FAMOUS GENERAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22917, 21 December 1937, Page 13

FAMOUS GENERAL

DEATH OF LUDENDORFF GERMAN WARTIME LEADER PART IN FASCIST STATE By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright (Received December 20, 10.30 p.m.) LONDON. Dec. 20 A message from Munich says the death has occurred of General von Ludendorff, the great German wartime military leader. He had been gravely ill for a few weeks and to-day suffered a sudden relapse.

Erich von Ludendorff was born near Schwersenz, Posen, in April, 1&65. Trained in the Cadet Corps, he entered the Army in 1882. From 1895 he served mostly on the Great General Staff until 1913, when he was made a regimental commander. In April, 1914, he was promoted major-general. "When the Great War broke out, he was quartermaster of von Bulow's (2nd) Army. He happened to be present during the fighting round Liege and when the commandant of a brigade fell near him he assumed the leadership on his own initiative. In this way

it came about that he was the general who took Liege. The result was that on August 22, 1914, he was appointed Hindenburg's Chief of Staff and accompanied him when he was summoned from Hanover to repel the Russian invasion of East Prussia. In the battle of Tannenberg (August 2.5-8), the invaders were repulsed and a campaign in Lithuania followed. Hindenburg was then merely the leader of the armie3 in the east and Ludendorff acted as administrator of the conquered region. Disastrous Mass Attacks The disastrous mass attacks on Verdun and "the losses on the Somme led to the fall of Falkenhavn, Ludendorff having told the Kaiser that, if he was not removed, the German forces would soon be decimated. Hindenburg was then made Chief of Staff with Ludendorff as his First QuartermasterGeneral. The latter thus became the organiser of the German campaigns. After his advent on August 29, 1916, the costly mass attacks were abandoned and an elastic system of defence employed. He was also responsible for the so-called Hindenburg Programme for the utilisation of man-power, for the abortive attempt to recruit an army of Poles by a promise of autonomy and for the deportations of Belgians which aroused world-wide indignation. Ludendorff retired on October 24, 1918. After the revolution he offered his services* to the new Government, but, as it anticipated attacks on him, it advised him to leave Germany. This he did, travelling to Sweden, disguised with blue spectacles. He wrote his "reminiscences. which appeared in 1919. in which year he went to live near Munich. Colleague of Hitler

lii March. 1920, Ludendorff was hand in glove with the Kapp conspirators, but kept in the background. Later in Munich he became one of the leaders of a group that had gathered round Hitler, whose attempt at a coup d'etat led to a fiasco in November, 1923, when he declared the Berlin Government deposed and proclaimed a National Government with Ludendorff as commander-in-chief of the army. In May, 1924, Ludendorff was elected to the Reichstag as a Fascist, but did not attend the sittings. In March, 1925, he stood for the Presidency against Hindenburg, but secured only 284,975 votes and did not proceed to the second ballot. In 1930 took steps for separation from his second wife by securing a decree for partition of property. She was regarded by his friends as having been the prime mover in his campaign against Freemasons, Jews and Jesuits, and his propaganda in favour of the cult of Wotan and other old German gods, Christianity being rejected owing to its Jewish connections.