Falkenhayn, Gen Erich von (1861-1922), one of the most criticized military leaders of WW I. He is best remembered as the author of the battle of Verdun. Falkenhayn was a scion of a typical Prussian junker family and followed a conventional military career until 1896, when he left the army and went to China as a military adviser. In 1900 he served on the staff of the expeditionary force sent there to crush the Boxer rebellion, thus attracting the notice of the kaiser. Returning to Germany in 1903, he reached the top of the Prussian army by merit and imperial protection, becoming Prussian war minister in July 1913.
In spite of evident success in the peacetime army, Falkenhayn disliked boring peacetime routine and desired war. During the July crisis of 1914 he did all that he could as war minister to ensure the outbreak of hostilities by putting pressure on the kaiser and the chancellor, and he applauded the outbreak of war, saying on 4 August 1914: ‘Even if we perish—it was wonderful.’
In September 1914 Falkenhayn succeeded the ailing Moltke ‘the Younger’ as COS. The failure of the Flanders campaign was an inauspicious beginning, but gave Falkenhayn important insights. Trench warfare had come to stay, and major offensives were only the ‘useless waste of human lives’. Falkenhayn reached his conclusions more thoroughly than many of his contemporaries. He gave up hope of a big breakthrough—and he also lost confidence in Germany's final victory. His only hope was a draw, a parti remis, and a separate peace with her enemies. ‘If we do not lose the war, ’ he declared, ‘we have won it.’
Both Falkenhayn's main convictions—that there could be no breakthrough in trench warfare, and that the Central Powers would lose a long war of attrition—were correct and far-sighted. They dominated his strategy, which was very successful in 1915, when Falkenhayn won two big victories that stabilized the eastern front and led to the conquest of Poland and Serbia. At the end of 1915 Falkenhayn thought that Russia was exhausted and unable to attack: he wished to exhaust France and Britain too by limited offensives, and make the Entente ready for peace.
In order to weaken the French he decided to attack at Verdun. His plan, launched in February 1916, to take the hills overlooking the fortress and force the French into costly counter-attacks was only partly successful. The ‘blood mill’ on the Meuse caused very heavy losses: French casualties of around 362, 000 were only slightly superior to German losses of about 337, 000.
Falkenhayn's plan to weaken Britain at the same time by unrestricted submarine warfare was not implemented because of the opposition of the kaiser and the chancellor. When the Entente managed to stage a co-ordinated series of offensives in the summer of 1916 and Romania entered the war in August, Falkenhayn was relieved of his post. He was given the chance to redeem his reputation, and defeated Romania by the end of 1916 after a brilliant campaign. Falkenhayn saw further service in Palestine in 1917 and in White Russia in 1918. He was widely criticized during and after the war. He tried to defend his strategy in his memoirs but was attacked from all sides. Even in retrospect, his support for a compromise peace and his realistic approach to the exigencies of trench warfare sit uneasily with his belief in unrestricted submarine warfare and his reputation as the butcher of Verdun.
Bibliography
- Afflerbach, Holger, Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich (Munich, 1996)
— Holger Afflerbach
