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Erich Georg Sebastian Anton von Falkenhayn (11 September 1861 - 8 April 1922) was a German General of the Infantry, Prussian Minister of War between 1913 and 1915 as well as the second Chief of the German General Staff of the Weltkrieg until 1916. Once known as the rising star of the general staff and as a young and ambitious leader with excellent connections to Kaiser Wilhelm II, Falkenhayn eventually was dismissed after he was not able to put an end to the war before 1917 in Germany's favour due to the failed Battle of Verdun and at the Somme, the Brusilov Offensive and Romania's entry into the war.
Falkenhayn, who had initially been a highly anticipated candidate by the far-right for the position of Reichskanzler in case of the dismissal of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, a man who was despised by rightists due to his progressive agenda & support for a compromise peace with the Entente, would be succeeded by the much more popular Hindenburg/Ludendorff duo, and quickly faded into political obscurity - over time, others would take his spot as potential "strongmen" at the helm of the Empire, for example Alfred von Tirpitz, Wolfgang Kapp or the aformentioned duo. In the later years of the war, Falkenhayn served as a military commander in Romania, Palestine and at the Eastern Front, eventually retiring in 1919.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Erich von Falkenhayn was born in Burg Belchau near Graudenz, West Prussia, to Fedor von Falkenhayn (1814–1896) and Franziska von Falkenhayn, née von Rosenberg (1826–1888). His family, an otherwise insignificant rural Prussian junker dynasty, would eventually rise to extraordinary prominence in the late 19th and early 20th century: His brother Arthur (1857–1929) became tutor of Crown Prince Wilhelm and had significant influence on the latter's archconservative political education, his other brother Eugen (1853–1934) became a Prussian General of Cavalry and his only sister Olga eventually married the famous Prussian general Moritz von Bock, and is the mother of famous Prussian general Fedor von Bock.
Becoming a cadet at the age of 11, Falkenhayn joined the army in 1880. After attending the Prussian Staff College in Berlin, he had the great privilege to enroll at the Great General Staff as a captain in 1893 - only the best of the best were permitted there. Falkenhayn was considered a very capable officer with a fresh mind full of optimism. In 1896, he was sent to China, where he would remain until 1903 and where he saw action during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In the Far East, he developed a fine sense for the geopolitical tensions between the Great Powers as he was directly involved in several diplomatic missions, especially to the Russians and Japanese. He spent a lot of his time in Korea, Manchuria, Kiautschou and Hankow, where he taught strategy at a Western war school.
Rise to Prominence[]
Upon his return to Germany, Falkenhayn served in various batallions, regiments and again at the General Staff, and soon got the reputation of an intelligent "model Chief of Staff" - it became clear that Falkenhayn would eventually be appointed to some high-ranking military position, either directly at the general staff or in Prussia. However, friction with General Sixt von Arnim instead led to Falkenhayn being deployed to the Ottoman Empire in 1913 as an instructor for the Turkish army - this was only called off in the last moment as Josias von Heeringen, Prussian Minister of War, had been dismissed due to his "soft" stance on a potential expansion of the German armed forces. Thus, Falkenhayn became Heeringen's young and ambitious successor in the Prussian War Ministry, only 51 at the time - mainly because of his excellent relations to the royal family via his brother.
From the beginning, Falkenhayn appeared as a determined speaker, often holding sharp speeches in front of the Reichstag, most prominently during the heated debate in the aftermath of the Zabern Affair in late 1913. His image of a "strongman" influenced the public more in favour towards him than his actual performance at the war ministry, which was acceptable but not overwhelming. The begin of the Weltkrieg in 1914 brought the implementation of the army reform to a sudden halt, however. In early July 1914, shortly after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, he unsuccessfully called for precautionary war preparations, and when Germany declared war on Russia at the height of the crisis, he called this decision too sudden and premature. It had become apparent that the General Staff, led by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger at the time, was entirely overwhelmed by the events that began to quickly unfold.
Sensing a opportunity to further rise in the ranks, and at the request of the military cabinet; he declared himself ready to succeed Moltke as Chief of the General Staff if necessary. But Moltke was there to stay for the time being - only when the Schlieffen Plan ended in a disaster in mid-September 1914, he resigned and was replaced by Falkenhayn, who had, from one day to another, become one of the most powerful men in Europe as the de facto commander-in-chief of the entire German land forces.
Chief of the German General Staff[]
However, despite all hopes, Falkenhayn was not able to turn the war around after the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. The lack of visible success in the first weeks fed the criticism of the young and ambitious major general whose relatively unspectacular career did not seem to justify the appointment as the head of the German wartime operations. Nonetheless, Falkenhayn did not lose his nerve - by the end of the year, he had established a more or less stable front stretching from Basel to the English Channel, thereby initiating five years of trench wafare in the Franco-German-Belgian frontier. Still, throughout his tenure, he would never be able to gain the full confidence of the entire political and military leadership, even though he was without a doubt one of the most outstanding figures of the German armed forces, distinguished by sharp intellect and quick perception, energy and toughness, political sense and skillful treatment of people - this lack of confidence would contribute to his fall almost exactly two years after his appointment.
The first intrigue against Falkenhayn was launched as early as January 1915, initiated by his predecessor Moltke and Paul von Hindenburg, the Empire's most popular military commander and the hero behind the successful German defense of Silesia, Posen and East Prussia against the Russians. While it failed to force Falkenhayn entirely out of his positions, he had to relinquish the Prussian War Ministry to Adolf Wild von Hohenborn. Still, the restraint of Wilhelm II to actively interfere in military matters gave Falkenhayn far-reaching competences even without the position of war minister - as Chief of the German General Staff, he practically had responsibility for the conduct of the entire war on every single front. However, the lack of coordination within the military, the absence of a unified war aims agenda and occasional conflict between the General Staff, the government and the Ober Ost administration would continue to cause friction, especially in regard to Falkenhayn's Russian policy.
Already as early as November 1914, Falkenhayn had called for a separate peace agreement with Petrograd as he was not convinced that Germany would ever be able to fight efficiently on two fronts at the same time, and the war effort against France had a clear priority to him as most important German war aims were tied to the Western Front, like the acquisition of the ore deposits in Longwy-Briey. His stance on this matter would not change throughout 1915 and 1916; Falkenhayn remained a firm proponent of a strategy of focusing on the west and defeating France as soon as possible while concluding peace with Russia in the east. This continuously brought him into conflict with Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who proposed the entire opposite approach of focusing on Russia with all means - an approach which found the approval of Reichskanzler Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, as Hindenburg and Ludendorff had proven the success of their strategy during their successful advance deep into Russian Poland in the summer of 1915.
In early 1916 Falkenhayn made a fateful decision: The German attack on Verdun, one of, if not the most well-fortified cities in France. Behind the choice of Verdun as a target was the idea of demonstrating Britain, the main enemy, the hopelessness of continuing the war by bleeding France dry and therefore substantially weakening them. However, this strategy of attrition failed to achieve the desired goal; more than a quarter of a million soldiers eventually died and Falkenhayn got the reputation of "the Blood-Miller of Verdun", but the French forces had not been weakened as drastically as hoped, mainly due to the efforts of Philippe Pétain.
Tied to the offensive plan against Verdun, Falkenhayn also had been demanding the re-launch of unrestricted submarine warfare since January 1916 to relieve the Western Front and to strike the struggling Britons directly at their heart by cutting them off from the overseas trade. His stance was supported by the State Secretary for the Navy Alfred von Tirpitz and most of the German rightist establishment, which made Falkenhayn a highly anticipated candidate for the position of Reichskanzler, as they thought that a determined and unscrupulous leader would be exactly what Germany needed. However, it would also bring him in conflict with the government and especially Reichskanzler Bethmann, who pursued a foreign policy of appeasement in regard to the United States of America and therefore rejected any kind of submarine warfare not in accordance with the international prize laws. By the late summer of 1916, Falkenhayn had been pretty much isolated, having neither the backing of the government, nor of the Kaiser, nor of most of his colleagues and subordinates.
Fall from Power and Later Life[]
The situation got further out of control when Russia launched the Brusilov Offensive and the Western Allies the Somme Offensive in early summer and the Kingdom of Romania entered into the war a few weeks after. In tis substantial crisis of the Central Powers, Wilhelm II eventually decided on 29 August 1916 to dismiss Falkenhayn from all of his positions. Main orchestrators behind this decision were of course Hindenburg and Ludendorff, whose constant intrigues had finally succeeded. The duo would be appointed as Falkenhayn's successors, with Hindenburg becoming Chief of Staff and Ludendorff Quartermaster general. Bethmann was glad that the government had finally got rid of the stubborn Falkenhayn and hoped that with the help of the popular Hindenburg, a compromise peace with the Allies would be much easier to achieve; it would turn out that he was gravely wrong with that assumption - only a year later Bethmann Hollweg would fall victim to the intrigues of the popular duo as well.
After his dismissal, Falkenhayn lost all the power he once possessed and faded into political obscurity. Instead of him, Hindenburg and Ludendorff would more and more take in the spot as "strongmen" at the helm of the Empire. An offer to succeed Paul Wolff Metternich, an outspoken critic of the Armenian Genocide, as German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire was rejected by Falkenhayn. Instead, he became commander of the 9th Army on the Balkans and participated very successfully in the Romanian Campaign - together with August von Mackensen, he would be celebrated as the "conqueror of Bucharest". With Romania under complete Central Powers occupation, Falkenhayn was sent to the Middle East in July 1917 as the supreme commander of Army Group Yildirim, a new formation which was being formed in Mesopotamia and Syria to repel the British. However, a planned attack on Baghdad had to be canceled and Falkenhayn only confined himself to the defense of the Palestine Front.
In the winter of 1917/18, he failed to prevent the British under General Edmund Allenby from conquering Jerusalem and soon got into conflict with the local Turkish army command as he had avoided a destructive defensive battle for the Old City of Jerusalem with its many holy sites and played a crucial role in preventing the forced removal of the Jewish population of Palestine, which Governor Djemal Pasha had planned along the lines of the Armenian genocide. In February 1918, Falkenhayn therefore had to leave the Ottoman Empire and was assigned to the German 10th Army in Vilnius and later Minsk, where he helped fostering the administrative structures of the White Ruthenian People's Republic and, from early 1919 onwards, assisted the formation of the West Russian Volunteer Army under the lead of former Tsarist military officer Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, which would later play an important role in the late stages of the Russian Civil War. In early summer 1919, Falkenhayn was discharged at his own request and, suffering from the health consequences of his last years at the front, lived in seclusion at Lindstedt Castle in Potsdam where he wrote down his memoirs. He would die on 8 April 1922 just at age 60 from acute kidney failure.
In many ways, Falkenhayn typified the archetypical Prussian general: a militarist in the literal sense, he had undeniable political and military competence and showed contempt for democracy and parliamentarianism. Loyal, honest and punctilious, he possessed many of the traditional Prussian virtues - but in the end, it would be his mixed record on the battlefield and the lack of confidence most of Germany's political and military elite had in his strategies that would lead to his fall. During his two years in office, Falkenhayn's plans did not succeed as planned and German fighting strength as well as the certainty of victory declined considerably. In anticipation of a long conflict and taking into account the character of the material war, he successfully endeavoured to raise the war armament and the food situation, without, however, demanding from the Reich leadership, which was hampered by domestic political considerations, similar intervention measures to increase the war potential as Ludendorff later did. His legacy therefore remains an ambivalent one: while without a doubt an ambitious, experienced and skilled commander, he had no chance to withstand the omnipresent influence of the Hindenburg/Ludendorff duo and eventually became one of their many casualties in the conflict over Germany's path towards the future.