1914 Assumption of command in East Prussia Hindenburg in 1914 When WWI broke out, Hindenburg was living in retirement in
Hannover. On 22 August, due to the purge of German command following
Russian success in East Prussia, he was selected by the War Cabinet and the German Supreme Army Command (
Oberste Heeresleitung, OHL) to assume command of the
German Eighth Army in East Prussia, with General
Erich Ludendorff as his chief of staff. The
Chief of the German General Staff,
Generaloberst Helmuth von Moltke, responded by relieving Prittwitz and replacing him with Hindenburg.
Tannenberg ) Upon arriving at
Marienburg on 23 August, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were met by members of the 8th Army's staff led by Lieutenant Colonel
Max Hoffmann, an expert on the Russian army. Hoffman informed them of his plans to shift part of the 8th Army south to attack the exposed left flank of the advancing Russian Second Army. Agreeing with Hoffman's strategy, Hindenburg authorised Ludendorff to transfer most of the 8th Army south while leaving only two cavalry brigades to face the Russian First Army in the north. In Hindenburg's words, the line of soldiers defending Germany's border was "thin, but not weak", because the men were defending their homes. If pushed too hard by the Second Army, he believed they would cede ground only gradually as German reinforcements continued to mass on the invading Russians' flanks before ultimately encircling and annihilating them. On the eve of the ensuing battle, Hindenburg reportedly strolled close to the decaying walls of the fortress of the
Knights of Prussia, recalling how the Knights of Prussia were defeated by the Slavs in 1410 at nearby
Tannenberg. On the night of 25 August, Hindenburg told his staff, "Gentlemen, our preparations are so well in hand that we can sleep soundly tonight". On the day of the battle, Hindenburg reportedly watched from a hilltop as his forces' weak center gradually gave ground until the sudden roar of German guns to his right heralded the surprise attack on the Russians' flanks. Ultimately, the
Battle of Tannenberg resulted in the destruction of the Russian 2nd Army, with 92,000 Russians captured together with four hundred guns, while German casualties numbered only 14,000. According to British field marshal
Edmund Ironside, it was the "greatest defeat suffered by any of the combatants during the war". Recognising 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. After this decisive victory, Hindenburg repositioned the Eighth Army to face the Russian First Army. Hindenburg's tactics spurned head-on attacks all along the front in favor of
schwerpunkte: sharp, localised hammer blows. Two
schwerpunkte struck in the
First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Two columns drove east from these breakthrough points to pocket the Russians led by General
Paul von Rennenkampf, who managed to retreat with heavy losses. In the first six weeks of the war the Russians had lost more than 310,000 men.
Defending Silesia On the east bank of the Vistula in
Poland, the Russians were mobilising new armies which were shielded from attack by the river; once assembled, they would cross the river to march west into
Silesia. To counter the Russians' pending invasion of Silesia, Hindenburg advanced into Poland and occupied the west bank of the Vistula opposite where Russian forces were mobilising. He set up headquarters at
Posen in
West Prussia, accompanied by Ludendorff and Hoffmann. When the Russians attempted to cross the
Vistula, the German forces under his command held firm, but the Russians were able to cross into the Austro-Hungarian sector to the south. Hindenburg retreated and destroyed all railways and bridges so that the Russians would be unable to advance beyond west of their railheads — well short of the German frontier. On 1 November 1914, Hindenburg was appointed
Ober Ost (commander in the east) and was promoted to field marshal. To meet the Russians' renewed push into
Silesia, Hindenburg moved the Ninth Army by rail north to
Thorn and reinforced it with two corps from the Eighth Army. On 11 November, in a raging snowstorm, his forces surprised the Russian flank in the fierce
battle of Łódź, which ended the immediate Russian threat to Silesia and also captured Poland's second largest city.
1915 Counterattacks in East Prussia and Poland After the Russians launched an offensive from Galicia toward Hungary, Hindenburg mounted an
unsuccessful attack in Poland with his Ninth Army as well as an
offensive by the newly formed
Tenth Army which made only local gains. Following these setbacks, he set up temporary headquarters at
Insterburg, and made plans to eliminate the Russians' remaining toehold in East Prussia by ensnaring them in a
pincer movement between the Tenth Army in the north and Eighth Army in the south. On February 7, Hindenburg's forces launched the attack, encircling an entire corps and capturing more than 100,000 men in the
Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Shortly thereafter, Hindenburg and Ludendorff played a key role in the Central Powers'
Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. As Field Marshal
August von Mackensen broke through Russian lines between
Gorlice and Tarnów, Hindenburg's Ninth and Tenth Army launched diversionary attacks that threatened Riga in the north. In one of the war's most successful cavalry actions, three cavalry divisions swept east into
Courland, the barren, sandy region near the Baltic coast. The cavalry's gains were held by Hindenburg's new
Nieman army, named after the river. In June, the Supreme Army Command ordered Hindenburg to launch a
Bug-Narew Offensive in Poland toward the
Narew River north of
Warsaw. Hindenburg created
Army Group Gallwitz, named after its commander.
Max von Gallwitz was one of many able commanders selected by Hindenburg, who stayed at the new army's headquarters to be available if needed. (When Berlin approved the new army group, it became
Twelfth Army.) The army group broke through the Russian lines after a brief, but intense, bombardment directed by Lieutenant Colonel
Georg Bruchmüller, an artillery genius recalled from medical retirement. One-third of the opposing Russian
First Army were casualties in the first five hours. From then on Hindenburg often called on Bruchmüller. The Russians withdrew across the Narew River. However, steamroller frontal attacks cost dearly: by 20 August, Gallwitz had lost 60,000 men.
Evacuation of Poland to the Heroes of
Novogeorgievsk (painting by Ernst Zimmer). On 1 June, Hindenburg's Nieman and Tenth Armies spearheaded attacks into the Latvian
Courland in an attempt to pocket the defenders. Ultimately, this plan was foiled by the prudent commander of the Fifth Russian Army who defied orders by withdrawing into defensible positions shielding
Riga. Despite the setback in Latvia, Hindenburg and Ludendorff continued to rack up victories on the Eastern Front. In August, the Germans stormed the
Novogeorgievsk fortress. Numerous Russian sources call the fall of Novogeorgievsk the most shameful page in the history of the Russian Imperial army. The German Tenth Army besieged
Kovno, a Lithuanian city on the
Nieman River, defended by a circle of forts. It fell on 17 August, along with 1,300 guns and almost 1 million shells. On 5 August, his forces were consolidated into Army Group Hindenburg, which took the city of
Grodno after bitter street fighting but could not trap the retreating defenders because the rail lines lacked the capacity to bring up the needed men. They occupied
Vilnius on 18 September, then halted on ground favorable for a defensive line. On 6 August, German troops under Hindenburg used
chlorine gas against Russian troops defending
Osowiec Fortress. The Russians demolished much of Osowiec and withdrew on 18 August. In October, Hindenburg moved his headquarters to Kovno. They were responsible for 108,800 km (42,000 mi) of conquered Russian territory, which was home to three million people and became known as
Ober Ost. The troops built fortifications on the eastern border while Ludendorff "with his ruthless energy" 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. Baltic Germans who owned vast estates feted Hindenburg and he hunted their game preserves.
1916 Brusilov Offensive In the spring of 1916, the Central Powers experienced a military catastrophe in the East that left Germany bearing much of the war effort until the end of hostilities. On 4 June, the Russian Army began a
massive offensive along of the southwestern front in present-day
western Ukraine. In the ensuing onslaught, four armies commanded by General
Aleksei Brusilov overwhelmed entrenchments that the Austro-Hungarians long regarded as impregnable. Under Hindenburg's command,
Ober Ost desperately shored up weak points with soldiers stripped from less threatened positions. Ludendorff was so distraught on the phone to
OHL that General
Wilhelm Groener (who directed the army's railroads and had been a competitor with Ludendorff on the General Staff) was sent to evaluate his nerves, which were judged satisfactory. For a week the Russians kept attacking: they lost 80,000 men; the defenders 16,000. On 16 July, the Russians attacked the German lines west of Riga but were ultimately thwarted. When looking back on the Russian offensive, Hindenburg admitted that another attack of such scale and ferocity would have left his forces "faced with the menace of a complete collapse."
Commander of the Eastern Front After having their strength decimated by the Russians in the
Brusilov Offensive, the Austro-Hungarian forces submitted their Eastern Front forces to Hindenburg's command on 27 July (except for Archduke Karl's Army Group in southeast Galicia, in which General
Hans von Seeckt was chief of staff). General von Eichhorn took over Army Group Hindenburg, while Hindenburg and Ludendorff, on a staff train equipped with the most advanced communication apparatus, visited their new forces. At threatened points, they formed mixed German and Austro-Hungarian units while other Austro-Hungarian formations were bolstered by a sprinkling of German officers. Officers were exchanged between the German and Austro-Hungarian armies for training. The derelict citadel of the
Brest Fortress was refurbished as their headquarters. Their front was almost and their only reserves were a cavalry brigade plus some artillery and machine gunners.
Supreme Commander of the Central Powers In the west, the Germans were hemorrhaging in the battles of
Verdun and the
Somme. Influential Army officers, lobbied against the leadership of the Army Chief of Staff, General
Erich von Falkenhayn, in favor of Hindenburg. The tipping point came when Falkenhayn ordered a spoiling attack by
Bulgaria on Entente lines in
Macedonia that failed with heavy losses. Thus emboldened,
Romania declared war on Austro-Hungary on 27 August, adding 650,000 trained enemies who invaded Hungarian
Transylvania. This outcome contrasted sharply with Falkenhayn's assurances to Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers that Romania would remain neutral. Consequently, the Kaiser began deliberating over who should assume leadership of the Supreme Army Command in Falkenhayn's place. On 29 August 1916, Field Marshal Hindenburg was summoned to Pless and named Chief of the Great General Staff, thereby assuming leadership of the Supreme Army Command. Upon taking command, Hindenburg named Ludendorff as his deputy while entrusting him with the signing of most orders, directives, and daily press reports. The eastern front was commanded by
Leopold of Bavaria, with Hoffmann as his chief of staff. Hindenburg was also appointed the Supreme War Commander of the
Central Powers, with nominal control over six million men. Hindenburg and Ludendorff visited the Western Front in September, meeting the Army commanders and their staffs as well as their leaders:
Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria,
Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg and
Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia. Both crown princes, with Prussian chiefs of staff, commanded Army Groups. Rupprecht and Albrecht were presented with field marshals' batons. Hindenburg told them that they must stand on the defensive until Romania was dealt with, defensive tactics must be improved, and ideas were welcome. A backup defensive line, which the Entente called the
Hindenburg Line, would be constructed immediately. Ludendorff promised more arms. Rupprecht was delighted that two such competent men had "replaced the dilettante "
Falkenhayn". Bauer was impressed that Hindenburg "saw everything only with the eye of the soldier."
Bolstering defense ,
Ludendorff, January 1917 Under Field Marshal Hindenburg's leadership, the German Supreme Army Command issued a Textbook of Defensive Warfare that recommended fewer defenders in the front line, relying on light machine guns. If pushed too hard, they were permitted to pull back. Front-line defenses were organized so that penetrating enemy forces found themselves cut down by machine gun fire and artillery from those who knew the ranges and location of their own strong points. Subsequently, the infantry would counterattack while the attacker's artillery was blind because they were unsure where their own men were. A reserve division was positioned immediately behind the line; if it entered the battle, it was commanded by the division whose position had been penetrated. (Mobile defense was also used in
World War II.) Responsibilities were reassigned to implement the new tactics: front-line commanders took over reserves ordered into the battle and for flexibility, infantry platoons were subdivided into eight-man units under a noncom. Field officers who visited headquarters often were invited to speak with Hindenburg, who inquired about their problems and recommendations. At this time he was especially curious about the eight-man units, which he regarded as "the greatest evidence of the confidence which we placed in the moral and mental powers of our army, down to its smallest unit." Revised Infantry Field Regulations were published and taught to all ranks, including at a school for division commanders, where they maneuvered a practice division. A monthly periodical informed artillery officers about new developments. In the last months of 1916, the British battering along the Somme produced fewer German casualties. Overall, "In a fierce and obstinate conflict on the Somme, which lasted five months, the enemy pressed us back to a depth of about six miles on a stretch of nearly twenty-five miles" Thirteen new divisions were created by reducing the number of men in infantry battalions, and divisions now had an artillery commander. Every regiment on the western front created an assault unit of stormtroopers selected from their fittest and most aggressive men. Lieutenant General
Ernst von Höppner was given responsibility for both aerial and antiaircraft forces; the army's vulnerable
Zeppelins went to the navy. Most cavalry regiments were dismounted and the artillery received their badly needed horses. In October, General
Philippe Pétain began a series of limited attacks at Verdun, each starting with an intense bombardment coordinated by his artillery commander General
Robert Nivelle. Then a double creeping barrage led the infantry into the shattered first German lines, where the attackers stopped to repel counterattacks. With repeated nibbles by mid-December 1916, the French retook all the ground the Germans had paid for so dearly. Nivelle was given command of the French Army.
The Hindenburg program Under Hindenburg, the Third
OHL set ambitious benchmarks for arms production in what became known as the
Hindenburg Programme, which was directed from the War Office by
General Groener. Major goals included a new light machine gun, updated artillery, and motor transport, but no tanks because they considered them too vulnerable to artillery. To increase output, they needed skilled workers. The army released a million men. For total war, the Supreme Army Command wanted all German men and women from 15 to 60 enrolled for national service. Hindenburg also wanted the universities closed, except for medical training, so that empty places would not be filled by women. To swell the next generation of soldiers, he wanted contraceptives banned and bachelors taxed. When a Polish army was being formed, he wanted Jews excluded. Few of these ideas were adopted, because their political maneuvering was vigorous but inept, as Admiral Müller of the Military Cabinet observed "Old Hindenburg, like Ludendorff, is no politician, and the latter is at the same time a hothead." For example, women were not included in the service law that ultimately passed, because in fact more women were already seeking employment than there were openings.
The extent of his command Following the death of the Austro-Hungarian emperor
Franz Joseph on 21 November 1916, Hindenburg met his successor
Charles, who was frank about hoping to stop the fighting. Hindenburg's Eastern Front ran south from the
Baltic to the
Black Sea through what now are the
Baltic States,
Ukraine, and
Romania. In
Italy, the line ran from the
Swiss border on the west to the
Adriatic east of
Venice. The Macedonian front extended along the
Greek border from the Adriatic to the
Aegean. The line contested by the Russians and Ottomans between the Black and
Caspian Sea ran along the heights of the
Caucasus mountains. Hindenburg urged the Ottomans to withdraw their men off the heights before winter set in but they did not. The front in Palestine ran from the
Mediterranean to the southern end of the
Dead Sea, and the defenders of
Baghdad had a flank on the
Tigris River. The Western Front ran southward from Belgium until near
Laon, where it turned east to pass Verdun before again turning south to end at the Swiss Border. The remaining German enclaves in
Africa were beyond his reach; a bold attempt to resupply them by
dirigible zeppelin failed in October 1917. The Central Powers were surrounded and outnumbered.
1917 Arms buildup and unrestricted submarine warfare By the second quarter of 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were able to assemble 680,000 more men in 53 new divisions and provide them with an adequate supply of new
light machine guns. Field guns were increased from 5,300 to 6,700 and heavies from 3,700 to 4,340. They tried to foster fighting spirit by "patriotic instruction" with lectures and films to "ensure that a fight is kept up against all agitators, croakers and weaklings". Meanwhile, to mitigate the risk of being attacked before their buildup was complete, Germany's new military leadership waged
unrestricted submarine warfare on allied shipping, which they claimed would defeat the British in six months. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and his allies expressed opposition to this policy, not wanting to bring the United States and other neutrals into the war. After securing the Dutch and Danish borders, Hindenburg announced that unrestricted submarine warfare was imperative and Ludendorff added his voice. On 9 January, the chancellor was forced to bow to their unsound military judgments.
OHL moved west to the pleasant spa town of
Bad Kreuznach in southwest Germany, which was on a main rail line. The Kaiser's quarters were in the spa building, staff offices were in the orange court, and the others lived in the hotel buildings. In February, a third Army Group was formed on the Western Front to cover the front in
Alsace–Lorraine, commanded by
Archduke Albrecht of Württemberg. Some effective divisions from the east were exchanged for less competent divisions from the west. Since their disasters of the previous year, the Russian infantry had shown no fight and in March the
revolution erupted in Russia. Shunning opportunity, the Central Powers stayed put; Hindenburg feared that invaders would resurrect the heroic resistance of
1812.
The great withdrawal and defending the Western Front On the Western Front, the Third OHL deduced that the German Army's huge salient between the valley of the Somme and Laon obviously was vulnerable to a pincer attack, which indeed the French were planning. The new Hindenburg line ran across its base. Subsequently, on 16 March, Hindenburg authorized
Operation Alberich whereby German forces were ordered to move out all able-bodied inhabitants and portable possessions to this line. In 39 days, the Germans withdrew from a 1000 mi2 (2,590 km2) area, more ground than they had lost to all Allied offensives since 1914. The cautiously following Allies also had to cope with booby traps, some exploding a month later. The new German front called the Hindenburg line was shorter freeing up 14 German divisions. On 9 April, the British attacked at
Arras and overtook two German lines while occupying part of a third as the Canadians swept the Germans completely off the
Vimy Ridge. When the excitable Ludendorff became distraught over such developments, Hindenburg reportedly calmed his First Quartermaster-General by "pressing his hand" and assuring him, "
We have lived through more critical times than today together." Ultimately, the British tried to exploit their opening with a futile cavalry charge but did not press further. In the battle's aftermath, the Third OHL discovered one reason behind the British attack's success was that the Sixth Army commander,
Ludwig von Falkenhausen, had failed to properly apply their instructions for a defense in depth by keeping reserve troops too far back from the front lines. As a result of this failure, Falkenhausen and several staff officers were stripped of their command.
The Eastern Front After the Romanov dynasty's fall from power, Russia remained at war under the new revolutionary government led by
Alexander Kerensky. In the
Kerensky Offensive launched on 1 July, the Russian army pushed Austro-Hungarian forces in Galicia on 1 July. In order to counter this success, six German divisions mounted a counterattack on 18 July that tore a hole through the Russian front through which they sliced southward toward
Tarnopol. The ensuing German advance threatened to encircle the Russian attackers, thereby causing them to retreat. At the end of August, the advancing Central Powers stopped at the frontier of
Moldavia. To keep up the pressure and to seize ground he intended to keep, Hindenburg shifted north to the heavily fortified city of Riga (today in Latvia), which has the broad
Dvina River as a moat. On 1 September the Eighth Army, led by
Oskar von Hutier, attacked; Bruchmüller's bombardment, which included gas and smoke shells, drove the defenders from the far bank east of the city, the Germans crossed in barges and then bridged the river, immediately pressing forward to the Baltic coast, pocketing the defenders of the
Riga salient. Next, a joint operation with the navy seized
Oesel and two smaller islands in the
Gulf of Riga. The
Bolshevik revolution took Russia out of the war, and an armistice was signed on 16 December.
The Reichstag peace resolution Hindenburg detested Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg for arguing against unrestricted submarine warfare. Then in July, the Reichstag debated a
resolution for peace without "annexations or indemnities". Colonel Bauer and the Crown Prince hurried to Berlin to block the move. The Minister of War urged Hindenburg and Ludendorff to join them, but when they arrived, the Kaiser told them that "there could be no justification for their presence in Berlin". They should "return in haste to Headquarters where they certainly would be much better occupied." In a letter to the Emperor dated 12 July 1917, Ludendorff threatened to resign, and Hindenburg joined in the ultimatum. The Kaiser declined to accept. By then, the majority parties in the Reichstag saw Bethmann Hollweg as an unacceptable negotiator for peace because he had been chancellor too long and was too weak in his dealings with the Supreme Army Command. The crisis was resolved when Bethmann Hollweg voluntarily resigned. Ludendorff and Bauer wanted to replace both the Kaiser and the chancellor with a dictator, but Hindenburg would not agree. On 19 July, the Reichstag passed the resolution calling for a peace of understanding without "territorial acquisitions achieved by force and violations of political, economic or financial integrity", which the new chancellor,
Georg Michaelis, agreed to "interpret". The policy of the peace resolution was therefore stillborn under Michaelis. The resolution became advantageous in August when
Pope Benedict XV called for peace. The German response cited the resolution to finesse specific questions like those about the future of
Belgium. The industrialists opposed Groener's advocacy of an
excess profits tax and insistence that workers take a part in company management. Groener made these proposals because he aimed for an increase in
labour productivity (a goal he shared with Hindenburg and Ludendorff) but wanted to achieve this partially on the base of consent instead of coercion. However, Ludendorff relieved Groener by telegram and sent him off to command a division. Hindenburg's 70th birthday was celebrated lavishly all over Germany; 2 October was a public holiday, an honor that until then had been reserved only for the Kaiser. Hindenburg published a birthday manifesto, which ended with the words:
Victory in Italy Bavarian mountain warfare expert
von Dellmensingen was sent to assess the Austro-Hungarian defenses in Italy, which he found poor. Then he scouted for a site from which an attack could be mounted against the Italians. Hindenburg created a new Fourteenth Army with ten Austro-Hungarian and seven German divisions and enough airplanes to control the air, commanded by
Otto von Below. The attackers slipped undetected into the mountains opposite to the opening of the
Soča valley. The attack and ensuing
Battle of Caporetto began during the night when the defender's trenches in the valley were abruptly shrouded in a dense cloud of poison gas released from 894 canisters fired simultaneously from simple mortars. The defenders fled before their masks would fail. The artillery opened fire several hours later, hitting the Italian reinforcements hastening up to fill the gap. The attackers swept over the almost empty defenses and marched through the pass, while mountain troops cleared the heights on either side. The Italians fled west, too fast to be cut off. Entente divisions were rushed to Italy to stem the retreat by holding a line on the
Piave River. Below's Army was dissolved and the German divisions returned to the Western Front, where in October Pétain had directed a successful limited objective attack in which six days of carefully planned bombardment left crater-free pathways for 68 tanks to lead the infantry forward on the Lassaux plateau south of
Laon, which forced the Germans off of the entire ridge — the French Army had recovered.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk In the negotiations with
Soviet Russia, Hindenburg wanted to retain control of all Russian territory that the Central Powers occupied, with German grand dukes ruling
Courland and
Lithuania, as well as a large slice of
Poland. Their Polish plan was opposed by Foreign Minister
Richard von Kühlmann, who encouraged the Kaiser to listen to the views of Max Hoffmann, chief of staff on the Eastern Front. Hoffmann demurred, but when ordered argued that it would be a mistake to bring so many Slavs into Germany, when only a small slice of Poland was needed to improve defenses. Ludendorff was outraged that the Kaiser had consulted a subordinate, while Hindenburg complained that the Kaiser "disregards our opinion in a matter of vital importance." The Kaiser backed off, but would not approve Ludendorff's order removing Hoffmann, who is not even mentioned in Hindenburg's memoir. When the Soviets refused the terms offered at
Brest-Litovsk the Germans repudiated the armistice and in a week
occupied the
Baltic states,
Belarus and
Ukraine, which had
signed the treaty as a separate entity. Now the Russians have also signed. Hindenburg helped to force Kühlmann out in July 1918.
1918 In January, more than half a million workers went on strike; among their demands was a peace without annexations. The strike collapsed when its leaders were arrested, the labor press was suppressed, strikers in the reserve were called to active duty, and seven great industrial concern taken under military control, which put their workers under martial law. On 16 January, Hindenburg demanded the replacement of Count von Valentini, the chief of the Civil Cabinet. The Kaiser bridled, responding "I do not need your parental advice", but nonetheless fired his old friend. The Germans were unable to tender a plausible peace offer because
OHL insisted on controlling Belgium and retaining the French coalfields. All of the Central Powers' cities were on the brink of starvation and their armies were on short rations. Hindenburg realized that "empty stomachs prejudiced all higher impulses and tended to make men indifferent." He blamed his allies' hunger on poor organization and transportation, not realizing that the Germans would have enough to eat if they collected their harvest efficiently and rationed its distribution effectively.
Opting for a decision in the west German troops were
in Finland, the
Baltics,
Poland,
Belarus,
Ukraine, much of
Romania, the
Crimea, and in a salient east of Ukraine extending east almost to the
Volga and south into
Georgia and
Armenia. Hundreds of thousands of men were needed to hold and police these conquests. More Germans were in
Macedonia and in
Palestine, where the British were driving north; Falkenhayn was replaced by
Otto Liman von Sanders, who had led
the defense of Gallipoli. All Hindenburg required was that these fronts stand firm while the Germans won in the west, where now they outnumbered their opponents. He firmly believed that his opponents could be crushed by battlefield defeats regardless of their far superior resources. Offensive tactics were tailored to the defense. Their opponents were adopting a defense in depth. He would attack the British because they were less skillful than the French. The crucial blow would be in Flanders, along the
River Lys, where the line was held by the Portuguese Army. However, winter mud prevented action there until April. Consequently, their first attack, named Michael, was on the southern part of the British line, at a projecting British salient near
Saint-Quentin.
Schwerpunkte would hit on either side of the salient's apex to pocket its defenders, the V Corps, as an overwhelming display of German power. Additional troops and skilled commanders, like General
Oskar von Hutier, were shifted from the east.
Army Group Gallwitz was formed in the west on 1 February. One quarter of the western divisions were designated for attack; to counter the elastic defense, during the winter, each of them attended a four-week course on infiltration tactics. Storm troops would slip through weak points in the front line and slice through the battle zone, bypassing strong points that would be mopped up by the mortars, flamethrowers, and manhandled field guns of the next wave. As always, surprise was essential, so the artillery was slipped into attack positions at night, relying on camouflage for concealment; the British aerial photographers were allowed free rein before D-day. There would be no preliminary registration fire; the gunners were trained for map firing in schools established by Bruchmüller. In the short, intense bombardment, each gun fired in a precise sequence, shifting back and forth between different targets, using many gas shells to keep defenders immersed in a toxic cloud. On D-day, the air force would establish air supremacy and strafe enemy strong points, and also update commanders on how far the attackers had penetrated. Signal lamps were used for messaging on the ground. Headquarters moved close to the front and, as soon as possible, would advance to pre-selected positions in newly occupied ground.
OHL moved to
Spa, Belgium while Hindenburg and Ludendorff were closer to the attack at
Avesnes, France, which re-awakened his memories of occupied France 41 years before.
Breaking the trench stalemate Operation Michael began on 21 March. The first day's reports were inconclusive, but by day two, the Germans knew they had broken through some of the enemy artillery lines. But the encirclement failed because British stoutness gave their V Corps time to slip out of the targeted salient. On day four, German forces moved on into the open country, and the Kaiser prematurely celebrated by awarding Hindenburg the
Grand Cross of the Iron Cross, a medal first created for
von Blücher. As usual, Hindenburg set objectives as the situation evolved. South of the salient, the Germans had almost destroyed the British Fifth Army, so they pushed west to cut between the French and British armies. However, they advanced too slowly through the broken terrain of the former Somme battlefields and the ground devastated when withdrawing the year before, and because troops stopped to loot food and clothing, the Allies maintained a fluid defensive line, manned by troops brought up and supplied by rail and motor transport. Hindenburg hoped the Germans would get close enough to
Amiens to bombard the railways with heavy artillery, but they were stopped just short, after having advanced a maximum of . Hindenburg also hoped that civilian morale would crumble, because Paris was being shelled by
naval guns mounted on rail carriages away, but he underestimated French resilience. The Allied command was dismayed. French headquarters realized: "This much became clear from the terrible adventure, that our enemies were masters of a new method of warfare [...] What was even more serious was that it was perceived that the enemy's power was due to a thing that cannot be improvised, the training of officers and men." Prolonging Michael with the drive west, delayed and weakened
the attack in Flanders. Again, the Germans broke through, smashing the Portuguese defenders and forcing the British from all of the ground they had paid so dearly for in 1917. However, French support enabled the British to save
Hazebrouck, the rail junction that was the German goal. To draw the French reserves away from Flanders, the next attack was along the
Aisne River where Nivelle had attacked the year before. Their success was dazzling. The defender's front was immersed in a gas cloud fired from simple mortars. Within hours the Germans had reoccupied all the ground the French had taken by weeks of grinding, and they swept south through Champagne until they halted for resupply at the
Marne River. However, the Germans had lost 977,555 of their best men between March and the end of July, while Allied ranks were swelling with Americans. Their dwindling stock of horses was on the verge of starvation, and the ragged troops thought continually of food. One of the most effective propaganda handbills, which the British showered on the German lines, listed the rations received by prisoners of war. The German troops resented their officers' better rations and reports of the ample meals at headquarters; in his memoirs, Ludendorff devotes six pages to defending officers' rations and perks. After an attack, the survivors needed at least six weeks to recuperate, but now crack divisions were recommitted much sooner. Tens of thousands of men were skulking behind the lines. Determined to win, Hindenburg decided to expand the salient pointing toward Paris to strip more defenders from Flanders. The attack on
Gouraud's French Fourth Army followed the now familiar scenario, but was met by a deceptive elastic defense and was decisively repelled at the French main line of resistance. Hindenburg still intended to make a decisive attack in Flanders, but before the Germans could strike, the French and Americans, led by light tanks,
smashed through the right flank of the German salient on the Marne. The German defense was halfhearted; they had lost. Hindenburg went on the defensive. The Germans withdrew one by one from the salients created by their victories, evacuating the wounded and supplies, and retiring to shortened lines. Hindenburg hoped to hold a line until their enemies were ready to bargain.
Ludendorff's breakdown After the retreat from the
Marne, Ludendorff became distraught, shrieking orders and often in tears. At dinner on 19 July, he responded to a suggestion of Hindenburg's by shouting, "I have already told you that is impossible" – Hindenburg led him from the room. On 8 August, the British completely surprised the Germans with
a well-coordinated attack at Amiens, breaking well into the German lines. Most disquieting was that some German commanders surrendered their units and that reserves arriving at the front were taunted for prolonging the war. For Ludendorff, Amiens was the "black day in the history of the German Army." Bauer and others wanted Ludendorff replaced, but Hindenburg stuck by his friend; he knew that "Many a time has the soldier's calling exhausted strong characters." A sympathetic physician who was Ludendorff's friend persuaded him to leave headquarters temporarily to recuperate. (His breakdown is not mentioned in Hindenburg's or his own memoirs.) On 12 August, Army Group von Boehn was created to firm up the defenses in the Somme sector. On 29 September, Hindenburg and Ludendorff told the incredulous Kaiser that the war was lost and that they must have an immediate armistice.
Defeat and revolution A new chancellor,
Prince Maximilian of Baden, opened negotiations with President
Woodrow Wilson, who would deal only with a democratic Germany. Prince Max told the Kaiser that he would resign unless Ludendorff was dismissed, but that Hindenburg was indispensable to hold the army together. On 26 October, the Kaiser reprimanded Ludendorff before curtly accepting his resignation — then rejecting Hindenburg's. Afterwards, Ludendorff refused to share Hindenburg's limousine.
Colonel Bauer was retired. Hindenburg promptly replaced Ludendorff with Wilhelm Groener. The Germans were losing their allies. In June, the Austro-Hungarians in Italy
attacked the Entente lines along the Piave River but were repelled decisively. On 24 October, the Italians crossed the river in the
Battle of Vittorio Veneto. After a few days of resolute resistance, the defense collapsed, weakened by the defection of men from the empire's subject nations and by starvation: the men in their Sixth Army had an average weight of . On 14 October, Austria-Hungary asked for an armistice in Italy, but the fighting went on. In September, the Entente and their Greek allies
attacked in Macedonia. The Bulgarians begged for more Germans to stiffen their troops, but Hindenburg had none to spare. Many Bulgarian soldiers deserted as they retreated toward home, opening the road to
Constantinople. The Austro-Hungarians
were pushed back in Serbia, Albania and Montenegro, and signed an armistice on 3 November. The Ottomans were overextended, trying to defend
Syria while exploiting the Russian collapse
to move into the Caucasus, despite Hindenburg's urging them to defend what they had. The British and Arabs
broke through in September, capturing
Damascus. The
Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October. Woodrow Wilson's 23 October diplomatic note to Germany had indirectly called for the Kaiser's abdication when it stated that the United States would negotiate only with representatives of the German people, not the monarchy. Wilhelm, determined to lead the Army home in the event of disturbances in Berlin, refused to abdicate. A week later, Admiral
Franz von Hipper and Admiral
Reinhard Scheer without authorization made plans to dispatch the
Imperial Fleet on a last battle against the British. Sailors in Kiel mutinied and set up
workers' and soldiers' councils that spread quickly across Germany, sparking the
German revolution of 1918–1919. On 8 November, Hindenburg and the Kaiser met with 39 regimental officers at Spa. There he delivered a situation report and answered questions. Then Hindenburg left and Groener asked the officers to answer confidentially two questions about whether their troops would follow the Kaiser. The answers were decisive: the army would not. The Kaiser then agreed to abdicate without doing so at the time. In Berlin, however, Prince Max had already publicly announced the
Kaiser's abdication and his own resignation, and that the
Social Democrat leader
Friedrich Ebert was the new chancellor. The Empire had crumbled all but bloodlessly. That evening
Groener telephoned Ebert, whom he knew and trusted, and promised to support the new government, including with military force against revolutionaries on the left. In return, Ebert promised that command of the troops would stay with the officer corps. Hindenburg remained head of the OHL to ensure an orderly return of the army. The withdrawal became more fraught when
the armistice obliged all German troops to leave Belgium, France, and
Alsace-Lorraine in 14 days and to be behind the Rhine in 30 days. Stragglers would become prisoners. When the seven men from the executive committee of the soldiers' council formed at Spa arrived at
OHL they were greeted politely by a lieutenant colonel, who acknowledged their leadership. When they broached the march home, he took them to the map room, explaining allocation of roads, scheduling unit departures, billeting, and feeding. They agreed that the existing staff should make these arrangements. To oversee the withdrawals
OHL transferred headquarters from Belgium to
Kassel in Germany, unsure how their officers would be received by the revolutionaries. They were greeted by the chairman of the workers' and soldiers' councils, who proclaimed, "Hindenburg belongs to the German nation." His staff intended to billet him in the Kaiser's palace there,
Wilhelmshöhe. Hindenburg refused because they did not have the Kaiser's permission, instead settling into a humble inn, thereby pleasing both his monarchist staff and the revolutionary masses. In the west, 1.25 million men and 500,000 horses were brought home in the time allotted. Hindenburg did not want to involve the Army in
the defense of the new government against their civil enemies. Instead, the Army supported the independent
Freikorps (modeled on formations used in the Napoleonic wars), supplying them with weapons and equipment. In February 1919,
OHL moved east to
Kolberg to mount an offensive against impinging Soviet troops, but they were restrained by the Allied occupation administration, which in May 1919 ordered all German troops in the east home. On 25 June 1919, Hindenburg retired to
Hanover once again. He settled in a splendid new villa, which was a gift of the city, despite his admittedly having "lost the greatest war in history".
Military reputation "Victory comes from
movement" was Schlieffen's principle for war. Hindenburg expounded on Schlieffen's ideas as an instructor and later applied them during
World War I. By employing such tactics, retreats and mobile defenses commanded by Hindenburg proved effective, and his
Schwerpunkt attacks broke through the trench barrier on the Western Front. However, they failed to produce decisive victories because penetrating forces proved too slow to capitalize on their breakthroughs. Hindenburg has undergone a historical re-evaluation: his teaching of tactics and years on the General Staff have been less emphasised while he is remembered as a commander in Ludendorff's shadow.
Winston Churchill in 1923, depicted Hindenburg as a figurehead awed by the mystique of the General Staff, concluding that "Ludendorff throughout appears as the uncontested master." Parkinson stated that he is a "beloved figurehead", while to Stallings he is "an old military booby". These judgements stem from Ludendorff, who was famous during the war and immediately thereafter wrote his comprehensive memoir with himself center stage. Hindenburg's less detailed memoir never disputed his colleague's claims, military decisions were made collectively not individually, and it is less useful to historians because it was written for general readers. Ludendorff continued emphasising his preeminence in print, which Hindenburg never disputed publicly. Others did, though: the
OHL officers who testified before the
Reichstag committee investigating the collapse of 1918 agreed that Hindenburg was always in command. He managed by setting objectives and appointing capable people to do their jobs, for instance, "giving full scope to the intellectual powers" of Ludendorff. These subordinates often felt he did little, even though he was setting the overall course. Ludendorff may have overrated himself, repressing repeated demonstrations that he lacked the resilience essential to command. Postwar, he displayed poor judgment and an attraction to unusual ideas, contrasting with his former commander's adaptation to changing times. Most of their conferences were in private, but on 26 July 1918 the chief of staff of the Seventh Army, Fritz von
Lossberg traveled to
OHL to request permission to withdraw to a better position: Hindenburg's record as a commander starting in the field at Tannenberg, then leading four national armies, culminating with breaking the trench deadlock in the west, and then holding a defeated army together, is unmatched by other soldiers in World War I. However, military skill is only one component of the record: "[...] in general, the maladroit politics of Hindenburg and Ludendorff led directly to the collapse of 1918 [...]" == In the Republic ==