaths | German natives of Province of Posen | German generals

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