Who is general erich ludendorff

He resigned when he was overruled. After the war, Ludendorff briefly went into exile in Sweden before emerging to claim that he had been deprived of victory by sinister forces operating behind the scenes. The popularity of this legend - that the German army was undefeated in battle but sabotaged by the home front - did much to condition the country for Adolf Hitler's ascent.

Ludendorff participated in an unsuccessful Nazi coup in Munich in , and in ran for president against Hindenburg, now a bitter enemy. From to he was a Nazi member of the Reichstag. After falling out with the Nazis he retired and died on 20 December Search term:. Read more. Erich Ludendorff embodied the strengths and weaknesses of the imperial German army in the twentieth century. He is frequently described as representing everything negative in the rising generation of officers: bourgeois by birth, specialist by training, and philistine by instinct.

Appointed head of the Mobilization and Deployment Section of the General Staff in , he was a leading advocate of expanding the army. Ludendorff did succeed in getting army estimates increased in the face of a Reichstag whose parties, from Right to Left, above all disliked voting for taxes. He paid the price of his convictions in by being transferred to command an undistinguished regiment in the industrial city of Dusseldorf—a kind of punitive assignment frequently used to teach recalcitrants their manners.

When war broke out in August , Ludendorff was restored to favor as deputy chief of staff to the Second Army. On August 8, he proved he was more than a desk soldier, rallying demoralized troops to play a crucial role in the capture of the Belgian fortress of Li[egrave]ge. What is certain is his emergence as a national hero whose symbiotic relationship with Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg seemed to symbolize the synthesis of the best of the old Germany and the new.

Hindenburg supplied the character, Ludendorff the intelligence. Personal ambition reinforced professional conviction. But eventually, Falkenhayn proved the author of his own downfall when he launched the attack against Verdun in January Combined with the Allied offensive at the Battle of the Somme six months later, the result was the kind of attritional war that Germany had little chance of winning.

On August 29, , Hindenburg was appointed chief of the General Staff with Ludendorff as his deputy. Going in person to the front to discover what was going wrong, he sponsored a system of flexible defense that took heavy toll of the French and the British armies in Ludendorff also played an active part in German politics.

His involvement was facilitated by the inability of Kaiser Wilhelm II to fulfill the role of a pivot figure, above the everyday frictions between soldiers and statesmen, and by the fierce rivalry among the political parties, which prevented the emergence of any effective civilian rival. The general was for a time successful in orchestrating public support for the war effort. Trade unions and industrialists alike accepted an arms program so comprehensive that within months the impossibility of its execution was obvious.

They accepted the starvation of their families in the Hunger Winter of The proud German Army, after victoriously resisting an enemy superior in numbers for four years, performing feats unprecedented in history, and keeping our foes from our frontiers, disappeared in a moment.

Our victorious fleet was handed over to the enemy. The authorities at home, who had not fought against the enemy, could not hurry fast enough to pardon deserters and other military criminals, including among these many of their own number, themselves and their nearest friends. They and the Soldiers' Councils worked with zeal, determination and purpose to destroy the whole military structure. Such was the gratitude of the new homeland to the German soldiers who had bled and died for it in millions.

The destruction of Germany's power to defend herself - the work of Germans - was the most tragic crime the world has witnessed. A tidal wave had broken over Germany, not by the force of nature, but through the weakness of the Government, represented by the Chancellor, and the paralysis of a leaderless people. In sharp contrast to the form of defence hitherto employed, which had been restricted to rigid and easily recognised lines of little depth, a new system was devised which, by distribution in depth and the adoption of a loose formation, enabled a more active defence to be maintained.

It was, of course, intended that the position should remain in our bands at the end of the battle, but the infantryman need no longer say to himself, 'Here I must stand or fall,' but had, on the contrary, the right within certain limits, to retire in any direction before strong enemy fire. Any part of the line that was lost was to be recovered by counter-attack. The group, on the importance of which many intelligent officers had insisted before the war, now became officially the tactical unit of the infantry.

The position of the N. Tactics became more and more individualised. Having regard to the ever more scanty training of our officers, N. I went to see Ludendorff chiefly to pay him a call of courtesy, but also in order to discuss with him the great national questions which then preoccupied his mind as much as mine. I deplored the fact that there were not at that time men in Germany whom an energetic national spirit would inspire to improve the situation.

Ludendorff greatly admired Hitler. Go and listen to him one day. I followed his advice. I attended several public meetings organized by Hitler. It was then that I realized his oratorical gifts and his ability to lead the masses. What impressed me most, however, was the order that reigned in his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers.

The rump of the old parties is now working in close touch with a new party, the so-called National Socialist Party under Herr Hitler and Herr Eckert, who is organizing under a Fascist banner those elements of the trade unions who are tired of the cowardice of the Social-Democratic leaders.

These new groups under the leadership of Hitler and Ludendorff have come out openly for a Fascist dictatorship, and by tactics of provocation of the Socialists and Republican elements in the rest of Germany, and by attacks on Socialist meetings and demonstrations, hope to ferment civil war, leading up to the seizure of power by their armed forces.

During the winter of , Hitler's storm battalions organized raiding expeditions to the industrial towns of North Bavaria.

His plan of campaign is to seize power in North Bavaria, or Frankenland, and use it as a base of operations against Thuringen and Saxony where Social-Democratic governments are in power with the aid of Communist votes.

From there the way would be open to the industrial districts of Prussia in the North. Success will very much depend on the goodwill of the German heavy industry trusts who, after the murder of Rathenau, withdrew their financial support from most of these Fascist bodies.

But after the French occupation of the Ruhr, the heavy industries began again to support the Bavarian Fascists. My War Memories. The German High Command.