Word: ludendorffers
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...organizer but no theorist, whose rise to the position of Commander in Chief of the German Land Forces had been due at least partly to his willingness to back Adolf Hitler where more experienced generals would not. This week Brauchitsch was a name to put beside those of Moltke, Ludendorff and Schlieffen: not only was he Germany's No. 1 Krieger (warrior), but he had fostered, planned and led the Blitzkrieg-and proved its validity up to the hilt...
After the catastrophe on the Somme in 1917, General Ludendorff was persuaded by a group of his junior staff officers to withdraw to a line running north-south behind the Canal du Nord between the Somme and the Scarpe River. By this move he saved his troops from a second Somme and shortened his line. More important, he gained the opportunity to prepare on virgin ground and far away from hostilities for defensive tactics which his bright young men, notably Colonel Fritz von Lossberg, had evolved for divisions after observing the French use for smaller units...
Great Britain and Germany came out of World War I with diametrically opposed attitude toward propaganda. Defeated Germans, unwilling to believe in military defeat, believed that Allied cleverness in propaganda, their own clumsiness in it, was largely responsible. On the subject both Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg were almost pathological. Manifestoed Hindenburg: "The enemy . . . seeks to poison our spirit. . . . His airmen throw down leaflets which are intended to kill the soul...
German military tradition goes back to Napoleon as interpreted by Clausewitz and made "totalitarian" by Ludendorff, who believed in the nation-in-arms theory and the war of extermination. Its weakness is a traditional reliance on Schrecklichkeit (frightfulness) which-though it won at Munich-is apt to backfire by stiffening instead of breaking opponents' morale. The modern German theory of victory by Blitzkrieg (lightning war) is untried and, in the opinion of many experts, unsound. Further, if Germany plans to carry war deep into Russian territory in case of Soviet participation, old Moscow Generals January and February (alias Cold...
...grown by leaps & bounds until it is now an organization of 230,000, and an SS man is far more important, politically, than a soldier or a policeman. Indeed, due to the fact that Herr Himmler followed the romantic, mystical streak of Wotan-worship developed by old General Ludendorff, the SS has become the most elite and exotic body of cops the world has ever known. Defined as a "National Socialist soldierly order of Nordic men," the SS took many of their rules from the old Order of Teutonic Knights. Fundamental principles: loyalty, honor, courage. The SS cardinal virtue: blind...