Erich Ludendorff

Erich Ludendorff came from a non-noble Prussian family and climbed the ranks on merit, admitted to the War Academy in 1893 and assigned to the Great General Staff by 1904, where he helped develop the Schlieffen Plan. Removed once for meddling in politics, he redeemed himself in August 1914 by leading the assault on Liège, then engineered the annihilation of Russian forces at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes under Hindenburg's command. By August 1916 he'd maneuvered himself into the role of First Quartermaster General, establishing a military dictatorship that controlled Germany's entire war strategy - he secured Russia's defeat and launched the 1918 spring offensives that briefly looked like breakthrough, until the Hundred Days Offensive crushed it all and the Kaiser forced him out. He spent the Weimar years peddling the stab-in-the-back myth, blaming Marxists, Freemasons, and Jews for the loss, and threw in with the Kapp Putsch in 1920 and Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 before a failed presidential run in 1925. His final work, The Total War, argued that peace was just a gap between wars and that nations must stay perpetually mobilized. He died of liver canc