LUDENDORFF DEAD

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 74, 21 December 1937, Page 11

LUDENDORFF DEAD

Noted German War-time

Leader

HINDENBURG’S CHIEF OF STAFF By Telegraph.—Press. Assn.—Copyright. (Received December 20, 10.35 p.ui.) Munich, December 20. The death has occurred of General Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff, the noted German wartime leader. He suffered a sudden relapse from the recovery which followed his recent illness. General Ludendorff was an outstanding figure in the German Army throughout the Great War. Brain, heart and will were all unsparingly enlisted in the service of his country, and his almost incomparable powers of organisation and action inspired with practically boundless confidence in his leadership tlie whole military force of Germany. A military historian has advanced the view that he failed in the final issue not because he was lacking in military knowledge and skill but because the great weapon he controlled had gone blunt, because the population at home was no longer capable of the effort of endurance and the will to win essential to victory. General Ludendorff was born in 1865 and entered the Prussian Army in ISS3. In 1894 he joined the General Staff and, except for an interval of two years as a company commander, remained on it from 1894 to 1913. In 1913, by initiative and energy, he was mainly responsible for the large increase in the numerical strength of tlie German Army. He attained early distinction in the Great War by his capture of the fortress of Liege, his success in breaking through the ring of fortifications and reaching the centre of the town resulting in his promotion to the position of Chief of Staff to Field-Marshal von Hindenburg in East Prussia.

There he became noted for his “theory of annihilation,” considered to have been demonstrated by his overwhelming of the Russian Army at the Battle of Tannenberg, which, with- his success in the first Battle,of the Masurian Lakes, resulted in the liberation of East Prussia from serious threat by the Russians. In February, 1915, he achieved the destruction of another Russian force in the region of the Upper Bohr.

Vigorous Conduct of War.

When Field-Marshal von Hindenburg assumed the office of Chief of the General Staff of the armies in the field, General Ludendorff became his first quarter-master-general. The pair embarked upon a more vigorous conduct of the war by remorseless recruiting of the whole available strength of the country in wealth, resources and population. To General Ludendorff is credited by many the responsibility for initiating the submarine blockade offensive, by which he hoped to make England disposed for peace before the United States of America could be in a position to throw any considerable forces into Europe.

In 1927, in the western thefitre of war, he managed, by timely withdrawals possible through his elastic defensive tactics, to check Allied advances carried out with gigantic expenditure of men and material, but his conviction that there was only one honourable road to peace for his country by a spectacular march to complete victory, led to the gigantic offensive of 1918. He considered that an end could be achieved only by an offensive which would be decisive, and in this he hazarded everything.

He launched heavy attacks against St. Quentin, and the German southern wing carried its offensive across the Somme and the Crozat canal to make a cleavage between the English and the French at and beyond Amiens. This result was not complete!}’ attained and indecisive results were obtained from a later drive on the Lys front against the English and the Portuguese designed to gain possession of the commanding heights north of Belleul and to cut off Ypres. Little further headway was made in forcing a decisive engagement in Flanders and after the last attempt to break through on both Hdes of Reims the conclusion that there was nothing to do but hold on till diplomacy yielded a tolerable peace was forced upon tlie Germans. Return to Germany.

General Ludendorff . German war historians claimed, failed because of his inability to continue the initiative through the drying up of supplies at home. German writers also assert that secret service operations resulted in tiie premature revelation of his plans to the Allies and cancelled any chance of a last successful drive by Germany. General Ludendorff was overthrown by the Cabinet of Prince Max of Baden and after the close of the war flew to Sweden. In 1919, however, he returned to his own country, where he became one of thd leaders of reactionary conspiracies. He was one of the initia- ' tors and organisers of the “putsch” of 1920 and in 1923 was allied with Adolf Hitler in an attempt to establish a dictatorship in Germany. In 1924 he entered the Reichstag as a National Socialist, and in 1925 unsuccessfully stood for the presidency of the Reich. It has been said of him that while as a military organiser he was without peer in modern times, in public life lie showed a complete lack of any sense of political realities and was an abject failure.