Erich Ludendorff
Erich Ludendorff ran Germany's war from 1916, gambled everything on one offensive, and spent his last years on the political fringe. Born in 1865 to a family of Pomeranian smallholders, he was a career staff officer with no aristocratic connection, which was unusual at his level, and he made his reputation on the mobilisation planning that turned Schlieffen's design into timetables. He seized the fortress of Liège in August 1914 by driving to its citadel and demanding its surrender, and was sent east with Hindenburg to the Eighth Army in a crisis. Tannenberg in August 1914 destroyed a Russian army of some 150,000. The plan was largely Max Hoffmann's; the credit went to the pair at the top, and the partnership of the aged field marshal and the working chief of staff became Germany's most powerful institution. They took the supreme command in August 1916 and progressively displaced the civil government, running what historians call a silent dictatorship — pushing for unrestricted submarine warfare that brought in the United States, forcing the chancellor's dismissal, and imposing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on Russia. The spring offensive of 1918 was the gamble. Freed of the eastern front and using infiltration tactics, it broke the British Fifth Army and advanced further than anything since 1914 — with no strategic objective, and at a cost in irreplaceable assault troops that broke the army when the Allies counterattacked. He demanded an armistice in September, resigned in October, and then propagated the stab-in-the-back myth. He marched with Hitler in 1923.
- Lived: 1865 CE – 1937 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: general, de_facto_military_dictator
