Erich Ludendorff (9 April 1865 – 20 December 1937) was Quartermaster-General of the Imperial German Army from August 1916 to October 1918 during World War I. Ludendorff served as Paul von Hindenburg's deputy during the war, and he would become a leader of the German Voelkisch Freedom Party (DVFP) party and a supporter of Adolf Hitler after the war.
Biography[]
Ludendorff sprang to fame in the early days of World War I when he led an attack on the Belgian fortress city of Liege. Hastily transferred to the Eastern Front as chief-of-staff to Paul von Hindenburg, he participated in the defeat of two Russian armies in a single month, at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, demonstrating his skill in organizing the rapid maneuver of large-scale forces. Further successes, notably the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in Poland in 1915, contrasted starkly with the stalemate on the Western Front.
Running the war[]
Hindenburg was appointed German chief of general staff in August 1916, with Ludendorff as his quartermaster. In practice, Ludendorff took control of the German war effort, mobilizing the German economy to maximize war production and implementing unrestricted submarine warfare in a failed effort to defeat Britain that instead provoked the United States into declaring war. After imposing punitive peace terms on a defeated Russia, in spring 1918, he gambled on winning the war through a swift offensive in France before the Americans arrived. Despite initial breakthroughs, the gamble failed. As his exhausted aries fell back in the face of counterattacks from July 1918, Ludendorff's nerve broke. By September, he was insisting that Germany make peace immediately. He was forced to resign in October 1918.