Max Hoffmann

Max Hoffmann planned the encirclement at Tannenberg, ran the eastern front as chief of staff for most of the war, and dictated the terms at Brest-Litovsk. He was a staff officer with an unusual background - he had learned Russian, served as an observer with the Japanese army in Manchuria in 1905, and knew both armies of the eastern front professionally. In August 1914 he was operations officer of the Eighth Army, and the plan to leave a screen in front of one Russian army while concentrating against the other was drafted before Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived to take command; Hoffmann said so afterwards, repeatedly and to their annoyance, and the documentary record supports him. He knew from intercepted uncoded Russian wireless traffic where each army was, and knew that the two commanders detested each other. Tannenberg destroyed the Russian Second Army and made Hindenburg and Ludendorff national figures, which took them to supreme command in 1916 and left Hoffmann running the east. At Brest-Litovsk in 1918 he negotiated with Trotsky, banged the table over the map, and imposed terms that took from Russia a third of its population and most of its industry - terms so extreme that they hardened Allied opinion about what a German victory would mean and were used against Germany at Versailles. He kept a diary that is candid about the high command and was published after his death. He spent his last years arguing that the war in the east had been won and thrown away in the west. He was promoted major general and never held a field command. He is said to have remarked, when asked about Hindenburg s genius, that this was where the field marshal had slept before the battle and where he slept after it. He died at fifty-eight.

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