Erich Ludendorff

German military leader

• Born: April 9, 1865
• Birthplace: Kruszewnia, near Posen, Prussia (later Poznan, Poland)
• Died: December 20, 1937
• Place of death: Munich, Germany

Ludendorff served as second in command to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg during World War I and became the most powerful person in Germany from 1916 to 1918. In the 1920’s, he was involved with radical nationalist movements, including the Nazi movement, but eventually became too radical even for Hitler. By the mid-1920’s, he had lost his influence with conservative and radical nationalists.

Early Life

Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (LEW-dehn-dohrf) was born into an impoverished middle-class landowning family. His father was a reserve officer in the Franco-German War (1870-1871). As a student, Ludendorff had an excellent academic record, especially in mathematics, but showed no interest in sports and was without close friends. Ludendorff entered cadet school in 1877, passing his entrance examination with distinction. Though his academic performance was superb, there and at the Military Academy in Berlin, he isolated himself from fellow students. Ludendorff was commissioned in 1885. In 1893, he entered the Kriegsakademie for advanced training. After service as company commander and staff officer, he was transferred to the general staff in 1904 and assigned to the crucial Mobilization and Deployment Section, in which he played a growing role in war plan preparations, updating the Schlieffen Plan (Germany’s plan for a two-front war). He became head of the section in 1907. Ludendorff strongly supported the planned attack into France through Belgium.

As war appeared increasingly imminent, with repeated international crises and an intensified arms race, Ludendorff drafted the Army Bill for 1913, calling for an increase of 300,000 men. Overly active lobbying for that increase outside regular military channels caused Ludendorff, then a colonel, to be transferred to a regimental command in January, 1913. When war began in August, 1914, Ludendorff, who had become a major general (one star), became deputy chief of staff of the Second Army, part of the thrust through Belgium. He distinguished himself during the capture of the strategically important fortress of Liege, becoming the war’s second Pour le Merite recipient. Liege’s early fall was vital to the Schlieffen Plan’s success.

Life’s Work

On August 22, 1914, Ludendorff was appointed chief of staff of the Eighth Army, after its commander was dismissed because he had failed to stop the Russian advance into eastern Prussia. Shortly thereafter, retired General Paul von Hindenburg was appointed Eighth Army commander, thus creating the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duo, which played a crucial role in Germany’s victories and its final defeat.

When Hindenburg became Supreme Commander in the East, in November, 1914, Ludendorff, now a lieutenant general (two stars) continued as his chief of staff. In August, 1916, Hindenburg became chief of the General Staff, replacing Erich Falkenhayn, and the Hindenburg-Ludendorff team again remained intact; Ludendorff was promoted to general of infantry (three stars) and given the position of first quartermaster general, Hindenburg’s deputy. Though Hindenburg was nominally in command, Ludendorff became the true power and Germany’s “silent dictator.” Ludendorff was a master of detail in planning and execution. Strategically he advocated encirclement, as in the Schlieffen Plan. Even when the war stalemated, he attempted to retain operational mobility, as with the strategic withdrawal to the “Siegfried Line” in 1917. This shortened German supply lines and forced the Allies to launch their 1917 offensive across devastated territory. In the spring of 1918, he supported introduction of the “Hutier tactics” the use of infiltration by specially trained and equipped storm troopers finally breaking the stalemate.

Ludendorff’s political machinations caused the removal of Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in July, 1917, and the establishment of a government subservient to the army. The German economy in particular was tightly controlled by Ludendorff to squeeze the last ounce of war effort from the country. The year 1917 also witnessed Russia’s collapse. By March, 1918, following the harsh Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Bolsheviks, Germany was in control of the East’s vast resources. That treaty was an expression of Ludendorff’s concept of economic warfare, which he understood better than did his contemporaries.

In January, 1917, Ludendorff advocated unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the United States into the war. He recognized that American belligerence would be inevitable but believed that Great Britain could be defeated before significant American aid arrived. With a clear, though short-range, superiority in men and material, the Germans launched their final offensive in March, 1918. Having already lost the gamble on unrestricted submarine warfare, Ludendorff now gambled all on a decisive blow before substantial American troops could arrive to support the exhausted and wavering Allies. The “Ludendorff offensive,” however, fell short of its goals. The hard-pressed Allies held, finally launching counteroffensives with the aid of fresh American troops. On August 8, Ludendorff recognized that the war was lost. On September 29, physically and emotionally exhausted and in near panic, he demanded that the civilian government, which he had earlier neutralized, negotiate an immediate armistice before his forces collapsed and the enemy entered Germany. He quickly reversed himself and demanded continuation of the war, hoping to halt the Allies on French soil, delaying the decisive action until 1919. On October 26, 1918, however, Ludendorff was dismissed. Late in the war, Ludendorff was ennobled (entitled to use the “von” with his name), and he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross for his part in the March, 1918, offensive.

Following the November armistice, Ludendorff fled to Sweden, where he wrote his memoirs, published in June, 1919. In his writings he placed the blame for defeat on the “soft” civilian government and its unwillingness to rally the people to a final total war effort. In November, 1919, Ludendorff and Hindenburg appeared before the parliamentary commission investigating the reasons for Germany’s defeat. Hindenburg popularized the “stab-in-the-back” legend the argument that the German army was not defeated, and could have continued, but was “stabbed in the back” by the Bolshevik Revolution.

In 1920, Ludendorff joined the disgruntled Free Corps members in the abortive Kapp Putsch against the Berlin government. In November, 1923, he participated in the Nazis’ equally ill-fated Munich Beer Hall Putsch , beginning an uneasy relationship with Adolf Hitler. While Hitler was imprisoned for treason, Ludendorff, because of his illustrious war record, was found not guilty. During Hitler’s absence, Ludendorff attempted to rally the banned Nazi Party around himself and, in 1924, was elected to the German parliament under the National Socialist label, serving for four years without playing a significant role. Ludendorff rapidly slipped into an increasingly irrational and paranoid, racially based radical nationalism, which even the Nazis found unacceptable. Ludendorff’s role in the party ended with Hitler’s return in 1925, but not until he had served as the Nazis’ presidential candidate, following the death of President Friedrich Ebert. In a field of seven candidates, Ludendorff carried only 1.1 percent of the vote. Since no candidate received the required majority, a second election was necessary, in which Hindenburg, not a candidate initially, was elected.

In 1926, Ludendorff divorced his first wife and married Mathilde von Kemnitz, a doctor. Under her influence, he continued to drift further into an eccentric racism. The two published numerous works in which they argued that “supernational forces,” the Jews, the Freemasons, the Marxists, and the Roman Catholic Church were responsible for all evil that had befallen the Western world, including World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the United States’ entry into the war. Ludendorff’s growing persecution complex led to his falling out not only with Hitler but also with his wartime colleagues, including Hindenburg. Together with his wife, Ludendorff founded a pseudoreligious movement, the Deutsche Gotteserkenntnis (German understanding of God), based on Germanic pagan traditions. In 1939, Hitler’s government officially recognized this movement as a religion.

Following his death in 1937, Ludendorff received a hero’s funeral, with Hitler as a prominent mourner. Ludendorff’s widow continued her radical racist activities, even after 1945, though without significant influence. In 1961, the Federal Republic of Germany outlawed her “Ludendorff Movement” as a revival of National Socialism.

Significance

Erich Ludendorff was the embodiment of the bourgeois military technocrat in an aristocratic era. Though he adopted aristocratic bearing, Ludendorff did not have the aristocracy’s sense of moderation and its desire to avoid politics. In 1912, while heading the Mobilization and Deployment Section of the General Staff, he concluded that future wars would be “total.” In a memorandum to Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff, he wrote, “We once again have to become a people in arms.” While confessing to follow Carl von Clausewitz, he in fact inverted Clausewitz’s views. While Clausewitz saw war as politics’ servant, to remain under civilian control, Ludendorff saw politics as the handmaiden of military needs. He expressed this concept again in 1935, charging that “war is the highest expression of the national will to live, and therefore politics must serve warmaking.” Though the general staff rejected his extreme views both times, his views deeply influenced Hitler.

In 1916, when he was in a position to realize his concepts, he pushed for total economic and manpower mobilization under military administration, contributing substantially to the people’s physical and emotional exhaustion and final collapse. However, strangely he did not take the concept of military preeminence to its ultimate conclusion; he did not advocate or establish military-political dictatorship but settled for total economic control. His inability to recognize failure of the 1918 spring offensive both civilian and military exhaustion also demonstrates his inability to recognize limits. Consequently, he missed the opportunity of possibly gaining a favorably negotiated peace in the late spring of 1918. His decision to ask for peace negotiations in late 1918 is seen by some as a ploy, designed to rally the German people against unreasonable Allied terms, not recognizing that the bulk of the population was ready for peace at any price.

Ludendorff’s inability to question his own judgment led him to seek blame for the lost war elsewhere, and the “stab-in-the-back” legend provided that escape. He was a highly intelligent and capable military leader, but he was also an arrogant and egotistical individual who, for example, bitterly resented the credit that went to Hindenburg for their joint achievements. His increasingly paranoid attitude toward Judaism, Christianity, Marxism, and Freemasonry merged with his inability to accept military defeat. His extremism and his inability to get along even with like-minded persons, his lack of political pragmatism, and his total lack of charisma prevented him from playing a popular role within the conservative, or radical, Right. By the mid-1920’s, Ludendorff had lost his earlier credibility.

Bibliography

Falls, Cyril. The Great War, 1914-1918. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959. Aimed at the general reader, this is a history of the war, with some discussion of its background and war plans. Also includes some discussion of the home front and wartime diplomacy. Military events are described in detail with frequent references to Ludendorff. Contains a short bibliography.

Goodspeed, D. J. Ludendorff: Genius of World War I. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Though the emphasis is on Ludendorff’s wartime career, the author also briefly covers his early life and the postwar period.

Lee, John. Warlords: Hindenburg and Ludendorff. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005. Examines the rise to power of Ludendorff and Hindenburg, focusing on their military exploits during World War I.

Ludendorff, Erich von. Ludendorff’s Own Story, August 1914-November 1918. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Bros., 1919. This is a detailed account of Ludendorff’s command decisions and campaigns. It is unclear to what extent he utilized official records.

Parkinson, Roger. Tormented Warrior: Ludendorff and the Supreme Command. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978. The author believes that Ludendorff has been ignored by historians and sees Ludendorff as Germany’s leading personality. Includes a bibliography.

Pierik, Perry. Tannenberg: Erich Ludendorff and the Defence of the German Eastern Border in 1914. Soesterberg, the Netherlands: Aspekt, 2003. Chronicles Ludendorff’s military strategy on the eastern front during World War I.

Wheeler-Bennett, John W. Hindenburg: The Wooden Titan. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967. Though Hindenburg is the chief topic, Ludendorff is discussed extensively. Largely based on interviews with personalities of the period. Though the emphasis is on Ludendorff’s wartime career, the author does deal with his postwar political involvements.