Europe’s Dark Angel of the 20th Century
Over many of the darkest events of the 20th century looms the presence of one man: Erich Ludendorff. His influence is with us still.
Born in 1865, near what is now the Polish city of Poznań, Ludendorff was the son of minor Prussian nobility when that part of the world was still German territory. Entering the German military at an early age, he soon made a name for himself as a strict, humorless, but gifted officer.
Especially capable in the area of detailed logistical planning, he was promoted to the High Command Staff of the German Imperial Army in Berlin, where he was instrumental in helping Alfred von Schlieffen develop the detailed military timetable for rapid mobilization and attack that many historians believe led inevitably to the start of World War I in 1914.
With the start of that War, Ludendorff quickly rose to prominence. His early victory at the fortress of Liège in Belgium opened the way into France for the German armies and made him a national hero. Later, on the eastern front, he and Paul von Hindenburg decisively defeated the Russian armies in a series of battles that effectively neutralized Russia as a source of concern for Germany.
Transferred from victory in the east to break the bloody deadlock of trench warfare that had developed on the western front, Ludendorff and Hindenburg…
