The Tragedy of Erich Ludendorff

In classical literature, tragedy tells how a person falls from greatness into ruin, often through arrogance and reverencing unholy things. History also tells such stories. As November 11 and the anniversary of the Great War fades into memory for another year, the tragedy of Erich Ludendorff offers a timely example.

Ludendorff was Germany’s First Quarter-Master General, a war hero, a virtuoso military planner and the virtual dictator of Germany from 1916-18. He nearly succeeded in defeating the Allies in World War I. Yet, by the time he died in 1937, he was a shrunken and bitter old man, an ideological extremist, and a hater of Christianity and Judaism, having sacrificed his energy and exceptional gifts in self-deception.

He was born in 1865 into a middle class family in Prussia, attended a cadet school and then a military academy. His fellow students, mostly aristocrats, mocked his lack of nobility. Their taunts may have spurred his unsparing application to his studies and to…