Erich Ludendorff

“ The retirement of General Ludendorff, formerly chief of staff and really generalissimo of the German armies at this time, was an event of the highest importance. As the persistent advocate of war to the bitter end, and which he had never failed to assert would result in the defeat of Germany's enemies, his throwing up the sponge at a time of crisis in his country's destiny could only mean one of two things: he had all the effective power of the empire against him, or he foresaw the triumph of the Allies and was eager to seek cover before the German armies were forced to surrender. ”

“ General Ludendorff finds the chief reason for the German defeat in the war spirit which had been aroused in England under the leadership of Mr. Lloyd George, and in France by the inspiration of M. Clemenceau. Neither of those leaders would admit that they alone could have achieved so great a triumph for liberty over the menace of militarism. It was the spirit of the peoples of France and Great Britain that really achieved resounding victory—the peoples who shrank from no sacrifice and faced every trial rather than accept defeat. ”

“ Ludendorff, the master tactician, was facing a new problem. That once dependable German machine was not responding with the alacrity, the team-play, and the bravery which had been his dependence in all his plans. He had to consider, in view of the situation that was now developing, whether or not the Saint-Mihiel salient was worth holding at a sacrifice of men. He knew that we were to attack in force; he knew that in an offensive a new army is bound to suffer from dispersion and from confusion in its transport arrangements. ”

“ Ludendorff was also able to withdraw his six divisions and many Austrian batteries from the Italian front, assured that no Italian offensive need be feared; and his tactics came as a surprise in spite of the practical warnings given at Caporetto and Cambrai. They were based not so much upon superiority of numbers as upon superiority of the selected troops to the average of the forces opposed; and success depended less upon the weight than upon the sharpness of the weapon used for the blow. Hindenburg liked a hammer; Ludendorff chose an axe with which to cleave the enemy front. ”

“ Such was the situation in Flanders and Picardy which confronted Ludendorff at the dawn of the second month of the German offensive. The whole problem to be solved was just as apparent to the Allies as it was to him—to gain the barriers which threatened his angles of penetration, in order again to utilize his preponderant forces of men and guns on a broad front. To attempt to extend the vertices without broadening the sides would mean to court danger, even destruction, at their weakest points. ”

“ The vital necessity of a stern British defence of the Channel Ports was appreciated by Ludendorff as fully as by the British G.H.Q., and he was therefore alive to the possibility—knowing the British inferiority in numbers—that the overwhelming importance of the north might lead to a concentration of British divisions in the north at the expense of the southern area. ”

“ The control of the campaign was taken over by the German Higher Command, and the troops had been trained in the new tactics which were tried by Von Hutier at Riga in the first week in September and were to be used to more serious purpose at Caporetto in October and on the Western front in 1918. Time was of the essence of Ludendorff's strategy; he could not afford, with the American peril in prospect, to prolong the war by fighting in trenches and merely defending the Hindenburg lines. ”

“ With every incentive to compel a decision before the new American army, which was now arriving at the rate of something like 150,000 a month, could enter the field in full strength, Ludendorff had either to throw up the sponge or strike again at the earliest moment in one final effort to beat the Allies to their knees. Meantime the obvious policy on the Franco-British part was to maintain an active defence until their own and American reinforcements made a counter-offensive possible. ”

“ It seems that rumors have reached us that Ludendorff has his present headquarters in a chateau among the hills that can be easily reached by the bombing plane squadron on their way to the main objective. Yes, and would you believe it, they even suspect that the Old Fox of the Hills, Von Hindenburg himself, is there right now, in consultation with his chief general. Think of a double killing, Jack, will you? ”

“ In order to exculpate themselves all the leaders in Germany declared that America would, in any case, have gone to war, and that the U-boat had merely given the last impetus. Whether this is quite true appears doubtful; it cannot either be asserted or denied positively.
The world has become used to looking upon Hindenburg and Ludendorff as one ”

“ Cantigny was our real beginning as combatants in the war. Our troops arrived there after the first flood of the German rush had been checked, and so we began in a small way the process of regaining lost ground. A little more than a month later Ludendorff had won his last victory when he burst across the Aisne and reached the Marne. It was in that critical time that two American divisions, including the Marines, gathered up from rest camps, seized upon a moment of supreme necessity, and appeared on the road to Paris and south of the bridge across the Marne at Chateau-Thierry. ”

“ Though every day added to the danger of delay, it was not until the end of May that the German army, its plans disorganized by its unexpectedly heavy commitments in the Amiens and Flanders battles, was launched on the third and final phase of Ludendorff's great offensive with a sudden attack on the Aisne front in the direction of Paris. ”

“ But it is the nemesis of militarism that it never can make a peace which is tolerable to its enemies, and Ludendorff had no choice but to persist with an offensive which had become a desperate gamble. His efforts since the end of May had profited him little; he had used up most of the divisions intended for a final resumption of his attack on the Franco-British liaison; and after more than a month's delay he could only launch his last bolt against an eccentric and subsidiary objective. Foiled in front of Amiens and Paris, he turned to Reims ”

“ The German armies began to give on 18 July, and the decay went on increasing because she had not the means with which to make repairs. The wonder is not that the machine broke down, but that it bore so great a strain for so prolonged a time. The Germans could not command success because they defied the conscience of mankind, but from the military point of view they certainly deserved it.
In spite of Ludendorff's attempt, natural in a Junker, to debit revolution with his failure, it was American reinforcements which turned the scale. ”

“ The last battle of the Aisne formed the third of the series of great advances which Ludendorff had made in March and April, 1918. In each of the first two the Allies had been driven back so far and so definitely as to enable the Germans to claim overwhelming victory. But each of them, all the same, had finally found the victorious troops face to face with undefeated and immovable [66] armies, and found them also too exhausted to press forward to gain those objectives which had constituted the real intention of each advance. ”

“ The German armies must retire across the Rhine and must be demobilised. German guns and ships must be surrendered. [124] In fact, Germany must be rendered incapable of resuming the war. Only on those terms was an Armistice possible with an enemy who had given such dire proofs of ill-faith.
Faced with these terrible terms, Ludendorff made a last effort to rally Germany to a final war of defence. But he was too late. He himself had fatally weakened the German fighting power when he suggested negotiations in August. Then the civilians had protested. ”

“ He left his front protected by only sufficient men and guns to produce the greatest possible losses among the enemy as he slowly advanced south and concentrated heavily on the enemy's flanks. It was he and not Ludendorff who decreed that the Germans should reach the Marne between Dormans and Château-Thierry, and nowhere else. ”

“ From this date onward the great German offensive began to decline, and ended in the Somme area with a final effort to separate the French and British Armies on the 4th and 5th April, by an attack on the north and south of the Somme. “It was an established fact,” says Ludendorff, “that the enemy’s resistance was beyond our strength.” Strategically the Germans had not won what the events of the 23rd, 24th, and 25th March had led them to hope for—the failure to take Amiens was a great disappointment. ”

“ If Ludendorff in France should be successful—if he should succeed in isolating the allied armies north of the Somme, or force the French back upon the defenses of Paris, or both—then the Austrian Commander in Chief with his million men would be aided by German generalship and German divisions, and, together, they would strike down the Giudicaria to the west of the Lago di Garda, with all strength and disregarding all sacrifices in order to reach the metallurgic centre of Italy in Lombardia and Emilia, thereby forcing Italy out of the war and gaining access to the back door of France. ”

“ Treachery requires some shrewdness. The man is not quite an imbecile. If your Roosevelt were a Socialist he would be a Scheidemann. [Pg 309] Daumig, Pasadowsky, Erzburger—rely upon me, m'sieur. And Ludendorff. Ah, there we have real work. If Ludendorff will talk now. He is supposed to be in Berlin. I will find him and arrange for you. And so on. You will meet all the great minds, all the big stomachs. I will take you to Radek who is hiding with a price on his head. And Dr. Talheimer on the Rote Fahne, if they do not arrest him too soon. Bernstorff is in the hotel. A man with too much brains. ”

“ Soldiers and writers made bitter complaints of the lack of any German organisation to maintain an adequate counter-campaign.
General Ludendorff ("My War Memories," pp. 360 et seq.) is pathetic in his laments at the non-success of German efforts. "The German propaganda," he writes, "was only kept going with difficulty. In spite of all our efforts, its achievements, in comparison to the magnitude of the task, were inadequate. We produced no real effect on the enemy peoples." He admits failure, too, in propaganda efforts on the fighting fronts. ”

“ We hear about Ludendorff's hammer blows. Hammer blows crack and crumble poor material. Hammer blows harden and consolidate good metal. There is good metal in British hearts. It has stood the test of centuries. It will stand this. So will that gallant little people, that gallant great people across the Channel who are fighting for their liberties, for the honor of their native land, fighting without flinching. I have seen them. I never saw signs of wavering in any French face. They are full of courage, full of determination to fight through to the end, and it is a united France more than ever. ”

“ But, later, when the war long since had assumed a totally different character, when the troops were made stationary by the war of position and fresh enemies were constantly rising up against us, when Italy, Roumania, and finally America appeared on the scene, then did the German generals achieve miracles of strategy. Hindenburg and Ludendorff became gods in the eyes of the German people; the whole of Germany looked up to them and hoped for victory through them alone. They were more powerful [Pg 18] than the Emperor, and he, therefore, less than ever in a position to oppose them. ”

“ Carefully prepared approaches and memorized speeches are worth much to the beginner, but an agility in adapting himself is much more important. Ludendorff failed to get to Paris because his original plan was upset and he could not think quickly enough to rally the German army and attack from a different angle. ”

“ This proclamation which was signed by Field Marshal Von Hindenburg was later signed by Ludendorff. It resulted in the Kaiser's immediate orders for a special conference at which both of these officials were dismissed from the Imperial German army.
Von Tirpitz in his Memoirs laid stress on the effect of the Wilson submarine notes. Ludendorff declares in his book that the "Wilson propaganda" that found root in Berlin and finally grew there eventually convinced the German people that it was not they themselves, but the Government and militarism that the United States was warring against. ”

“ Situated as the Germans were between two fronts, they were quicker to grasp the significance of events in the East than were Western Powers; and the collapse of Russia had already inspired Ludendorff with the idea and hopes of a final and victorious offensive on the West in the spring of 1918. It must come soon, or the advent of American armies would make it too late. Even the French and British forces were serious enough, and an obvious preliminary would be to weaken the enemy line in France by a diversion. ”

“ Ludendorff, Kriebel, and Röhm sent a Lieutenant Alois Hecker to Lossow requesting him to attend a meeting at the Wehrkreiskommando. At this point, Kriebel said to Hecker, " Hecker, you are our last hope. You must go to the garrison and see to it that Lossow comes to this meeting with Ludendorff. Everything depends on it. There seems to be several misunderstandings which must be cleared up immediately." ”

“ Whereupon he helped himself to a generous allowance of Scotch whisky, and as they had just been talking about Ludendorff's coming offensive, he began to discourse upon the Germans.
"One of the most astounding things about German psychology," he said, "is their passion for suggesting the appearance of results which they know they are powerless to attain. A German general who is not in a position to undertake a real offensive deludes himself into believing that he will strike terror into his opponent by describing an absurd and appalling attack in his reports ”