Hindenburg Ludendorff And Hitler

They are two of twentieth-century history’s most significant figures, yet today they are largely forgotten – Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s First World War leaders. Although defeat in 1918 brought an end to their ‘silent dictatorship’, both generals played a key role in the turbulent politics of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis. Alexander Clifford, in this perceptive reassessment of their political careers, questions the popular image of these generals in the English-speaking world as honourable ‘Good Germans’. For they were intensely political men, whose ideas and actions shaped the new Germany and ultimately led to Hitler’s dictatorship. Their poisonous wartime legacy was the infamous stab-in-the-back myth. According to the generals, the true cause of the disastrous defeat in the First World War was the betrayal of the army by politicians, leftists and Jews on the home front. This toxic conspiracy theory polluted Weimar politics and has been labelled the beginning of ‘the twisted road to Auschwitz’. Hindenburg and Ludendorff’s political fortunes after the war were markedly different. Ludendorff inhabited the far-right fringes and engaged in plots, assassinations and conspiracies, playing a leading role in failed uprisings such as Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Meanwhile Hindenburg was a vastly more successful politician, winning two presidential elections and serving as head of state for nine years. Arguably he bore even more responsibility for the destruction of democracy, for he and the nationalist right he led sought, through Hitler, to remould the Weimar system towards authoritarianism.

"The authors deliver a chilling, well–researched biography that opens a whole new window on the world wars and the German psyche at the time."—Kirkus Reviews "A brilliant tactician and an abysmally poor politician and strategist, Ludendorff summed up the strengths and weaknesses of the German General Staff. His is a fascinating story of talent, discipline, obsession, and denial."—Professor Isabel Virginia Hull, PhD, Cornell University One of the most important military individuals of the last century, yet one of the least known, Ludendorff not only dictated all aspects of World War I, he refused all opportunities to make peace; he antagonized the Americans until they declared war; he sent Lenin into Russia to forge a revolution in order to shut down the Russian front; and in 1918 he pushed for total military victory, in a slaughter known as "The Ludendorff Offensive." Ludendorff created the legend that Germany had lost the war only because Jews had conspired on the home front. He forged an alliance with Hitler, endorsed the Nazis, and wrote maniacally about how Germans needed a new world war, to redeem the Fatherland. He aimed to build a gigantic state to dwarf even the British Empire. Simply stated, he wanted the world.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff were two of the greatest generals of the First World War. At Tannenberg in 1914 their brilliance on the battlefield annihilated one Russian army completely, and drove a second from German territory in disarray. They repeated these feats time and again on the Eastern Front, and when Falkenhayn resigned as Chief of the Great General Staff in 1916 (partly through the pair's intriguing against him), Hindenburg was the natural choice to take over. where literally everything was geared towards helping the war effort, their influence reached into all parts of German life: not only the army but the economy, industry, the transport systems, and the production and distribution of food. Their power was such that they were able to force the resignation of three successive Chancellors and several government ministers. They meddled in foreign policy and affairs of state with such frequency that it was impossible for anyone of note to hold office without their approval. By the end of the First World War, Germany was effectively a military dictatorship. his concise but incredibly comprehensive history of the war, John Lee shows how Hindenburg and Ludendorff rose to power, and how their iron grip on the nation very soon brought Germany to the brink of starvation, with riots and industrial strikes reaching epidemic proportions. He also shows how their Prussian values not only contributed to Germany's downfall, but paved the way for an even more devastating war 20 years later.

In this fascinating biography of the infamous ideologue Erich Ludendorff, Jay Lockenour complicates the classic depiction of this German World War I hero. Erich Ludendorff created for himself a persona that secured his place as one of the most prominent (and despicable) Germans of the twentieth century. With boundless energy and an obsession with detail, Ludendorff ascended to power and solidified a stable, public position among Germany's most influential. Between 1914 and his death in 1937, he was a war hero, a dictator, a right-wing activist, a failed putschist, a presidential candidate, a publisher, and a would-be prophet. He guided Germany's effort in the Great War between 1916 and 1918 and, importantly, set the tone for a politics of victimhood and revenge in the postwar era. Dragonslayer explores Ludendorff's life after 1918, arguing that the strange or unhinged personal traits most historians attribute to mental collapse were, in fact, integral to Ludendorff's political strategy. Lockenour asserts that Ludendorff patterned himself, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, on the dragonslayer of Germanic mythology, Siegfried—hero of the epic poem The Niebelungenlied and much admired by German nationalists. The symbolic power of this myth allowed Ludendorff to embody many Germans' fantasies of revenge after their defeat in 1918, keeping him relevant to political discourse despite his failure to hold high office or cultivate a mass following after World War I. Lockenour reveals the influence that Ludendorff's postwar career had on Germany's political culture and radical right during this tumultuous era. Dragonslayer is a tale as fabulist as fiction.

Originally published in 1976 and based upon the extensive use of original archival material, this book provides a detailed account of the 2 years in which the German army enjoyed unprecedented power and influence. The rise of Hindenburg and Ludendorff is seen against the background of the failure of the army to win a decisive victory in the early stages of the war. The book provides insights into the dynamics of German militarism and imperialism, and is an important contribution to the discussion of the continuity of German history.

During the first two years of World War I a German general called from obscure retirement, Paul Von Hindenburg, aided by his deputy, Erich Ludendorff, won imperial fame from his successful campaigns on the eastern front. In 1916 Kaiser Wilhelm named Hindenburg to head the all-powerful Great German Staff with Ludendorff his deputy. At first all went well. But as food and other resources including replacements diminished, and as America entered the war, the top command increasingly panicked. In the summer of 1918 German armies in the west opened an all-out defensive. This failed and German surrender followed-as did the fall of the German empire.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff and world war I, 1914 at the out break of war.

This double biography of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, joint leaders of Germany's General Staff, provides an account of the Great War from the German point of view and sheds light on the nation's disastrous defeat as a result of expanded military egos unchecked by civil authority.

Hitler and Nazism is an essential introduction to a notorious figure and crucial theme in modern European history. Focusing on the key themes of Nazi domestic policy, this book draws together the results of recent research into a concise analysis of the nature of Nazi rule and its impact on German society. This book continues to explore how Nazism took hold in Germany; the issues of Hitler's beliefs and their role in the Third Reich; the factors that brought the party to power, and the structure and nature of both government and society in the Third Reich. It also develops further its analysis of the important issues of modernisation, gender, racial hygiene and the origins and implementation of the Holocaust.