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Paul von Hindenburg (2 October 1847 - 2 August 1934) was a German Field Marshal and 8th Reichskanzler of the German Empire, serving from 1918 to 1923. He is widely regarded as one of the men who lead Germany to victory in the Weltkrieg; However, his involvement in the Ludendorff Dictatorship and the Eastern Aid Scandal of 1923 tarnished his reputation later on.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg was born in Posen, Prussia, the son of Prussian aristocrat Hans Robert Ludwig von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg and his wife Luise Schwickart, the daughter of a physician. His family, deeply protestant, was directly related to 16th century church reformer Martin Luther and remotely related to the ruling house of Waldeck-Pyrmont.
Already at age 11, Hindenburg entered the Cadet Corps School at Wahlstatt in Silesia, later being transferred to Berlin, and at 18 he served as a page to the widow of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia.
Military Career[]
Hindenburg became a second lieutenant in the Third Regiment of Foot Guards of the Prussian Army and fought in both the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian War. Rising in the ranks because of great bravery, he became his regiment's elected representative at the Palace of Versailles when the German Empire was proclaimed on 18 January 1871. After the French surrender he watched from afar the suppression of the Paris Commune.
In 1873 he passed in the highly competitive entrance examination for admission to the Kriegsakademie in Berlin After three years of study, his grades were high enough for an appointment with the General Staff. He was promoted to captain in 1878 and assigned to the staff of the Second Army Corps.
He was transferred in 1885 to the General Staff and was promoted to major. For five years Hindenburg also taught tactics at the Kriegsakademie. At multiple army maneuvers, he came in contact with Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, who would become Emperor Wilhelm II three years later.
In 1887, he moved to the War Ministry to write the field service regulations on field-engineering and on the use of heavy artillery in field engagements; both would be used later during the Weltkrieg. He became a lieutenant-colonel in 1891, and two years later was promoted to colonel commanding an infantry regiment. He became chief of staff of the Eighth Army Corps in 1896.
Hindenburg was given command of a division in 1897 as a major-general; in 1900 he was promoted to lieutenant general. Five years later he was made commander of the Fourth Army Corps based in Magdeburg as a General of the Infantry. In 1909, Alfred von Schlieffen recommended him as Chief of the General Staff, but he lost out to Helmuth von Moltke. He retired in 1911 to histownhouse in Hanover "to make way for younger men", after serving in the army for 46 years, including 14 years in General Staff positions.
Early Weltkrieg[]
Despite being retired, he was selected by the War Cabinet and the German high command (Oberste Heeresleitung, OHL) to assume command of the German Eighth Army in East Prussia in late August. The Russians had mobilized faster than the OHL expected and therefore more commanders were needed in the East. Erich Ludendorff, the "Victor of Liège", became his chief of staff. The duo would stay together for the rest of the war.
Upon arriving in East Prussia, Hindenburg and Ludendorff met with Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffmann, an expert on the Russian Army. With the help of his knowledge, they worked out an effective strategy to annihilate and repel the Russians as fast as possible. Nine days later the Eighth Army surrounded most of a Russian army at Tannenberg, taking 92,000 prisoners in one of the great victories in German history. Recognizing the victory's propaganda value, Hindenburg suggested naming the battle "Tannenberg" as a way of "avenging" the defeat inflicted on the Order of the Teutonic Knights by the Polish and Lithuanian knights in 1410, even though it was fought nowhere near the field of Tannenberg.
Similar tactics led to the Battle of the Masurian Lakes later that year, which resulted in the Russian ejection from East Prussia. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were celebrated as being the masterminds behind this strategic wonder; It helped to boost morale and war support greatly, as the War in the West went very sluggish. The Hindenburg-Ludendorff duo's successful performance on the Eastern Front in 1914 marked the beginning of a military and political partnership that would last until the Eastern Aid Scandal of 1923. Hindenburg wrote to the Kaiser a few months later: "Ludendorff has become my faithful adviser and a friend who has my complete confidence and cannot be replaced by anyone."
During the rest of 1914, commanding an Army Group, they averted the projected invasion of German Silesia by dexterously moving their outnumbered forces into Russian Poland, fighting the Battle of the Vistula River, which ended with a brilliantly executed withdrawal during which they destroyed the Polish railway lines and bridges needed for an invasion. When the Russians had repaired most of the damage the Germans struck their flank in the Battle of Łódź, where they almost surrounded another Russian Army. Masters of surprise and deft maneuver, they argued that if properly reinforced they could trap the entire Russian army in Poland, a plan that was ultimately rejected by the OHL, however.
In early 1915, Hindenburg and Ludendorff managed the defense of Silesia and later drove the Russians out of Austrian Galicia. By the end of the year, they had occupied all of Russian Poland, Lithuania, Courland and Latvia, an area almost the size of France. Hindenburg moved headquarters to Kovno, Lithuania. He and Ludendorff were responsible for 108,800 km2 of conquered Russian territory, which was home to three million people; Their military administration became known as Ober Ost-Verwaltung, (Verwaltungszone des Oberbefehlshabers der gesamten Deutschen Streitkräfte im Osten, German for "Administration Zone of the Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East"). The troops built fortifications on the eastern border while Ludendorff headed the civil government, using forced labor to repair the war damages and to dispatch useful products, like hogs, to Germany. A Hindenburg son-in-law, who was a reserve officer and a legal expert, joined the staff to write a new legal code. Hindenburg therefore had become ruler of his own "little fiefdom" in the East.
However, Hindenburg was not very happy with the results of the year 1915. He had hoped to push further East to trap the fleeing Russian troops in a giant cauldron, using motor vehicles for speed. From Hindenburg's point of view, such an overwhelming triumph could have ended the war in the Eastern Front. However, his ambitious plans were rejected by the Chief of Germany's Great General Staff, the more precautious Erich von Falkenhayn. Hindenburg deeply despised Falkenhayn, as he was the only instance between him and the Kaiser himself. Fueled by Ludendorff and Hoffmann, he started a campaign to push Falkenhayn out of his offices by trying to persuade the Kaiser of his ideas. The Kaiser however was very reluctant; In the end, he compromised by by keeping Falkenhayn in supreme command, but replacing him as Prussian war minister.
On 16 March 1916 the Russians, now with adequate supplies of cannons and shells, attacked parts of the new German defenses, intending to penetrate at two points and then to pocket the defenders. They attacked almost daily until the end of the month, but the Lake Naroch Offensive ultimatel failed. The Russians did better attacking the Austro-Hungarians in the south. The Brusilov Offensive cracked their lines with surprise hurricane bombardments followed by well-schooled assault troops probing for weak spots. The breakthrough was finally stemmed by Austro-Hungarian troops recalled from Italy stiffened with German advisers and reserves. In July Russian attacks on the Germans in the north were beaten back. On 27 July 1916 Hindenburg was given command of all troops on the Eastern Front from the Baltic to Brody in the Ukraine. The new headquarters were set up in Brest-Litovsk. By August 1916 their front was finally holding everywhere.
Chief of the German General Staff[]
After the relative failure at Verdun and the beginning of the Anglo-French offensive on the Somme, Falkenhayn was replaced as Chief of Staff by Hindenburg on 29 August, 1916, making Hindenburg officially one of the most influential men in the Empire. Ludendorff was appointed Generalquartiermeister (quartermaster general). However, despite Ludendorff having a lower rank than Hindenburg, he would become more influential over time than his associate, with Hindenburg only being a representative of Ludendorff's actions to the public and therefore de facto his puppet. Ludendorff was entrusted with signing most orders, directives and the daily press reports, and therefore held the true power in his own hands.
Right after their nominations, Hindenburg and Ludendorff visited the Western Front, meeting the Army commanders and their staffs as well as their leaders: Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Duke Albrecht of Württemberg and Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia. Hindenburg told them that they had to stand on the defensive and that a backup defensive line, the so-called "Hindenburg Line", would be constructed immediately. This was mainly due to one reason: The joining of Romania on side of the Allies.
Romania's offensive into Transylvania threatened to disturb the power balance on the Eastern Front; Hindenburg and Ludendorff wanted to destroy that problem as soon as possible. Thanks to Hindenburg's clever strategies and excellent communication with the front provided by Ludendorff, a Romanian invasion of Transylvania was repelled. Then Romania was invaded from the south by German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman troops commanded by August von Mackensen and from the north by a German and Austro-Hungarian army commanded by Falkenhayn. Bucharest fell in December 1916.
The fall of Romania increased Hindenburg's prestige even more. The duo had grown extremely powerful now, even eclipsing the German government and almost the Kaiser himself by now. Hindenburg was eventually given titular command over all of the forces of the Central Powers; His and Ludendorff's hands were everywhere, with almost no one to stop them.
The Hindenburg Programme[]
In August 1916, Ludendorff & Hindenburg launched the so-called "Hindenburg Programme", which intended to double German industrial production and greatly increase the output of munitions and weapons. They were aware of the fact that to win the war in the west, severe reforms were needed, as France and Britain still were not suffering from shortage of resources and manpower as their huge colonial empires were providing them with everything they needed.
Their man for the job was artillery expert Max Bauer of the OHL Operations Section, who advocated or a further industrial mobilisation and military conscription to equip the army for the Materialschlacht (battle of equipment/battle of attrition) being inflicted on it in France, which would only intensify in 1917. The first step was the establishment of the Kriegsamt (Supreme War Office), which would be led by General and railway expert Wilhelm Groener and which was intended to by-pass the War Ministry as well as create the structure of a command economy, with a militaristic organisation intended to facilitate management and a subordinate level of six departments organised along bureaucratic lines.
The second step were severe domestic changes. In late 1916, the Gesetz über den vaterländischen Hilfsdienst (Hilfsdienstgesetz, Auxiliary Services Law) was passed which made every German between 16 and 50 years old subject to compulsory service, either in the military or in the war industry. Enterprises "not important to the war economy" were closed to supply more workers. The law aimed to treble artillery and machine-gun output and double munitions and trench mortar production to slowly replace manpower with firepower.
The third step was the expansion of the German Army. Hindenburg and Ludendorff ordered the creation of another 22 divisions, to have an army of 179 divisions by early 1917 to have better chances in future resource-consuming battles, like the desastrous Battle of the Somme in 1916 had been. A larger number of divisions might reduce the strain on the Westheer and realise a surplus for offensives on other fronts.
The Hindenburg Programme soon beared first successes. The production of ammunation and explosives reached all-time highs and several dozen trains loaded with material rolled to the Western Front every day. Every months, more than 12,000 t of propellant were produced. Additionally, 125,000 skilled workers were returned to the war economy by the German Army and 800,000 workers were conscripted via the Auxiliary Services Law. By the summer of 1917, the Westheer artillery park had increased from 5,300 to 6,700 field guns and from 3,700 to 4,300 heavy guns, many being newer models of superior performance. Machine-gun output enabled each division to have 54 heavy and 108 light machine-guns.
However, steel production was still below the expectations and the OHL realised that additional labor forces were needed to keep the war economy afloat on a long-term scale. The imposition of compulsory labour for prisoners of war and deported Belgian and Polish workers, which already had began in mid 1915, was greatly expanded. Over 115 deportation operations were conducted and 60,847 deportations were achieved - which was not seen as a success, as Ludendorff had hoped to obtain 20,000 workers per week. The deported Poles and Belgians were put into camps with extremely poor conditions and were forced to sign employment contracts under duress to make them "volunteers". This de-facto slave labour was even condemned by the Pope and drastically worsened the German reputation in the neutral United States of America.
The Facade of the Ludendorff Dictatorship[]
The years of 1917 and 1918 would be a huge success for the German war effort.
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Reichskanzler under Ludendorff[]
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Later Life[]
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