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Erich Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as
Erich von Ludendorff) (April 9, 1865 –
December 20, 1937, Tutzing, Bavaria, Germany) was
a Imperial Germany|German Army officer, noted as a
general during World War I.

Ludendorff was born in Kruszewnia near
Poznan|Posen, Prussia (now Poznań, Poland).
Though, strictly speaking, not a Junker himself,
Ludendorff was loosely connected to the privileged
class through his mother, Klara von Tempelhoff. He
grew up on a small family farm and recieved his
early schooling from his maternal aunt. His
acceptance into cadet school at Plön was largely
due to his excellence in mathematics and
extraordinary work ethic that he would carry with
him throughout his life.

Commissioned as an officer at 18, he made a
splendid military career, appointed to the German
General Staff in 1894, serving as head of the
deployment section in 1908 assisting with the
fine-tuning of the invasion strategy for France,
the Schlieffen Plan.

In World War I Ludendorff was first appointed
Deputy chief of staff to Germany's Second Army,
under Karl von Bülow, responsible for capturing
the forts of Liège (city)|Liège, without which
the Schlieffen Plan could not succeed.  This task
successfully accomplished, Ludendorff was sent to
East Prussia where he worked with Paul von
Hindenburg as his Chief of Staff. Hindenburg
relied heavily upon Ludendorff and Max
Hoffmann|Hoffmann in crafting his victories in the
battles of Battle of Tannenberg (1914)|Tannenberg
and the Battle of Masurian Lakes|Masurian Lakes.

In August of 1916,  when Falkenhayn resigned  as
Chief of the General Staff — the Oberste
Heeresleitung (OHL or "Supreme Army Command"), 
Hindenburg took his place  with Ludendorff as his
First Generalquartiermeister — his Deputy Chief
of Staff.  Ludendorff was the chief manager of the
German war effort throughout this time, with
Hindenburg his pliant front man. Ludendorff
advocated unrestricted submarine warfare, which
was ultimately responsible for bringing the United
States|USA into the war. 

Their so-called Third Supreme Command or "Third
OHL",  was effectively a military-industrial
dictatorship, which largely relegated  Wilhelm II
of Germany|Kaiser Wilhelm II to the periphery.
They meddled with domestic  politics to the point
of forcing the resignation of government
ministers,  including the Chancellor himself three
times in a row;  they then held an effective  veto
over appointments  in the state hierarchy.  



With Russia's withdrawal from the war in 1917,
Ludendorff played a key role in the advantageous
Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.
Effective commander-in-chief on the Western Front
in 1918, Ludendorff planned and executed a series
of German offensives which came close but failed
to collapse the Entente (see Operation Michael).
The massive American military buildup made
Germany's position untenable, causing Ludendorff
to lose his nerve and transfer power back to the
Reichstag on September 29. He demanded an
immediate peace, whereafter he left Germany for
Sweden.

In exile, he wrote numerous books and articles
mythologizing the German military's conduct of the
war, practically founding the Dolchstoßlegende,
claiming that the army had been "stabbed in the
back" by left-wing politicians. Ludendorff
eventually returned to Germany in 1920, where as a
right-wing politician he took part in Hitler's
failed Beer Hall Putsch (1923). In 1924 he was
elected to the Reichstag (institution)|Reichstag
as a representative of the Nazi party, serving
until 1928.  He lost the 1925 presidential
election against his former commander, Paul von
Hindenburg. 

After 1928, Ludendorff went into retirement,
having fallen out with the Nazi party. He
concluded that the world's problems were the
result of Christians, Jews and Freemasons;
together with his second wife Mathilda, he founded
the "Bund für Gotteserkenntnis" (Society for the
Knowledge of God), a small and rather obscure
esotericism|esoterical society that has survived
until today. In his later years, many believed
Ludendorff to be little more than an eccentric. He
rejected Hitler's offer to make him a field
marshal in 1935. At his death in 1937, he was
given a state funeral attended by Hitler.

==External links==
*http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/ludendorff.htm
Erich Ludendorff Firstworldwar.com Who's Who
*http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/17jun/mencken.h
tm  Ludendorff by H. L. Mencken published in the
June 1917 edition of the Atlantic Monthly
*http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWludendorf
f.htm Biography of Erich Ludendorff From Spartacus
Educational

==Bibliography==
*	General Erich Ludendorff,  My War Memoirs,
1914-1918. 2v. ("Meine Kriegserinnerungen
1914-1918",  written in Sweden,  1919). 
* Donald James Goodspeed, 
	http://www.epwbooks.com/search.php?field=serial&q
=8054862 Ludendorff: Genius Of World War I,  
Boston, Houghton Mifflin,  1966. 
* John Lee, 
http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/HB-29877/The-Warlords.
htm The Warlords: Hindenburg And Ludendorff (Great
Commanders S.) 
* Robert B Asprey,  The German High Command at
War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the First World
War,  Time Warner, 1994.