Paul von Hindenburg

President of Germany (1925-1932, 1932-1934)

• Born: October 2, 1847
• Birthplace: Posen, Prussia (now Pozan, Poland)
• Died: August 2, 1934
• Place of death: Neudeck, Germany (now in Poland)

During the years 1916-1918, Hindenburg commanded Germany’s armed forces. As the second president of the Weimar Republic, Hindenburg attempted to manage a Germany that was beset by extreme political, economic, and social disorder. As a result of this instability, Hindenburg presided over the rise of Nazi power. In January of 1933 he appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany, despite his personal dislike of him, thereby legally giving Hitler power.

Early Life

Paul von Hindenburg was born in Posen, Prussia (now Pozan, Poland), into an old Prussian Junker family devoted to military service of the Prussian state. In 1858, when he was eleven years old, Hindenburg entered the Prussian Cadet Corps. In April, 1865, Hindenburg was subsequently appointed a second lieutenant in the Prussian Third Guard Infantry Regiment. His battle experience was not long in coming. In the summer of 1866, Hindenburg fought in Prussia’s war against Austria. He was eager for combat, remarking, “It is high time the Hindenburgs smelt powder again.” At the Battle of Königgrätz, he was slightly wounded in the head and earned a citation for bravery, along with the Order of the Red Eagle with Crossed Swords, an honor normally reserved for officers of the rank of major and higher.

In August, 1870, Hindenburg fought in the Franco-Prussian War, again with the Prussian Third Guard Infantry Regiment. Hindenburg again distinguished himself in battle and was present at St. Privat, later called “the graveyard of the Prussian Guard,” where the Prussians had a casualty rate of more than 40 percent. Hindenburg was also present at the climactic Battle of Sedan, for which William II awarded him the Iron Cross. Hindenburg then served with the army besieging Paris and represented his regiment at the ceremony on January 18, 1870, at Versailles, where the German Empire was proclaimed.

Following his return from France, Hindenburg began his higher military education. Hindenburg pursued military studies from 1873 to 1876 at the Kreigsakademie, after which, in 1878, he was made a member of the German General Staff, through which he came into contact with Field Marshals Helmuth von Moltke and Count Alfred von Waldersee. His personal life was enriched by his marriage in 1879 to Gertrude Wilhemine von Sperling, the daughter of a military officer. The Hindenburgs eventually had three children; their one son also entered military service.

Life’s Work

Hindenburg’s assignments provided the basis of his future greatness; in 1881, he was assigned to Königsberg in East Prussia, where in 1914 his superior knowledge of the geography of the area would allow him to achieve his great victories against the armies of the Russian czar. In 1883, he was transferred to Berlin, where he served under Moltke’s successor, General Count Alfred von Schlieffen, whose war plan was utilized in 1914. Schlieffen’s doctrine was based on a swift German attack on its enemies to overcome the threats of a two-front war against both France and Russia. According to Schlieffen, German armies would advance rapidly through Belgium and engage French forces on the Franco-Belgian frontier; having defeated them, the military would use its superior railway network to transfer German forces to the eastern front, where they could then confront the more slowly mobilizing Russian forces in turn.

Hindenburg spent the next few years passing through the system on the basis of bureaucratic seniority. In 1889, he was transferred to the War Office. Four years later, he was promoted to colonel and given command of the Ninety-first Infantry Regiment based at Oldenburg. He remained at Oldenburg until 1896, when he was transferred to the Seventh Army Corps, based in Koblenz, having been promoted to major general. Three years later, Hindenburg took over command of the Fourth Army Corps at Magdeburg, where he served until his retirement in 1911. On retiring he moved to Hannover.

With the outbreak of World War I in August, 1914, Hindenburg wondered if he would be recalled to active service. On August 23 he received a telegram asking if he was ready to return to active service. Hindenburg was immediately appointed commander of the Eighth Army, stationed in East Prussia. General Erich Ludendorff was appointed his chief of staff.

Hindenburg’s immediate problem was to blunt the thrust into East Prussia being made by Russian forces. Given Russian difficulties, Hindenburg’s forces on August 14-16 were able to score a crushing victory against the invaders at Tannenberg. Russian casualties were immense. Hindenburg then shifted his forces and twelve days later fought and won the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Russian losses in less than a month totaled more than 250,000 killed, wounded, and captured. Hindenburg’s victories ended Russian dreams of a swift offensive into Germany that would relieve pressure on their French allies in the West. For his victories, Hindenburg received the rank of colonel general, the Iron Cross first class, command of all the German forces on the eastern front, and the adulation of the nation.

The magnitude of Hindenburg’s victories caused the German High Command to reconsider their policy of remaining on the defensive on the eastern front. The possibility of supporting their Austrian allies in a campaign in Russian Poland caused the authorities to appoint Hindenburg to the command of an army group that contained the Eighth and Ninth armies. By October, 1914, the German forces had pushed to the outskirts of Warsaw. A flanking movement by Austrian forces failed, however, and to cover their flanks, Hindenburg’s forces retreated to the Masurian Lakes, stalemated for the winter. Hindenburg was promoted to field marshal for his efforts and in 1916 was made chief of staff of the army. The High Command again turned its attention westward and left the region quiescent until August, 1916, when Romania entered the war on the Allies’ side, an event that threatened to turn the Austrian flank.

With the fall of the Russian monarchy in March, 1917, effective Russian resistance largely came to an end. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had pressed the kaiser to authorize unrestricted submarine warfare, however, despite the pleadings of many politicians. The kaiser overruled the fainthearted in his government, and unrestricted submarine warfare began on February 1, 1917, hastening the United States’ entry into the war in April. Following the collapse of Central Power forces on the Balkan fronts, Hindenburg realized that Germany could not triumph over such a coalition and in September, 1918, pressured the government to seek an armistice. On November 9 the Weimar Republic was declared; the armistice followed two days later. In June, 1919, Hindenburg retired from active service and in 1920 published his memoirs, Aus meinem Leben (Out of My Life , 1920), a modest account of his activities. Following his retirement, Hindenburg lived quietly.

The immediate postwar years were hard for Germany; racked by massive inflation in 1922-1923 and the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty, with its infamous “war guilt” clause, Germany had to bear the indignity of both foreign occupation of the Rhineland and the payment of reparations. In the chaotic postwar environment, many looked back with increasing nostalgia to the one national institution that had comported itself with honor, only to be “stabbed in the back” at home by defeatists: the army. As the former head of the army, Hindenburg was increasingly viewed as above politics. Even before the death of President Friedrich Ebert in February, 1925, Hindenburg was being sounded out as to his willingness to serve as president. Despite his age, Hindenburg agreed to be the candidate of the united parties of the Right. On April 26, 1925, Hindenburg was elected president with 14,655,766 votes, as opposed to his nearest opponent’s 13,751,615.

Much to his supporters’ and opponents’ surprise, the new president followed a path of dignified simplicity in executing the duties of his office and continually stressed the need for unity. Hindenburg was not entirely free of the imperial past; he had actually communicated with the former kaiser, seeking his permission to accept the presidency. The political Left was not impressed with Germany’s new president. Under the centrist governments, Germany’s economic instability began to subside, yet Germany’s equilibrium was still fragile.

When the Allies evacuated the Rhineland in July, 1930, five years ahead of schedule, Hindenburg was triumphantly acclaimed. Such nationalist triumphs could not, however, mask the worsening economy. The German economy had begun to feel the aftershocks of the October, 1929, stock market crash, and unemployment began to soar. In such an environment, political extremism flourished. Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists were the major beneficiaries of this extremism; in the September, 1930, Reichstag elections, the National Socialists’ number of delegates increased from 12 to 170.

In 1932, Hindenburg’s seven-year term of office expired, and he again ran for president. The old general was 0.4 percent short of a majority and needed to stand in a runoff election against Hitler. As one of the more popular nationalist parties, Hitler’s Nazis battled communists and leftists in increasing street violence. Hindenburg called on Franz von Papen as chancellor to form a coalition government, but this proved to be a temporary measure. In the election on November 6, the Nazis actually lost votes for the first time since 1928, and Hindenburg was reelected. Despite such a volatile political atmosphere, Hindenburg still hesitated to make Hitler chancellor. Under increasing pressure, Hindenburg gave way to the Nazis, and on January 30, 1933, he appointed Hitler to the chancellory. Hitler moved swiftly to consolidate his power. Two days after becoming chancellor, Hitler dismissed the Reichstag. A suspicious fire gutted the Reichstag building on February 28, and Hitler persuaded Hindenburg the same day to issue a “Decree for Protection of People and the State,” which effectively suspended the constitution.

Despite his weakening health and increasing frailty, Hindenburg made sporadic attempts to restrain Hitler. In June, 1934, the president threatened to impose martial law if Hitler did not restrain the more radical elements of the Nazis. Hindenburg’s health rapidly worsened, and on August 2, he died. The same day, Hitler took over the office of president and remained chancellor.

Significance

Hindenburg was a pivotal figure in Germany’s transition from a loose confederation of states headed by Prussia through the height of empire to Nazi Germany. As a military leader he was competent, though hardly outstanding. Having proved his personal courage in conflicts with Austria and France, he subsequently led the typical life of an average staff officer. Called from retirement by World War I, Hindenburg was fortunate in being assigned Ludendorff as his chief of staff. As a team they achieved striking victories against the Russians in 1914, in distinct contrast to their colleagues on the eastern front.

As head of the army from 1916 to the end of the war, Hindenburg made no innovative decisions and more than one ill-considered one. The German offensive that captured Poland ruled out the possibility of a separate peace with the Russian Empire, while Hindenburg’s forceful advocacy of unrestricted submarine warfare, when implemented, brought the United States into the war.

Hindenburg was largely out of his depth when he assumed the presidency of the Weimar Republic in 1925. While his immense prestige provided stability to the government, his adherence to an officer’s code of honor and political naïveté made him blind to the true threat that Hitler and his Nazis represented. As an ill and befuddled old man of eighty-five, he appointed Hitler chancellor, which ended the Weimar Republic and made increased friction with Western democracies inevitable. With Hindenburg’s death, Germany quickly sank into the nightmare of Hitler’s totalitarianism, which took World War II to overthrow.

Bibliography

Astore, William J., and Dennis E. Showalter. Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005. Biography tracing Hindenburg’s life and career, including his role during World War I and his presidency of the Weimar Republic.

Dorpalen, Andreas. Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964. A well-balanced, scholarly account of Hindenburg’s early dealings with the Weimar Republic and his two subsequent terms as president.

Dupuy, Trevor N. The Military Lives of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. New York: Watts, 1970. A paired set of biographies by an outstanding military historian emphasizing the campaigns and strategies of Hindenburg and Ludendorff during World War I.

Goldsmith, Margaret, and Frederick Voigt. Hindenburg: The Man and the Legend. New York: William Morrow, 1930. This account is a balanced but mostly favorable narrative of Hindenburg’s career as both a military man and a politician. It does not deal with the Nazis’ rise to power.

Hindenburg, Paul von. Out of My Life. Translated by F. A. Holt. London: Cassel, 1920. Hindenburg’s own soldierly, modest record of his life up to the end of World War I and the beginnings of the Weimar Republic.

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

Wheeler-Bennett, John W. The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945. 2d ed. London: Macmillan, 1964. This brilliant, thorough work draws extensively on German primary and secondary sources and attempts to fit Hindenburg and the Prussian military tradition into the larger picture as it groped to find its place in the changed circumstances of Weimar and Nazi Germany.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Wooden Titan: Hindenburg in Twenty Years of German History, 1914-1934. New York: William Morrow, 1936. Wheeler was one of the best British historians working on modern Germany. This book is an eminently readable, scholarly account of both Hindenburg’s military service in World War I and his subsequent role as reluctant politician.