Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as von Ludendorff) (9 April 1865 – 20 December 1937) was a German Army officer, victor of Liège, and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. From August 1916 his appointment as Generalquartiermeister made him joint head (with von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort. From this point on he ran Germany's war effort in World War I until his resignation ...
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Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as von Ludendorff) (9 April 1865 – 20 December 1937) was a German Army officer, victor of Liège, and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. From August 1916 his appointment as Generalquartiermeister made him joint head (with von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort. From this point on he ran Germany's war effort in World War I until his resignation in October 1918.
Ludendorff was born in Kruszewnia near Posen, Province of Posen (now Poznań County, Poland), the third of six children of August Wilhelm Ludendorff (1833-1905), descended from Pomeranian merchants, who had become a landowner in a modest sort of way, and who held a commission in the reserve cavalry. Erich's mother, Klara Jeanette Henriette von Tempelhoff (1840-1914), was the daughter of the noble but impoverished Friedrich August Napoleon von Tempelhoff (1804-1868), and his wife Jeannette Wilhelmine von Dziembowska (1816-1854) ...
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