Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as von Ludendorff) (April 9, 1865 – December 20, 1937)I was a German Army officer, Generalquartiermeister during World War I, victor of Liège, and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. After the war, I briefly supported Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. I was acquitted of criminal charges for his role in the Nazis' unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch. I became disillusioned with politics and retired from public life that year.
I was born in Kruszewnia near Posen, Province of Posen (now Poznań, Poland), the third of six children of August Wilhelm Ludendorff (1833-1905), descended from Pomeranian merchants, who had become a landowner in a modest sort of way, and who held a commission in the reserve cavalry. My mother, Klara Jeanette Henriette von Tempelhoff (1840-1914), was the daughter of the noble but impoverished Friedrich August Napoleon von Tempelhoff (1804-1868), and his wife Jeannette Wilhelmine von Dziembowska (1816-1854) — she from a Germanized Polish landed family on her father's side, and through whom I was a remote descendant of the Dukes of Silesia and the Marquesses and Electors of Brandenburg. He is said to have had a stable and comfortable childhood, growing up on a small family farm. I received my early schooling from my maternal aunt and I had a flair for mathematics.My acceptance into the Cadet School at Plön was largely due to my excellence in mathematics and extraordinary work ethic that he would carry with me throughout my life. Passing my Entrance Exam with Distinction, I was placed in a class two years ahead of my actual age group. Thereafter I was consistently first in my class. Heinz Guderian attended the same Cadet School, which produced many well-trained German officers.Despite my maternal noble origins, however, I married outside them, to Margarete née Schmidt (1875–1936).
In 1885 I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 57th Infantry Regiment, at Wesel. Over the next eight years I saw further service as a lieutenant with the 2nd Marine Battalion at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, and the 8th Grenadier Guards at Frankfurt (Oder). My service reports were of the highest order, with frequent commendations. In 1893 I was selected for the War Academy where the commandant, General Meckel, recommended me for appointment to the General Staff. I was appointed to the German General Staff in 1894, rising rapidly through the ranks to become a senior staff officer with V Corps HQ in 1902–04. In 1905, under von Schlieffen, I joined the Second Section of the Great General Staff in Berlin, responsible for the Mobilization Section from 1904–13. By 1911 I was a full colonel.
I was involved in testing the minute details regarding the Schlieffen Plan, assessing the fortifications around the Belgian fortress city of Liege. Most importantly, I attempted to prepare the German army for the war he saw coming. The Social Democrats, who by the 1913 elections had become the largest party in the Reichstag seldom gave priority to army expenditures, building up its reserves, or funding advanced weaponry such as Krupp's siege cannons. Funding for the military went to the Kaiserliche Marine. I then tried to influence the Reichstag via the retired General Keim. Finally the War Ministry caved in to political pressures about my agitations and in January 1913 I was dismissed from the General Staff and returned to regimental duties, commanding the 39th (Lower Rhine) Fusiliers ar Dusseldorf. I was convinced that my prospects in the military were nil but took up my mildly important position.Barbara Tuchman describes me in her book The Guns of August as Schlieffen’s devoted disciple who was a glutton for work and a man of granite character. He was deliberately friendless and forbidding, and remained little known or liked. Lacking a trail of reminiscences or anecdotes as he grew in eminence, Ludendorff was a man without a shadow.However, John Lee (p.45) states that while Ludendorff was with his Fusiliers "he became the perfect regimental commander......the younger officers came to adore him."
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