Erich Friedrich Wilhelm von Ludendorff

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Erich Ludendorff, 1930. (credit: Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin)

(born April 9, 1865, Kruszewnia, near Poznan, Prussian Poland — died Dec. 20, 1937, Munich, Ger.) German general. In 1908 he joined the German army general staff and worked under Helmuth von Moltke in revising the Schlieffen Plan. In World War I he was appointed chief of staff to Paul von Hindenburg, and the two won a spectacular victory at the Battle of Tannenberg. In 1916 the two generals were given supreme military control. They tried to conduct a total war by mobilizing the entire forces of the home front, and in 1917 Ludendorff approved unrestricted submarine warfare against the British, which led to the U.S. entry into the war. In 1918, after his offensive on the Western Front failed, he demanded an armistice, but then he insisted the war continue when he realized the severity of the Armistice conditions. Political leaders opposed him, and he resigned his post. Ludendorff insisted he had been betrayed, and for the next 20 years he led a bizarre life, becoming a leader of reactionary political movements and taking part in the Kapp Putsch (1920) and Beer Hall Putsch (1923). He served in Parliament as a National Socialist (1924 – 28) and developed a belief that "supernational powers" — Jewry, Christianity, Freemasonry — had deprived him and Germany of victory in World War I.

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Ludendorff, Gen Erich von (1865-1937), a personally violent and abrasive officer whose bulldozer skill in military operations and organization paved the way, at horrific cost, for the realization of his strategic ideal of total war and militarized, mass politics in the industrial age. Born of bourgeois background and commissioned into the infantry, Ludendorff soon made his reputation in the Prussian general staff. From 1904 until 1913, he served in the mobilization and operations department, the section which he headed from 1908 until 1913. He participated in Moltke ‘the Younger’'s modifications to the Schlieffen plan, as well as helping to draft the laws and operational procedures required to increase the size of the army in the years prior to war. He soon saw such plans become a reality. As DCOS of the Second Army in the German operation against Belgium he assumed a field command in the siege of Liège, after which Moltke shifted him to the eastern front to become COS of the Eighth Army under Hindenburg. Together they turned back the Russian armies invading East Prussia at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes.

His strategic and operational successes in the east led him into conflict with the Army COS Falkenhayn over the centre of gravity of German strategy. Once the latter was broken by failure at Verdun, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were appointed to assume supreme command of the army in August 1916. Ludendorff emerged as a national figure with an unprecedented impact on the face of war and the character of German society until 1918 and beyond. His revamping of tactics, operations, and doctrine adjusted battlefield practice to the realities of trench warfare with modern weapons. Simultaneously, his reforms of the home front vastly increased supplies of munitions and matériel, and he put in hand such measures as the ‘Hindenburg Programme’ of munitions, an economic super-agency for the mobilization of all sectors of society for war work. The Russian collapse, starting in 1917 and helped along by his dispatch of Lenin to Petrograd (formerly and now St Petersburg), seemed to reward his efforts. However, another aspect of total war, unrestricted submarine warfare, caused the USA to enter the war and to a degree negate success in the east.

The reorganized German war machine was hurled west in the Ludendorff offensive of 1918, which achieved great tactical success but not the necessary breakthrough. He suffered a loss of nerve amounting to a nervous breakdown and left the stage already blaming the politicians for his failures. Emerging from the chaos of defeat and Swedish exile, Ludendorff became a prolific author of apologia for the way he had waged war, while wallowing in the maelstrom of völkisch, militarist Bavarian politics. His brief, violent alliance with Hitler and the National Socialists ended bloodily in the Munich putsch in November 1923, where he appears to have been the only one not to take cover. Thereafter he withdrew from active political life to devote himself to verbose political, strategic, and cosmological writings until his death in 1937.

— Donald Abenheim

Ludendorff embodied two of the twentieth century's shaping events: German imperialism and total war. As a young General Staff officer his outspoken advocacy of engaging the army earned him a punitive transfer. On the outbreak of World War I, he was the architect of the victory over the Russians at Tannenberg (August 1914), while serving as chief of staff to Paul von Hindenburg. Through political intrigue and battlefield victories the ambitious, mercurial Ludendorff sought to become chief of staff of the German Army. When Erich von Falkenhayn was dismissed in 1916, Hindenburg became supreme military commander and Ludendorff his deputy—reflecting the doubts about Ludendorff's character that permeated the German hierarchy.

Ludendorff galvanized what remained of Germany's human and material resources behind the war effort. He also overhauled the army's tactical doctrines. In domestic politics, he orchestrated the dismissal (July 1917) of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and dominated his successors. With the collapse of Russia, Ludendorff extended German power far eastward in the vindictive Peace of Brest‐Litovsk. But his deficiencies as a general brought about his downfall. Ludendorff's spring 1918 offensives in the west lacked strategic objective and exhausted Germany's fighting power. With the Allies on the offensive, Ludendorff in September demanded an armistice. He was dismissed by the new government. In the Weimar Republic, he took part in two unsuccessful rightist putsches—by Friedrich Kapp (1920) and Adolf Hitler (1923)—and became an outspoken “Aryan” racist.

[See also World War I: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

• Covelli Barnett, The Swordbearers: Studies in Supreme Command in the First World War, 1963.
• Norman Stone, Ludendorff, in The War Lords: Military Commanders of the Twentieth Century, ed. M. Carver, 1976, pp. 73–83

Ludendorff, Erich (1865-1937) German general (1914-18) born near Posen, Prussia (now Poznan, Poland). Ludendorff is identified with German imperialism and total war during World War I. He was chief of staff to Paul von Hindenburg and later, when Hindenburg became supreme military commander, his deputy. Ludendorff was architect of the victory over the Russians at Tannenberg (1914), but his offensives in the west (1918) lacked strategic objective and exhausted Germany's fighting power, leading to the armistice. During the Weimar Republic, Ludendorff took part in two unsuccessful putsches, including that by Adolf Hitler in 1923, and became an outspoken Aryan racist.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The German general Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (1865-1937), a brilliant strategist and successful field commander, directed Germany's total war effort during the last 2 years of World War I. He later promoted the rise of Hitler.

Erich Ludendorff was born on April 9, 1865, in Kruszewnia in the chiefly Polish-populated Prussian province of Posen. He was the son of an impoverished former cavalry officer. Educated in military schools, Ludendorff entered the German army in 1882, where his fine performance earned him an assignment to the general staff in 1894. He at once gained the confidence of its chief, the younger Count Moltke, and as chief of mobilizations from 1908 to 1912 Ludendorff was largely responsible for Germany's preparations for war.

The first month of World War I witnessed the meteoric rise of the young staff officer. As deputy chief of staff of the 2d Army, Ludendorff immediately made a name for himself by taking the key Belgian fortress of Liège by means of a bold coup. This move earned him the highest German military award. Weeks later Ludendorff won his greatest victory as chief of staff for 8th Army commander Paul von Hindenburg at Tannenberg on the Eastern front against the advancing Russians. During the next 2 years Ludendorff remained in the East, overseeing a series of German victories, yet frustrated in his hopes of launching a decisive campaign against the Russians.

After the failure of Erich von Falkenhayn's Supreme Command in the murderous battle for the key French fortress of Verdun (1916), Hindenburg and Ludendorff were called to the Supreme Command, the latter as first quartermaster general. In this position Ludendorff gained increasing control of the German war effort, not only in its military phases but also in its economic and political ones. In January 1917 Ludendorff ordered unrestricted submarine warfare over the objections of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. This move soon brought the United States into the war against Germany. After peace moves began in the German Parliament in the summer of 1917, Ludendorff brought about Bethmann Hollweg's dismissal, replaced him with a nonentity, and began a program of total mobilization (Hindenburg Program) and national emergency service. In February 1918 Ludendorff dictated the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the defeated Russians. After the German position in the war had become hopeless in the West in the summer of 1918, Ludendorff suddenly demanded armistice negotiations and a democratization of the government. In the face of President Woodrow Wilson's reply, however, Ludendorff called for a last-ditch national resistance. He resigned when he was overruled by the new chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, and thereby he shirked all responsibility for Germany's defeat.

In the postwar years Ludendorff vociferously spread the "stab in the back" legend that blamed German Socialists and Democrats for the defeat. Ludendorff then became active in "folkish" ultranationalist movements, and he participated in the Nazis' Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Ludendorff entered Parliament as a Nazi in 1924, and he ran for president on the Nazi ticket in 1925.

With his second wife, Dr. Mathilde von Kemnitz, Ludendorff later founded the mystico-religious Aryan-German Tannenberg League, which actively campaigned against Jews, Marxists, Freemasons, and Jesuits. Ludendorff set down his political views in numerous writings, particularly in his openly militarist The Nation at War (1936). Highly acclaimed by the Nazi regime but isolated in his own mystical politics, Ludendorff died in Munich on Dec. 20, 1937.

Further Reading

Ludendorff's autobiographical accounts include My War Memoirs, 1914-1918 (trans. 1919) and The General Staff and Its Problems, translated by F. A. Holt (2 vols., 1920). The memoirs of his first wife, Margarethe Ludendorff, My Married Life with Ludendorff (1930), were translated by Raglan Somerset; those of his second wife are unavailable in English. The standard biography in English is D. J. Goodspeed, Ludendorff: Genius of World War I (1966).

Additional Sources

Parkinson, Roger., Tormented warrior: Ludendorff and the Supreme Command, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978; New York: Stein and Day, 1978, 1979.

Venohr, Wolfgang., Ludendorff: Legende und Wirklichkeit, Berlin: Ullstein, 1993.

Ludendorff, Erich (nr. Posen, 1865-1937, Tutzing, Munich), Prussian general famous as the chief of staff of Hindenburg under whom he served in the east (1914-16) and at German General Headquarters. An efficient and ruthless organizer, Ludendorff was largely responsible for the temporary military successes of the spring of 1918. With his superior, he became increasingly influential politically in 1917 and 1918, but showed little understanding of political forces and problems. His right-wing extremism manifested itself after the war in sympathy with the Kapp-Putsch and in participation in Hitler's revolt in Munich in 1923 (see Hitlerputsch). For this he was tried and acquitted.

Ludendorff's second wife Mathilde (1877-1966) was an active publicist, attacking free-masonry which she believed to be responsible for the deaths of Mozart and Schiller. She was a prominent anti-Semite.

Ludendorff's reminiscences appeared as Meine Kriegserinnerungen (1919). He also published a number of tendentious works.