Erich Ludendorff

Biography

Erich Ludendorff was born in 1865 at Kruszewnia in the Prussian province of Posen, into a family without noble rank. Trained in the cadet corps, he was commissioned in 1885, entered the War Academy in 1893 and joined the Great General Staff, where by 1904 he worked on mobilisation planning for the Schlieffen Plan. His lobbying of the Reichstag for a larger army led to his transfer to a regimental post in 1913.

At the start of the First World War he led the capture of Liège, then became chief of staff to Paul von Hindenburg in the east, where they won at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. In August 1916 Hindenburg took over the Supreme Army Command with Ludendorff as First Quartermaster General. The two came to dominate German politics as well as strategy, forcing out Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and insisting on harsh terms at Brest-Litovsk. After the failure of the 1918 spring offensives and the Allied counter-attacks, the Kaiser dismissed him in October 1918.

After the war he spread the stab-in-the-back myth, joined the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and marched beside Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Tried for treason in 1924, he was acquitted, and that year entered the Reichstag for the National Socialist Freedom Movement. He polled about one per cent as the völkisch candidate in the 1925 presidential election.

He then broke with Hitler and Hindenburg, founded the Tannenbergbund and, with his second wife Mathilde von Kemnitz, published conspiracy writings against Jews, Catholics and Freemasons, as well as the book The Total War. He died in Munich in 1937 and was given a state funeral against his wishes.