Erich Ludendorff: Failed Strategist or War Visionary? Rereading Ludendorff in Light of the War in Ukraine

Few military commanders in history have had such unbounded power as General Ludendorff at the end of World War I (WWI). He commanded an army of more than five million men and for a year was de facto dictator of Germany, eclipsing the Kaiser himself. However, his political or military power was never officially conferred and a few weeks after the Armistice he fled Germany, where his countrymen had previously proclaimed him their saviour, in fear for his life[i].

As Richard Tilley rightly points out in his article Erich Ludendorff: Successful Tactician, Failed Strategist: “Ludendorff is a true paradox of military history. At his best, he revolutionized the tactics of World War I. At his worst, he failed to adapt to the political power his battlefield successes brought him and doomed his nation”[ii]. It is difficult to say whether the entry of the United States into the war, with its massive military potential, would have left Germany any chance of finding a winning strategy at that stage of the war. However, the figure of Ludendorff and his thinking, beyond his role during WWI, regained special interest in the subsequent interwar period. His reflections become even more topical with the current return to great power competition and the possibility of large-scale conventional clashes, as we see in the war in Ukraine. His late works grappled with fundamental questions about the evolution of the character of war. His enduring insights stand the test of time because they address the universal nature of war.

The concept of Total War

“In 1914 the War became universal and went from victory to victory until the final humiliation. Who was to blame: politicians or soldiers, Clausewitz or Schlieffen, Falkenhayn or Ludendorff?” asked Raymond Aron[iii]. WWI, considered the first “total war”, was from the beginning a great example of improvisation. The mobilization of the military, economies and societies as a whole was carried out without prior design, without precedent and without clear objectives[iv]. Although some thinkers came to foresee a long and hard war, they were not able to predict the full extent of its impact, which would allow it to be legitimately called a “total war”[v].

WWI came to be described as the “War to end all Wars” but provided only a short respite. As it ended, the world began to look to the future with the conviction that the Great Powers had not finished fighting each other. Ludendorff himself states in his work “The Coming War” written in 1930 that he was “as certain as he was in 1912, that a world war would break out in the near future and bring about the destruction of the peoples and States of Europe“[vi]. As Van Creveld rightly emphasises, this kind of military thinking gave rise to the question: how should we fight in the future?[vii] It is difficult not to draw parallels with Western armies which, after twenty years of conducting mainly stabilization operations, are now reassessing their capabilities and doctrine in view of a new geopolitical scenario in which conventional confrontations are a real possibility.

The horrors that the Great War had produced, with previously unimaginable numbers of casualties, led the military apparatus of the Western world to look back on 1914 with a single emotion: “Never again, at least not in the same way!“[viii]. In Ludendorff’s own words: “Four years of trench warfare had created apprehension about the nature of war in the minds of those who experienced it”[ix]. Alternatives were being sought to the mass armies composed of infantry, whose lack of mobility had turned WWI into a nightmare. Advocates of mechanized units, air power or armies made up of elite professionals: Fuller, Douhet and Liddell Hart offered credible theories of a future in which war would be highly mobile. However, if anyone was able to predict the future evolution of war and the characteristics that the next war would have, it was Erich Ludendorff.

In his book “Der Totale Krieg“, “Total War”[x], he recounts his own experiences in “an emotional and intellectual odyssey to make sense of the defeat, both collective and personal, that the armistice of November 1918 signified“[xi]. He defended the thesis that the new technologies of production, transport and communication had turned war into something more than military forces confronting each other on the battlefield, requiring for its realization all the forces of the nation, with the mobilization of all its human and material resources. The term “total war” was developed during the interwar period, born out of the discussion on the challenges, consequences and implications, both political and military, of civilian mobilization for war[xii]. Erich Ludendorff’s book gave meaning to the term “total war”.

Ludendorff vs Clausewitz

Ludendorff predicts that the Second World War (WWII), a term which of course he does not use, would be very similar to the first one and that it would be huge in scale and prolonged. The next war would demand that governments mobilised all their national resources. Already in WWI, even governments of democratic countries came very close to doing away with politics and bringing everything and everyone under their control[xiii]. Under the command of a dictatorial leader, in a militarised society, war plans would be integrated with national and international politics, economics, tactics and operational art.

He launches a direct attack on Clausewitz’s work and openly declares that the author of “Vom Kriege” belongs in the past[xiv]. WWI had broken with all forms of warfare of the previous 150 years. The difference was not in the armies and navies, which fought each other in the same ways, but in the fact that the forces deployed were the most powerful in history. Unlike in the past, populations supported their armies with all their energy. For Ludendorff, the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces no longer sufficed. It was difficult to distinguish between the armed forces and the people; the fighting on the fronts and at sea “was joined by the struggle against the psychological and vital forces of the people, which it tried to dissociate and paralyse“.[xv].

Military and civilian technical developments, particularly those affecting public communications, had extended the battlefield to the entire territory of the belligerent countries. Not only armies, but entire populations would suffer the effects of war, in the form of economic blockades, bombings or enemy propaganda, as the next war would be total. For these reasons, “by its very essence, total war can only be waged if the existence of the entire people is threatened and if they decide to take on the burden” [xvi]. The importance of technological innovations is also found in Jünger, who considers WWI to be the most influential event of the era, “the specific peculiarity of that great catastrophe is that in it the genius of war was blended with the spirit of progress”.[xvii]. Breaking out in an atmosphere of the cult of progress, WWI’s influence on the warring parties was to be “the real moral factor of this time, a factor with such subtle and imponderable radiations that not even the strongest armies can compete with them“[xviii].

It is for this reason that Ludendorff advocated that politics should serve war. The transformation that politics and war had undergone would have to change the relationship between the former and military strategy: “all Clausewitz’s theories were to be replaced. War and politics serve the preservation of the people, but war became the ultimate expression of that people’s will to live” [xix]. A weak nation wracked by internal division could not survive in a hostile international environment. A total state provided essential preconditions for fighting a successful war. Total war thus involved the total mobilization of the total state in the pursuit of total political and strategic objectives. This inversion of Clausewitz’s famous maxim represents a complete break with his thinking, with Ludendorff transforming “war into the supreme test of peoples, into the verdict of history“[xx]. As Jan Willem Honig rightly affirms, “however horrific we might now think Ludendorff’s product was, this was a coherent and seemingly practical concept of war that was adjusted directly to political demands”[xxi]

He goes on to criticise Clausewitz because he believes that he does not reflect the need for “mental strength in the people“, to whom the war demands a strong contribution from the first days of the war; “it is necessary to strengthen the state of the soul and the warrior will at home; beware if they feel depressed! The longer the war lasts, the greater the dangers, the more obstacles there will be to overcome, and the more the army and navy will need to have their morale reinforced”[xxii].

The evolution of the character of war

As economic hardship would be one of the main causes of demoralisation among the population, the dedication of all the nation’s efforts to winning a war requires advanced economic planning by policymakers, which must be conducted during peacetime. Ludendorff acknowledged that Germany was neither economically nor financially prepared for war in 1914. Economic preparation for war would be essential for Germany because it would not have access to raw materials and international loans. The accumulation of raw materials and financial measures, such as preventing the withdrawal of money from banks, or the accumulation of foreign exchange and gold reserves, would be essential to sustain the future war effort. The transformation of peacetime industry into the war industry should be prepared, because in a “total war” the “production of munitions and war materials in the largest conceivable quantities must be carried out“[xxiii]. This requires not only raw materials, but also training and development of skilled manpower in quantity, which cannot be improvised once the fighting starts.

According to Ludendorff, the long duration of WWI had shown that the relationship between the mental cohesion of the population and the war economy was an important aspect of “total war”. The lack of adequate measures in the preparation and execution of the war would make people face a harsh reality. “The idea that strategy also comprises the preparation for war, even if it takes place in peacetime, does not exist before the inter-war period, when it was advocated by Ludendorff“[xxiv].

For Ludendorff, the army on campaign is made up of the existing peacetime army plus the reserve and the territorial forces. He argues that despite the superior preparation of the German Army for WWI, it failed to win a quick victory, so the prolongation of the war forced the mobilisation of a large number of forces whose equipment and preparation had been ignored in peacetime. The improvement of the equipment available to the armies and their increasing technological complexity made the training of the non-permanent forces more complicated in the inter-war period, and this had to be taken into account for their preparation. “Men and technology form the strength of an army“[xxv], but despite the importance of technology in the next war, Ludendorff argues that men will always be the priority; the material is useless without man and it is man who has the strength to destroy the enemy.

Ludendorff advocates for a new type of leadership in armies. In the age of “total war”, officers must become aware of the fundamental importance of popular support and recognise the importance of discipline; they must therefore understand “the particular character of the soul of the soldier and of the people“[xxvi]. He accuses the former German officer corps of having disregarded the latter aspect, and he harshly attacks the received concept of honour at the time, “the honour of an officer is to be at once a civic role model, an educator and a leader of his racial brothers in the struggle for the survival of the people…he must become a master of souls to be a true leader, otherwise the troops will not be able to cope with all the demands of total war“.[xxvii]. For Ludendorff “training and equipment are the outward forms of an army’s strength, but it is only its mental and moral constitution which give it the strength to answer the demands of total war“.[xxviii].

Regarding popular mobilisation, conscious of the mistakes committed by the Second Reich in 1914, Ludendorff correctly states that “the people do not understand the meaning of wars of aggression. But they understand and accept the struggle for life, and easily see in a declaration of war a desire for aggression“[xxix]. Jünger also states that the people’s “readiness to mobilise” would be the decisive aspect in a war. Efforts of this kind require an appeal to a people’s sense of identity. Mobilisation of large masses becomes easier the more their convictions are appealed to. In this sense, for Jünger, the best example of this in WWI was the USA, which with a democratic constitution was able to take very rigorous mobilisation measures, “what mattered was not the degree to which a state was or was not a military state, but the degree to which it was able to effect total mobilisation“.[xxx]. Such measures could not have been taken even in a militarized state like Prussia.

For Ludendorff, all facets of the “total war” effort require the “implementation of an omnipotent will, represented by the nation’s military leader“[xxxi]. Politics encompasses all the interests of a society as a whole. To this statement Raymon Aron points out that, in any case, if governments serve their vanity or ambitions rather than the state, the art of war will not improve them in this regard; an instrument, by definition, cannot become the teacher of the person who employs it; the state cannot be at the service of war. But Ludendorff replies that the state in our time cannot but be at the service of war[xxxii]. This fascination with the necessity of the dictator is shared by Ludendorff and Jünger, who also missed this figure in WWI, “that dull fervour which burned in them [young Germans] for an inexplicable and invisible Germany was enough to make such an effort that it shook the people to their very marrow. What would not have been achieved if they had already possessed a leadership, a consciousness, a figure?”[xxxiii].

Radical madness or war visionary?

“Far be it from me to write a theory of war. I am, as I have often said, hostile to any theory. War is reality, one of the most serious realities in the life of the people“[xxxiv], with these words Erich Ludendorff begins his work “Total War”, written in 1935, a volume of 80,000 words in which, in addition to some of the ideas highlighted in this article, he deals with operational and tactical issues. His prejudices against Jews, Freemasons, Jesuits and Christians are present, although to a much lesser extent than in earlier works. In the inter-war period his political position became ever more radical, even scandalising Hitler. He broke away from all his former comrades and he lived in great solitude. His political activity would focus on the importance that the “supranational powers”, as he referred to Jews, Freemasons and Christians, had played in Germany’s defeat in 1918. Towards the end of his life he was greatly influenced by his second wife, Mathilde von Kemnitz, whom he married in 1925, embracing her anti-Christian faith in the “German understanding of God”. (Deutsche Gotterkenntnis)[xxxv]. At the age of 70, he wrote his last two books, “Mein Militärischer Wedegang” y “Der Totale Krieg”, in what appears to be “a recovery of the clarity and efficiency that characterised him during the WWI”[xxxvi]. Erich Ludendorff died on 20 December 1937 at the age of 72.

The vision of war described by Ludendorff in his book is the best prediction of what World War II would entail. His strategic and military thinking, although obscured by his extreme political radicalisation, surpasses that of other thinkers of the inter-war period who have left us with theories that fall short of the true strategic character of WWII. One example is the theory of Blitzkrieg, which, as Shimon Naveh rightly points out, served “as a principal instrument in implementing an irrational and impossible strategy”[xxxvii]. Ludendorff’s “Total War” theory was put into practice two years after his death, to an extent and intensity that would have surprised him. As he predicted, one man, concentrating all political and military power, would lead the total German effort, but he was wrong to think he would be a Prussian General-in-Chief; he was an Austrian former corporal.

Some of Ludendorff’s thoughts presented in this article sound like many of the lessons Western militaries are drawing from the war currently raging in Ukraine: energy security, economic sanctions, the importance of technology but above all of soldiers, the cult of progress, the need to maintain the morale of the civilian population, the importance of public communication and information, peacetime preparation for war, the need for industry to support the military effort, the need to mobilise society to provide the number of soldiers necessary to face a prolonged and violent war, etc. In a world in which great power competition and a return to conventional warfare is on the horizon, with countries with totalitarian systems calling the international order into question, perhaps now is the time for a re-reading of Ludendorff’s work.