Home > World War I > Erich Ludendorff Biography

April 9, 1865
Kruszewnia, Prussia
December 20, 1937
Munich, Germany

German general

By August 1916 the German army was struggling to survive a war it thought it should be winning. The great assault on the French fortresses at Verdun—which German general Erich von Falkenhayn (1861–1922) thought would "bleed France white" and crush the Allies' will to fight—had turned into a six-month-long bloodbath. German military and political leaders pushed Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941), the German emperor, for a change. Late in August, the kaiser called on the country's two most illustrious military leaders: General Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) and his second in command, General Erich Ludendorff. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had become heroes by beating the Russians on the Eastern Front; now they would be given unprecedented powers to direct the German war effort on the crucial...