Erich von Falkenhayn

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Erich Georg Sebastian Anton von Falkenhayn (born September 11, 1861 in Belchau Castle ; † April 8, 1922 in Lindstedt Castle near Potsdam ) was a Prussian infantry general , Ottoman marshal and, in the First World War, Prussian war minister and chief of the general staff .

Erich von Falkenhayn (1913)

Life

origin

He came from the noble family Falkenhayn and was the son of Fedor Tassilo von Falkenhayn (born February 6, 1814 in Nakel; † January 20, 1896 in Tarnowitz) and his wife Franziska, née Freiin von Rosenberg (born June 26, 1826 in Klötzen; † August 14, 1888 in Graudenz). His father was a landlord on Belchau and Schwirsen.

Erich had six siblings:

Military career

At age eleven, Falkenhayn in 1872 entered the military academy Culm , then, he spent three years into the Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt large light field . On April 17, 1880, at the age of 18, he joined the Oldenburg Infantry Regiment No. 91 of the Prussian Army as a second lieutenant . From October 1, 1887, he graduated from the War Academy in Berlin for three years and has since been promoted to Prime Lieutenant. On March 22, 1891, Falkenhayn joined the General Staff in Berlin. First he worked in the topographical section, then in the railway department, on March 25, 1893 he was promoted to captain . On January 2, 1894, he was employed in the General Staff of the IX. Army Corps in Altona . On December 9, 1895 he became company commander in the infantry regiment "von Borcke" (4th Pommersches) No. 21 in Thorn .

After nine months of service, Falkenhayn took a leave of absence on June 25, 1896 for "financial and career reasons" and went to China as a military advisor . As a military instructor, he built a military school based on the Prussian model in Wu Chang , but without finding the support of the Chinese military authorities. In 1898 he moved to the German lease area in Kiautschou and was employed as a major with a patent from March 25, 1899 à la suite as a military attaché in the Prussian army. After his return to Germany, he was used again for a short time in the Great General Staff in Berlin from February 24, 1900 and moved to Karlsruhe on March 29 to take over the position of Chief of Staff of the XIV Army Corps there for five months .

On September 7, 1900 he was assigned to the General Staff of the Command of the East Asian Expeditionary Corps, which was involved in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion . After a long stay in Manchuria and Korea, Falkenhayn returned home.

On October 18, 1903 he was appointed battalion commander of the Braunschweig Infantry Regiment No. 92 in Braunschweig , and on September 15, 1905, he became a lieutenant colonel . On April 10, 1906, he was used again in the General Staff. A year later, on March 22, 1907, he became Chief of the General Staff of the XVI. Army Corps in Metz , on May 18, 1908 he was promoted to colonel . On January 27, 1911, he was appointed commander of the 4th Guards Regiment on Foot in Berlin. On February 20, 1912, due to unforeseen personnel bottlenecks, he became chief of the general staff at the IV Army Corps in Magdeburg . In this position he reached the rank of major general on April 22, 1912 . Falkenhayn was also instrumental in organizing the imperial maneuvers.

Minister of War of Prussia

On July 8, 1913, Falkenhayn was surprisingly appointed Prussian Minister of War . In this position he was responsible for the implementation of the 1913 Army Bill adopted in the spring, which provided for a clear arming of Germany. He first gained greater public awareness through his appearances in front of the Reichstag in connection with the Zabern affair at the turn of the year 1913/14, where he unreservedly defended the questionable behavior of the military authorities in Alsace-Lorraine and defended the army against criticism from civil society Took protection. In the July crisis of 1914, Falkenhayn was one of the key figures behind the outbreak of World War I. Like most of the military, he did not anticipate a European war at the time and probably did not initially think the time for the assassination attempt in Sarajevo was right. Nevertheless, he was soon one of those who urged Kaiser Wilhelm II to declare war .

Erich von Falkenhayn (1915)

Chief of the General Staff in the war

Pessimistic assessment of the situation after Ypres

In the first year of the war, after the First Battle of the Marne on September 14, 1914 , Falkenhayn replaced Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke , who had mentally collapsed, as Chief of the General Staff . He managed to sort out the chaotic situation and overcome the leadership crisis. Since the Schlieffen Plan had failed, he first tried to outmaneuver the French Army and the British Expeditionary Corps by racing to the sea (via northern France and Belgium to the North Sea) in order to achieve an enclosure of the enemy. However, the project did not succeed and ended after the Battle of Ypres , in which Falkenhayn - in order to achieve the breakthrough - deployed inexperienced and briefly trained regiments and visibly accepted their high losses (→ Langemarck myth ), in the full trench warfare at the Western front .

Falkenhayn shook Ypres deeply. He came to the conclusion that a military victory was no longer achievable. In a memorandum presented on November 18, 1914, he urged the political leadership around Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg to end the war by negotiation, but was not heard. Compared to Bethmann-Hollweg, he outlined the limited German options given the foreseeable growing material and personal superiority of the Allies. Since a quick victory has become impossible after the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, Germany is threatened with slow exhaustion. The only possibility is a break up of the opposing coalition, i.e. a separate peace with one of the opponents of Germany, whereby he considered Russia to be the decisive candidate, since - as he assumed - France would not fight further without the Tsarist Empire. Falkenhayn did not seek a peace treaty with Great Britain vis-à-vis the Chancellor - he considered his immovable and in the background controlling hostility out of economic and political envy towards Germany to be established. He proposed to continue the war against Great Britain after a separate peace with the fleet alone. The question of larger territorial cedings or even an annexation of Belgium - which was considered the least by the public in Germany - he only wanted to deal with after the "defeat" of England. This, in turn, he wanted to achieve after a partial peace on the continent under a blockade of the island empire, since Britain could be starved in many months. Falkenhayn's statements made Bethmann-Hollweg thoughtful, but did not lead to political action or even results. The September program Hollweg reflected a more optimistic assessment at that time of achievable by the Foreign Office and government circles.

On January 20, 1915, Falkenhayn was replaced as Minister of War by Adolf Wild von Hohenborn . On the day of his replacement he was promoted to general of the infantry, on February 16, 1915 he received the order Pour le Mérite for his previous achievements . As Chief of the Army Command, Falkenhayn devoted himself completely to the military organization of warfare.

What was striking about Falkenhayn's position as Minister and Chief of the General Staff was that his power base lay less in the General Staff (Falkenhayn had spent years abroad, beyond the staff's social contacts and networks) than in his relationship with the Emperor himself, who to a certain extent valued him who above all, within the possible alternative to him, the military duo Erich Ludendorff / Paul von Hindenburg , detested the strategist Ludendorff out of personal antipathy and at the same time feared Hindenburg's popularity in public.

Strategic differences and conflicts on the eastern and western fronts

Despite the successes in the Battle of Tannenberg , Falkenhayn considered it impossible to defeat Russia completely and at the same time to be strong enough in the west to maintain a successful defensive there against the increasingly stronger Entente . This brought him into conflict with Hindenburg and Ludendorff , who wanted to encompass and encircle the large, but poorly managed Russian army from the north and south, which Falkenhayn considered impracticable and politically undesirable. With the establishment of his own commander-in-chief for the Eastern Front, Falkenhayn had "created a dualism in warfare that was to be directed directly against him". From now on, Hindenburg and Ludendorff tried, from their own position of power, to shift the focus of the war to the east. Many high-ranking officers from around Ober Ost , such as Ludendorff's right-hand man Max Hoffmann , simply called Falkenhayn "the criminal" from the time he rejected the strategy of embracing in the east. Ludendorff said that he really hated Falkenhayn. In the opinion of his opponents, Falkenhayn's rejection resulted from the fear that he would be replaced as Chief of Staff if such an approach was successful; on the other hand, Falkenhayn did not consider the Russians already defeated, nor did he want to be drawn further into the depths of the Russian territory or to narrow the diplomatic scope of the empire for a peace treaty with Russia through conquests and costly occupations. Attempts by Hindenburg to force the emperor to change strategy and to dismiss Falkenhayn by means of an immediate request , however, outraged the emperor to such an extent that, contrary to expectations, this stabilized Falkenhayn's position. In the future, Falkenhayn did not entrust most of the tasks in the east to his competitors Ludendorff and Hindenburg, whose colonial goals of a German eastern empire carried out in Upper East had to make any peace agreement more difficult, but to August von Mackensen .

Falkenhayn's attitude towards his ally Conrad von Hötzendorf , the chief of the Austro-Hungarian army , was also ambivalent. Both had completely different basic ideas. For Hötzendorf the decisive factor was, of course, the war against Russia, which he wanted to defeat with all his might - including the German one. For Falkenhayn, the East was a secondary theater of war compared to France and the Balkans, which were important to the Austrians, were indifferent. That was even more true of Italy. It was humiliating for the Austrians that after their defeats at the beginning of the war they were hardly able to go to war on their own. However, Falkenhayn had at least some understanding that Conrad v. Hötzendorf was not willing and able to politically accept direct subordination to German supreme command, and deliberately did not promote corresponding ambitions of Hindenburg and Ludendorff - also out of self-interest. Instead, Army Group Mackensen was formally subordinated to the Austrians after it was set up.

Falkenhayn's relationship with the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht , who commanded the 6th Army in the west , couldn't stand Falkenhayn's displayed Prussian superiority and resented him for relocating associations subordinate to the Crown Prince at will, was completely shattered . There were also significant strategic differences. For a long time the Crown Prince believed in the possibility of a comprehensive breakthrough and victory, while Falkenhayn no longer believed this and, compared to the constrained Crown Prince - who dreamed of slamming Alsace Bavaria - was of the opinion that it was only a question of "doing without decision-making operations To tire opponents and to hope that they will give in at some point. "

Fatigue strategy

Limited offensives in the east and the Balkans

In 1915 and 1916, Falkenhayn pursued - as Hans Delbrück attributed it to him - "fatigue strategy", which provided for limited offensives in the east and a defensive in the west. The situation of the allied Austria-Hungary was so desperate from a military point of view that a complete collapse of the Danube monarchy appeared conceivable, which Falkenhayn could not risk. He refused, however, Ludendorff and Hindenburg's demands, strongly supported by the Austrians, to detach large units of troops from the Western Front and throw them against the Russians in order to break the tsarist army's willingness and ability to fight through devastating encircling battles. Falkenhayn feared that he would then not be able to hold the western front - in fact, the year 1915 saw French offensives and the Second Battle of Flanders emphatically presented in the West - while he considered the recruitment of troops through major straightening of the front by surrendering conquered areas in France to be psychologically unenforceable. Instead, after negotiations with Hindenburg / Ludendorff and Bethmann-Hollweg, he supported limited offensives in the east. The winter battle in Masuria was only a partial success; the Russian army was not encircled as Ludendorff had hoped, but merely pushed away; Falkenhayn saw his assumptions confirmed in this regard. In March 1915, however, the situation of the Austrians in Galicia became precarious after the disastrous Carpathian Battle. Conrad therefore urgently asked for German help in order to be able to carry out an attack at Gorlice on his part (The authorship of the idea for the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow is unclear, it was claimed by both the Austrian and German sides.) Falkenhayn found the idea of ​​one The attack on the Russian center was promising - whereas he rejected the more ambitious plans of Hindenburg and Ludendorff for extensive encirclement of the Russian army - and released eight divisions for the Eastern Front. Although - or maybe because - Italy's entry into the war against Austria was threatened , Falkenhayn vigorously pursued the battle of Gorlice-Tarnów at the beginning of May 1915 , which he had carefully and covertly prepared by Hans von Seeckt . The 11th Army was formed from the Army Reserve and subordinated to August von Mackensen , to which Austrian units were also subordinated - under the nominal supreme command of the Austrian Army High Command. However, Conrad von Hötzendorf was only informed of the coming battle when the German divisions - which were mainly to carry the attack - had already been loaded onto the trains and were rolling towards the front. The Battle of Gorlice and the offensive that followed became the Central Powers' greatest success in World War II. Galicia was recaptured, the tsar lost Poland, Lithuania and Courland (the latter was conquered by Hindenburg's associations). Falkenhayn, however, did not want to see any continuation of the advance after these - already more extensive than originally planned - successes. He also snubbed the allied Austria when he - together with the German government - emphatically proposed the cession of Trentino to Italy in order to prevent the formation of a new front. To prevent Italy from entering the war came the success against the Russians, which made it clear that Austria-Hungary had not yet been defeated, but too late to be part of the Italian deliberations.

In October 1915, Falkenhayn released funds to wrestle Austria's opponent Serbia , since he now saw a way in the conquest of Serbia - which, according to Bethmann-Hollweg, would only leave the war if the intended conquest of the Turkish Constantinople had become unreal - to push out of the war and thus create a land connection for the support of the allied Ottoman Empire. He waited until the participation of Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers was secured. From the Austrian point of view, the campaign was only partially successful after the German forces of the Central Powers had to stop their advance on the Greek border on Falkenhayn's orders. Falkenhayn feared a tie-up of forces in the periphery, which would then no longer have been deployable for other purposes on the western front. But at the end of 1915 “Germany's goal of relieving Austria and Turkey had been achieved in an almost triumphant way”.

When Conrad von Hötzendorf, contrary to Falkenhayn's wishes, attacked and conquered Montenegro , both chiefs of the general staff broke off contact from December 22, 1915 to January 19, 1916 and waged war separately in 1916 without agreeing on a strategy. Conrad's "Balkan imperialism" endangered the alliance with Bulgaria, and a separate peace with Montenegro would have been a diplomatic success because of the symbolic external effect. In May 1916, he completely refused Conrad's request for German troop aid for the Austrian offensive in South Tyrol . a. also because Italy was officially not at war with Germany and he had no interest in changing anything (e.g. because of imports of goods from the still neutral USA). The Ostoffensiven and the assistance in the Balkans saved the Danube Monarchy for the time being and hit the Russians hard, but they did not persuade the Tsar to achieve the separate peace that Falkenhayn wanted.

Battle of Verdun in the west

In the West, instead of waiting for French offensives, he wanted to regain the initiative in early 1916. Because the problem with Falkenhayn's fatigue strategy was that the Western Allies, due to their growing resources, could actually afford one much sooner than the German Reich. Falkenhayn therefore believed he had to strike localized from the defensive in order to accelerate the exhaustion of the opponents. As the real main enemy, he saw the resource-rich and financially strong Great Britain, which in the background held the enemy coalition together, but which as an island kingdom could hardly be reached militarily, so that France as the tool of Great Britain had to be primarily eliminated. In addition to the resumption of the submarine war - which Falkenhayn demanded, although he foresaw that he would bring the United States into the war, but in his view militarily effective only with delay - must indirectly against the island empire by a blow against the French army action should be taken to throw France, instrumentalized by Great Britain, out of the war and thus to end it. The aim was for Great Britain to recognize that after the defeat of France there was no longer any objective possibility of defeating Germany.

At the same time, he had known since Ypres that, due to the development of weapons, the defense was now far superior to the offensive, and that an offensive approach within the scope of a major breakthrough demanded from him would only lead to high losses. The problem of having to attack due to the foreseeable increase in strength of the opponent, but also not being able to break through, was like “squaring the circle”.

Falkenhayn planned it before Verdun to occupy the mountain ranges and to bombard the fortress and the place Verdun by massed artillery to the French force there to counter attacks on the highs, which should in turn be met from superior defensive positions in a surprising foray. After the war, he explained his strategy by stating that the French would either have had to give up Verdun, the strongest of their fortresses on the German border - which in his opinion they would never do for reasons of prestige - or had to "bleed to death" in Verdun. Even contemporaries spoke of the “blood pump” or “bone mill” of Verdun. The idea was to impose a battle on the French in which they would have to attack continuously, while the German troops would have had the enormous advantage of the defensive.

One of the reasons the battle failed, however, was that the decisive goal of quickly occupying the higher eastern bank was only partially successful, as Falkenhayn initially allowed too few troops to attack - in order to preserve his always precarious army reserve - and did not allow himself to get by with his too economical calculation The contradiction of Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, who carried out the offensive, was confused. As calculated by Falkenhayn, France actually accepted the challenge, contrary to what had been thought but without the Germans already having the heights in their hands. Instead of being able to shoot at the French from a superior artillery position relatively safely, as would have been possible after a complete conquest of the heights, not only the French but also the Germans fought for months from unfavorable positions. Falkenhayn's decision to start the battle with too few forces allowed the French to strengthen their positions on the east bank in good time and to bring forces up. In addition, the French succeeded in releasing their troops more quickly in the course of the battle according to Pétain's Noria principle , so that they could morally survive the ordeal of the operation, while the deployment phases of the German units were longer - which led "to their complete exhaustion of combat strength in battle" . The defensive victory of the French in front of Verdun cost them enormous losses, but the losses of the German army were - quite differently than expected and understood by Falkenhayn, who had over-optimistically extrapolated and erroneously estimated French casualty rates on the western front - almost as high and thus ultimately pointless because they did not change the balance of power. This misjudgment was also led to incorrect reports by the German intelligence service, which correctly stated that prisoners came from numerous and apparently newly relocated French divisions, but incorrectly concluded that previous divisions had been wiped out. Instead, they had only been temporarily replaced by Petain. This misjudgment of the opposing losses let Falkenhayn continue the battle against his own concerns.

At the end of August 1916, Falkenhayn told Reich Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg that he had not assumed that he would be able to bring about a direct victory against the Entente in this way. Rather, he had considered that the losses on the French side ("white bloods") were more difficult to bear than on the German side. According to Falkenhayn, it was about "paralyzing France when her army stood in front of the fortress by vigorous bleeding and, if the fortress was abandoned, by internal tremors for the further course of the war, on the other hand to stimulate England to deploy all of its forces prematurely." . " And after all, Falkenhayn believed that France had already lost 250,000 more soldiers than Germany. Bethmann-Hollweg assessed the sacrificial battle differently and became further alienated from Falkenhayn, whose skepticism about the possibility of a German victory in the war he actually shared. But with regard to Verdun, the Chancellor asked where inability ends and becomes a "crime".

Falkenhayn's political position was not improved by the fact that the attack on Verdun was not uncontroversial in the military leadership of the empire from the beginning, the Bavarian Crown Prince considered an attack on France's strongest position to be completely wrong. Falkenhayn had "immeasurably underestimated the resistance of the French", Verdun had now become a "matter of prestige" for him. For symbolic reasons, giving up the battle while retreating to the starting positions soon seemed impossible to the Germans, even though they had planned with a “limited use of forces”. The conquest of the important Fort Douaumont was triumphant at the beginning of the battle and with the enthusiastic approval of the German public and propaganda, but they never succeeded in conquering the Fort de Souville , and thus the desired conquest of the east bank with its superior firing position as a whole.

It is unclear whether Falkenhayn's goals before Verdun weren't more operationally more operational than he wanted to admit after the war, and therefore only subsequently claimed to have pursued a purely attrition strategy, which - according to Falkenhayn - was a partial success. Instead (or in addition) it was his aim to eliminate the Verdun fortress as a base for large French units; - and to lure both the French and the British into improvised relief offensives, which Falkenhayn wanted to intercept and respond to with strong counter-offensives. So he wanted to set the western front in motion again and connect it with a weakening of the French and British, who after further German offensives might have become ready for peace. However, only the first part of these ideas - inflicting losses on the defenders of Verdun in a battle of exhaustion - worked, the second part - provoking hasty Allied offensives, intercepting them and responding with decisive counterstrikes - not. British Commander Douglas Haig was about to fall into the trap of Falkenhayn, but was stopped by French Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre . Falkenhayn declared this failure of his calculation after the war in his memoirs as an intended success in order to preserve his reputation; with which he unintentionally destroyed it in the long term. After the First World War, after the First World War, aiming at a pure "white blood" with the deliberate acceptance of a terribly high number of favors was soon - and is still considered - grotesquely cynical.

In view of the material and personal superiority of the Allies, which became more and more apparent in the course of the war, Falkenhayn's strategy of exhaustion in Verdun was never realistic. After the strong - and carefully prepared - Allied attacks on the Somme, further attacks at Verdun were no longer justifiable and the failure on the western front was obvious. Domestically, too, the battle was a single “disaster”, as it also publicly associated Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia , who officially led the 5th Army in Verdun , with the barely tolerable losses.

Failure and resignation

The heavy losses in the summer battle in the west, the collapse of the Austrian front during the simultaneous Brusilov offensive in the east and the declaration of war by Romania , which was not expected for this time, especially by Falkenhayn, forced the German army command to act. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria wrote to the military cabinet that Falkenhayn had lost the army's trust and Moriz von Lyncker finally convinced the angry emperor to ask Hindenburg to give an Immediate lecture. Only the Commander-in-Chief of the Army had immediate rights . Falkenhayn understood the intrigue correctly and asked for his resignation as Chief of the General Staff , which the Kaiser granted on August 29, 1916, despite his reluctance to the Hindenburg / Ludendorff duo, who succeeded Falkenhayn.

Conquest of Romania

Erich von Falkenhayn, Crown Prince Boris , Hans von Seeckt , Gerhard Tappen , Colonel Gantschew, General Nikola Schekow , unknown, August von Mackensen in Paraćin on November 6, 1915 (from right to left)

As compensation, Falkenhayn received on September 6, 1916, the supreme command of the again and hastily assembled 9th Army against Romania, which had entered the war and had advanced on Hungarian territory . He forced the invasion of Transylvania, defeated two numerically clearly superior Romanian armies near Sibiu and Kronstadt, and fought to leave the mountains in Wallachia in the Battle of the Argesch . He succeeded in conquering Bucharest on December 6, 1916 in cooperation with the Danube Army under August von Mackensen .

The rapid conquest of Romania was of great value to the Central Powers. On the one hand, the Russians now had to move strong forces to the south in order to secure their positions there on the now extended front, which claimed forty of their divisions and thus came at the expense of their general offensive ability. Furthermore, Romania also proved to be of great importance as a source of supplies; the Central Powers were able to "pull one million tons of oil and two million tons of grain from the occupied territories by the end of 1918".

Ottoman general

Mesopotamia and Palestine

In mid-July 1917, at the request of the Ottoman army command under Enver Pascha , Falkenhayn took over the leadership of Army Group F , whose forces were newly formed in Iraq and Aleppo. A planned offensive to conquer Baghdad, which had been lost by the Ottomans to the British - which Falkenhayn considered difficult but possible - did not materialize due to logistical difficulties, the lack of sufficient forces and the poor and worn-out condition of the Turkish troops after weeks of fighting. what Falkenhayn - who, on the warning advice of German officers familiar with the situation like Kress von Kressenstein , had given little on the spot - saw with difficulty.

After long disputes with the Turkish leadership, he was finally deployed on September 7, 1917 as Ottoman field marshal to commander in chief of two Turkish field armies in Palestine . There the British under Edmund Allenby broke through the Turkish-German positions in mid-November 1917 in the Third Battle of Gaza . Falkenhayn had not yet sufficiently deployed his troops, the battle took place during a regrouping process. Falkenhayn gave tactically demanding orders by telephone from his headquarters in Aleppo, which the overwhelmed Turkish troops could not carry out at all, Kreß von Kressenstein commented scornfully that Falkenhayn led his subordinate Turkish units in the desert like a "German army in civilized Europe leads". In addition, Falkenhayn lived in the erroneous attitude that he - also because of his earlier experiences in China - understood the mentality of Orientals particularly well; in fact, his harsh nature, his commanding tone and his hidden contempt made him opponents. By the time he became more realistic about the situation in Palestine, the relationship was already broken.

Preventing the deportation of Jews from Palestine

However, he successfully intervened against the deportation of the Jews from Palestine, which the Young Turks considered to be an internal danger according to the Balfour Declaration, planned by the Turkish government under the governor Cemal Pasha , who presumably followed the model of the genocide of the Armenians and their death marches in the Desert should have expired and banned collective penalties in its area. Falkenhayn telegraphed Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff , the German ambassador in Istanbul, that espionage cases that had occurred had nothing to do with the Jewish population as a whole: “I consider Jewish procedures to be acts of a very small extreme party [...]; Mass Judaism has nothing to do with it. ”Bernstorff put pressure on the Minister of the Interior, Talât Pascha , to which he gave in. The Jews were spared.

Defeat against the British

Falkenhayn could not prevent the progressive conquest of Palestine by the British under General Edmund Allenby in December 1917. Jerusalem, which he wanted to keep for symbolic reasons, fell on December 9, 1917 . The front against the superior British had previously slipped.

Falkenhayn's position had become untenable. He asked for his replacement and was ordered back.

End of the war in Russia

From March 4, 1918, Falkenhayn became Commander-in-Chief of the 10th Army in western Russia, in this position he experienced the end of the war.

To the news of the establishment of a parliamentary government in Germany ( Baden Cabinet ), which heralded the end of the Prussian state and the monarchy for him, he responded by unsuccessfully proposing the establishment of a military dictator and suggesting Colonel General Ludwig von Falkenhausen , but still hoped to be considered. But such plans had lost all base.

End of life

On February 25, 1919, Falkenhayn retired from the army due to a kidney disease and retired into private life. In several writings he described and justified his military decisions. He died on April 8, 1922 in Lindstedt Palace near Potsdam. His grave at Bornstedt cemetery near the Potsdamer Schloss Sanssouci is preserved.

Falkenhayn's grave in the Bornstedter Friedhof in Potsdam

Awards

Falkenhayn was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle and the Order of Pour le Mérite with Oak Leaves during the World War . On June 26, 1915 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Military Max Joseph Order . In 1917 he was appointed chief of the Teutonic Order Infantry Regiment No. 152 . He was also awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy by the University of Berlin .

family

From his marriage to Ida Selkmann (born June 7, 1866) in Oldenburg on February 3, 1886, the children came:

Strategic conception and historical evaluation

Falkenhayn fulfills the stereotype of the Prussian general in a classic way . His undeniable military competence -  Winston Churchill noted in 1931 that many experts considered him the most capable German general in World War I ("many good judges consider him the ablest soldier that Germany produced during the whole war") - went with disdainful contempt for democracy and parliamentarism , as was common in the military environment of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the nobility.

In the material battles off Verdun, Falkenhayn consciously calculated the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Tactical considerations played no role - as he probably untruthfully stated after the war - what counted were the opposing losses. According to his own account - which is no longer uncritically followed in historiography - the chief of staff had planned the infamous “ blood pump ” Verdun from the start as the core of his wear and tear strategy, which was unprecedented in its scope at the time.

As a conceptionist - as Hans Delbrück put it - "fatigue strategy", which he became after the failure in the Marne Battle and the Battle of Ypres, he - unlike his strategic competitor Erich Ludendorff - no longer believed that Germany would get through the war He hoped to end the war through a tiring and political breakup of the opposing coalition: "If we don't lose the war, we have won it." He again preferred an approach in the West, although he had the greater success in the east through August von Mackensen, who was promoted by him . There, however, he was looking for a separate peace with Russia, for which he regarded major conquests as counterproductive.

This strategy found numerous critics. Liddell Hart thought it was indecisive, but trying to respond with expertise but half-measure to a situation that would have required major focus offensives and greater risk-taking. Representations of the Reichsarchiv - headed by Hans von Haeften , an opponent of Falkenhayn and an admirer of Ludendorff - came to the same conclusion, there in the twenties the sympathy was clearly for Erich Ludendorff's Eastern strategy, with which victory in the world war was seen as possible.

Hans Delbrück came to a completely different conclusion. Falkenhayn - unlike Ludendorff - correctly assessed the unfavorable balance of power vis-à-vis the Entente and consequently pursued a strategy of exhaustion that was adapted to strategic reality, although before Verdun it was fatally overstretched. One could ask soldiers to die for specific goals, but psychologically not expect them to be “slaughtered” so that “twice as many” soldiers die on the other side. Unlike Ludendorff, however, he would have understood that Germany could not have enforced a dictated peace - that is, a peace from a position of absolute strength.

According to Herfried Münkler , Falkenhayn had a "Janus face" on this key issue. On the one hand, he recognized the real unfavorable situation of the Reich early on with a “remarkable clarity” and formulated it precisely, - on the other hand, he did not think this knowledge through politically, but continued to seek a primarily military solution. He should have acted in close consultation with Reich Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg - whose domestic political leeway and willingness to negotiate peace is, however, indistinct and difficult to assess to this day - and should have given him the freedom to look diplomatically for opportunities for peace. But he did not do that and thus again did not subject military action to political requirements, although his military strategy was based on the political exhaustion of the enemy. To this extent, despite a correct analysis of the situation, he was always stuck in the Prussian General Staff's usual notion of “wanting to colonize politics and demand political decisions based on the military situation”. Falkenhayn's "obsessive [.] Enmity against England" stood in the way of a diplomatically open approach.

According to his biographer Holger Afflerbach , Falkenhayn earned lasting merit and reputation through his behavior in the Jewish pogrom conflict in the Ottoman Empire in 1917: “An inhuman excess against the Jews in Palestine was prevented solely by Falkenhayn's behavior, which against the background of German history in the 20th century. Century received a special - and Falkenhayn distinctive - importance. "

Fonts

  • The Supreme Army Command 1914–1916 in its most important resolutions. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1920; Reprint Kessinger Publishing 2010 ( digitized version ).
  • The campaign of the 9th Army against the Romanians and Russians in 1916/17.
Volume 1 The triumphant advance through Transylvania. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1921.
Volume 2 The struggles and victories in Romania. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1921.

literature

Web links

Commons : Erich von Falkenhayn  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Ernst Willi Hansen, Karl-Volker Neugebauer , Michael Busch: The Age of World Wars. 1914 to 1945. Peoples in arms. (= Basic course in German military history 2) Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58099-0 , p. 45.
  2. ^ Ernst Willi Hansen, Karl-Volker Neugebauer Michael Busch: The Age of World Wars. 1914 to 1945. Peoples in arms. (= Basic course in German military history 2) Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58099-0 , p. 45.
  3. Ekkehart P. Guth: The contrast between the Commander in Chief East and the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army 1914/15 . In: Military History Journal . tape 35 , no. 1 , June 1, 1984, ISSN  2193-2336 , pp. 75-112, here 75 , doi : 10.1524 / mgzs.1984.35.1.75 ( degruyter.com [accessed on May 8, 2020]).
  4. ^ Stevenson, David .: The First World War: 1914-1918 . Albatros, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-491-96274-3 , p. 103 ff .
  5. Ekkehart P. Guth: The contrast between the Commander in Chief East and the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army 1914/15 . In: Military History Journal . tape 35 , no. 1 , June 1, 1984, ISSN  2193-2336 , pp. 75-112; here 76 , doi : 10.1524 / mgzs.1984.35.1.75 ( degruyter.com [accessed on May 8, 2020]).
  6. Münkler, Herfried, 1951-: The Great War: The World 1914 to 1918 . 6th edition Rowohlt-Berlin-Verl, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-87134-720-7 , pp. 292 f .
  7. Afflerbach, Holger .: Falkenhayn Political Thought and Action in the Empire . 2nd edition, 2nd, reprint 2014. De Gruyter, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-486-56184-5 , pp. 198 ff .
  8. Herfried Münkler: The great war. The world 1914–1918. Rowohlt, Berlin 2014, p. 300.
  9. Ekkehart P. Guth: The contrast between the Commander in Chief East and the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army 1914/15 . In: Military History Journal . tape 35 , no. 1 , June 1, 1984, ISSN  2193-2336 , pp. 75-112; here 76 , doi : 10.1524 / mgzs.1984.35.1.75 ( degruyter.com [accessed on May 8, 2020]).
  10. Jesko von Hoegen: The hero of Tannenberg. Genesis and function of the Hindenburg myth (1914–1934.) Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-17006-6 , p. 168; Karl-Heinz Janßen : The Chancellor and the General. The leadership crisis surrounding Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn (1914–1916). Musterschmidt, Göttingen 1967, p. 28.
  11. Ekkehart P. Guth: The contrast between the Commander in Chief East and the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army 1914/15 . In: Military History Journal . tape 35 , no. 1 , June 1, 1984, ISSN  2193-2336 , pp. 75-112; here 76 , doi : 10.1524 / mgzs.1984.35.1.75 ( degruyter.com [accessed on May 8, 2020]).
  12. Herfried Münkler: The great war. The world 1914–1918. Rowohlt, Berlin 2014, p. 355.
  13. Ekkehart P. Guth: The contrast between the Commander in Chief East and the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army 1914/15 . In: Military History Journal . tape 35 , no. 1 , June 1, 1984, ISSN  2193-2336 , pp. 75-112; here 77 , doi : 10.1524 / mgzs.1984.35.1.75 ( degruyter.com [accessed on May 8, 2020]).
  14. a b Christian EO Millotat; Manuela R. Krueger: The Battle of Verdun 1916 A fatal German strategic solo effort without the participation of the Austrian ally anatomy of a key battle of the 20th century and its aftermath. In: Austrian military magazine. Federal Army of the Republic of Austria, 2016, accessed on April 23, 2020 .
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  16. Holger Afflerbach: Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria in the First World War . In: Military History Journal . tape 75 , no. 1 , May 1, 2016, ISSN  2193-2336 , p. 36 , doi : 10.1515 / mgzs-2016-0002 ( online [accessed April 19, 2020]).
  17. ^ Hans Delbrück: Ludendorff, Tirpitz, Falkenhayn . Karl Curtius, Berlin 1920, p. 73 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201704095236 ( dnb.de ).
  18. Münkler, Herfried, 1951-: The Great War: The World 1914 to 1918 . 6th edition Rowohlt-Berlin-Verl, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-87134-720-7 , pp. 304 .
  19. Afflerbach, Holger: On a knife's edge: how the German Reich lost the First World War. Special edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education . Bonn, ISBN 978-3-7425-0345-9 , p. 112.
  20. Afflerbach, Holger: On a knife's edge: how the German Reich lost the First World War. Special edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education . Bonn, ISBN 978-3-7425-0345-9 , p. 124
  21. Afflerbach, Holger: On a knife's edge: how the German Reich lost the First World War. Special edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education . Bonn, ISBN 978-3-7425-0345-9 , pp. 123-129.
  22. ^ A b Stevenson, David .: The First World War: 1914-1918 . Albatros, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-491-96274-3 , p. 193 .
  23. Herfried Münkler : The great war. The world 1914–1918. Rowohlt, Berlin 2014, p. 362.
  24. Afflerbach, Holger: On a knife's edge: how the German Reich lost the First World War. Special edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education . Bonn, ISBN 978-3-7425-0345-9 , p. 184.
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  29. Stachelbeck, Christian: Germany's Army and Navy in the First World War . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71299-5 , pp. 46 .
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  31. Jost Dülffer : Making Peace. De-escalation and peace policy in the 20th century. Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20117-3 , p. 191.
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  33. Stachelbeck, Christian: Germany's Army and Navy in the First World War . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71299-5 , pp. 48 .
  34. Herfried Münkler: The great war. The world 1914–1918. Rowohlt, Berlin 2014, p. 417 f.
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  37. Holger Afflerbach: Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria in the First World War . In: Military History Journal . tape 75 , no. 1 , May 1, 2016, ISSN  2193-2336 , p. 36 , doi : 10.1515 / mgzs-2016-0002 .
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