THE FIRST NAZI

General Erich Luddendorf was one of the most important military individuals of the last century, yet today, one of the least known.

One of the top two German generals of World War I, Luddendorf dominated not only his superior – General Paul von Hindenburg – but also Germany’s head of state, Kaiser Wilhelm II. For years, Luddendorf was the military dictator of Germany.

Ludendorff not only dictated all aspects of World War I, he refused all opportunities to make peace; he antagonized the Americans until they declared war; he sent Lenin into Russia to forge a revolution in order to shut down the Russian front; and then he pushed for total military victory in 1918, in a rabid slaughter known as “The Ludendorff Offensive.”

Luddendorf lost the War in 1918. Shortly thereafter, he created the murderous legend that Germany had lost this war only because Jews had conspired on the home front, in what he called a “stab in the back.” He soon forged an alliance with Hitler, endorsed the Nazis, and wrote maniacally about how Germans needed a new world war, to redeem the Fatherland.

This savage man had staggering designs to build a gigantic state that would dwarf the British Empire, sweep across all of Africa, then the Middle East, Central Europe, Persia and even India. Simply stated, he wanted the world. His plans, person, and ambitions were the prototype for his good younger friend, Adolf Hitler. All in all, Luddendorf was the key German, instrumental in both world wars and the Russian Revolution. He changed the 20th century beyond recognition.

Will Brownell, Ph.D. is a scholar with both military and academic experience. Militarily, he has served as a translator and interpreter for the US Army and State Department. He was educated at Exeter, Cornell, Columbia, plus the Universities of Madrid and Paris. An expert in European military history, he is the author of So Close to Greatness, the biography of Ambassador William C. Bullitt, the first US Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He lives in New York.