Erich von Falkenhayn

Erich von Falkenhayn
Prussian Minister of War
In office 7 June 1913 – 21 January 1915
Monarch	Wilhelm II
Prime Minister	Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
Preceded by	Josias von Heeringen
Succeeded by	Adolf Wild von Hohenborn
Chief of the German General Staff
In office 14 September 1914 – 29 August 1916
Monarch	Wilhelm II
Chancellor	Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
Preceded by	Helmuth von Moltke the Younger
Succeeded by	Paul von Hindenburg
Personal details
Born	11 September 1861 Burg Belchau, Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	8 April 1922 (aged 60) Potsdam, Brandenburg, Weimar Germany
Relations	Eugen von Falkenhayn (brother) Fedor von Bock (nephew)
Awards	Order of the Black Eagle Pour le Merite with Oak Leaves
Military service
Allegiance	German Empire  Ottoman Empire
Service/branch	German Army Ottoman Army
Years of service	1880–1922 1917–1918 (Ottoman Army)
Rank	General of the Infantry (German Army) Field Marshal (Ottoman Army)
Commands	4th Foot Guards (German Empire) Chief of the German General Staff 9th Army (German Empire) Army Group F (Ottoman Army) 10th Army (German Empire)
Battles/wars	Boxer Rebellion First World War

General Erich Georg Anton von Falkenhayn (11 September 1861 – 8 April 1922) was the Chief of Germany's General Staff during the First World War from September 1914 – August 1916. He was removed after the failure at the battles of Verdun and the Somme in 1916 and given important field commands in Romania and Syria. His reputation as a war leader was attacked in Germany during and after the war, especially by the faction which supported Hindenburg. Falkenhayn held that Germany could not win the war by a decisive battle but would have to reach a compromise peace; his enemies said he lacked the resolve necessary to win a decisive victory. Falkenhayn's relations with the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg were troubled and undercut Falkenhayn's plans.^[1]

Early life

Falkenhayn was born in Burg Belchau near Graudenz, West Prussia (now Białochowo, Poland) to Fedor von Falkenhayn (1814–1896) and Franziska von Falkenhayn, née von Rosenberg (1826–1888). His brother Arthur (1857–1929) became tutor of Crown Prince Wilhelm while Eugen (1853–1934) became a Prussian General of Cavalry. His only sister Olga von Falkenhayn was the mother of Fieldmarshall Fedor von Bock.^[2] Becoming a cadet at the age of 11, he joined the Army in 1880. He served as an infantry and staff officer and became a career soldier. Between 1896 and 1903, he served in Qing China, on leave for several years and saw action during the Boxer Rebellion. He also spent time in Manchuria and Korea. Afterwards, the army posted him to Brunswick, Metz and Magdeburg; becoming a Major-General in 1912. In 1913 he became Prussian Minister of War, in which capacity he was involved the beginning of World War I, when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo took place. Like most German military leaders, he did not expect a great European war but he soon embraced the idea and joined with others pushing for Kaiser Wilhelm II to declare war.

Chief of Staff

Falkenhayn succeeded Helmuth von Moltke the Younger as Chief of the Oberste Heeresleitung (German General Staff) after the First Battle of the Marne on 14 September 1914. Falkenhayn attempted to outflank the British and French in the Race to the Sea, a series of engagements throughout northern France and Belgium in which each side made reciprocal attempts to turn the other's flank, until they reached the North Sea and had no more room for manoeuvre. The British and French eventually stopped the German advance at the First Battle of Ypres (October–November 1914).

Falkenhayn preferred an offensive strategy on the Western Front, while conducting a limited campaign in the east: he hoped that Russia would accept a separate armistice more easily, if it had not been humiliated too much. This brought him into conflict with Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who favored massive offensives in the east. Eventually, in the hope that either a massive slaughter would lead Europe's political leaders to consider ending the war or that losses would be less harmful for Germany than for France, Falkenhayn staged a battle of attrition, as claimed in his post-war memoires, in the Battle of Verdun in early 1916. Although more than a quarter of a million soldiers eventually died and Falkenhayn was sometimes called the Blood-Miller of Verdun, neither side's resolve was lessened. Contrary to Falkenhayn's assumptions, the French were able to limit casualties in the divisions sent to Verdun. General Philippe Pétain kept the divisions in the line at Verdun until casualties reached 50 percent of the infantry and then relieved them. The procession of divisions back and forth was analogous to the operation of a "noria", a type of water wheel that continuously lifts water and empties it into a trough.^[3][4] After the relative failure at Verdun, coupled with reverses on the Eastern Front, the Somme and the intrigues of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, Falkenhayn was replaced as Chief of Staff by Hindenburg.

Later career

Falkenhayn then assumed command of the Ninth Army in Transylvania, and in August launched a joint offensive against Romania with August von Mackensen. Falkenhayn's forces captured the Romanian capital of Bucharest in under four months, with help of troops from all Central Powers against the poorly trained, equipped and inexperienced Romanian Army, which had to defend the longest front in Europe (1,600 kilometres (990 mi)).

Following the success, Falkenhayn went to take military command in Ottoman Palestine. Given the rank of Mushir (Field Marshal) in the Ottoman Army, he was assigned to command the Yildirim Army Group (Heeresgruppe F, Army Group F). He eventually failed to prevent the British under General Edmund Allenby from conquering Jerusalem in December 1917.

In February 1918, Falkenhayn became commander of the Tenth Army in Belarus, where he witnessed the end of the war.

Postwar

In 1919, he retired from the army and withdrew to his estate, where he wrote several books on war, strategy and his autobiography. His war memoirs were translated into English as The German General staff and Its Critical Decisions, 1914–1916. With the benefit of hindsight, he remarked that the German declarations of war on Russia and France in 1914 were "justifiable but overly-hasty and unnecessary".^[5] Falkenhayn died in 1922, at Schloss Lindstedt, near Potsdam.

Assessment

Falkenhayn in many ways typified the Prussian generals; a militarist in the literal sense, he had undeniable political and military competence but showed contempt toward democracy and the representative Reichstag. He addressed the Reichstag in 1914 as follows:

Only through the fact that the Prussian army is removed by the constitution from the party struggle and the influence of ambitious party leaders has it become what it is: the secure defence of peace at home and abroad.

— Falkenhayn^[6]

Militarily, Falkenhayn had a mixed record. His offensive at Verdun proved a strategic failure. His defence of Palestine in 1917 was also a failure but his forces, overwhelmingly Ottoman in composition, were outnumbered and outclassed and casualties were fairly equal. His campaign against Romania was also not very successful. He initially suffered several defeats against the Romanians, such as failing to take Bucharest via the shortest route, the Prahova Valley and being repulsed at first in the Jiu Valley. The Romanians were poorly trained, equipped, inexperienced and forced to fight on the longest front in Europe so his relatively swift campaign was more lost by the Romanians than won by his combined troops. Moreover, the German casualties suffered until the conquest of Bucharest totalled 60,000 troops. Total casualties for the Central Powers during the 1916 campaign were nearly as high as those of the Romanians, excluding POWs. Finally, he failed to achieve the Central Powers' fundamental strategic and political goal: Romania's withdrawal from the war. The Balkan country remained in the war but even managed, in the summer of 1917, to inflict defeats on the Central Powers.

Winston Churchill considered him to be the ablest by far of the German generals in World War I. Dupuy also ranked him near the top of the German commanders, just below Hindenburg and Ludendorff.^[7] Foley wrote that Germany's enemies were far more able to apply a strategy of attrition, because they had greater amounts of manpower, industry and economic control over the world, resorting to many of the methods used by Falkenhayn in Russia in 1915 and France in 1916. As the cost of fighting the war increased, the war aims of the Entente expanded, to include the overthrow of the political elites of the Central Powers and by attrition, achieved the ability to dictate peace to a comprehensively-defeated enemy.^[8]

All sources portray Falkenhayn as a loyal, honest and punctilious friend and superior. His positive legacy is his conduct during the war in Palestine in 1917. As his biographer Holger Afflerbach wrote,

An inhuman excess against the Jews in Palestine was prevented only by Falkenhayn's conduct, which against the background of the German history of the 20th century has a special meaning, and one that distinguishes Falkenhayn.

— Afflerbach^[9]

Decorations and awards

• Order of the Black Eagle
• Pour le Merite (16 February 1915)
  • Oak Leaves (3 June 1915)
• Iron Cross (1914)
  • 2nd Class
  • 1st Class
• Commander of the Military Order of Max Joseph (Bavaria)
• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Military Merit with Swords (Bavaria)
• Knight of the Military Order of St. Henry (Saxony)
• Gold Military Merit Medal ("Signum Laudis", Austria-Hungary) (11 October 1916)

See also

• Douaumont Ossuary Verdun

Footnotes

1. Messenger 2001, pp. 165–166.
2. Afflerbach 1996, p. 9.
3. Smith, Audoin-Rouzeau & Becker 2003, p. 82.
4. Cowley & Parker 1996, p. 361.
5. Falkenhayn 2009, p. 96.
6. Craig 1956, pp. 253–254.
7. Cowley & Parker 1996, p. 915.
8. Foley 2007, p. 268.
9. Afflerbach 1994, p. 485.

References

• Afflerbach, Holger (1994). Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich [Falkenhayn: Political Thinking and Action in the Empire]. Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte (in German). München: Oldenbourg. ISBN 3-48655-972-9.
• Afflerbach, Holger (1996). Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich [Falkenhayn: Political Thinking and Action in the Empire]. Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte (in German) (repr. ed.). München: Oldenbourg. ISBN 3-486-56184-7.
• Cowley, Robert; Parker, Geoffrey (1996). The Reader's Companion to Military History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-39566-969-3.
• Craig, Gordon A. (1956). The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640–1945. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 275199.
• Falkenhayn, Erich von (2009) [1919]. General Headquarters, 1914–1916 and its Critical Decisions (PDF) (Naval & Military Press ed.). London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-1-84574-139-6. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
• Foley, R. T. (2007) [2005]. German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (pbk. ed.). Cambridge: CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-04436-3.
• Messenger, Charles, ed. (2001). Reader's Guide to Military History. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 978-1-57958-241-8.
• Smith, Leonard V.; Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane; Becker, Annette (2003). France and the Great War, 1914–1918. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-52166-176-5.

Further reading

• Ritter, Gerhard (1972). The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany: The Tragedy of Statesmanship–Bethmann Hollweg as War Chancellor [Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk: das Problem des Militarismus in Deutschland. Dritter Band: Die Tragödie der Staatskunst Bethmann Hollweg als Kriegskanzler (1914–1917)] III (trans. ed.). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press. ISBN 978-0-87024-182-6.
• Watson, Alexander (2008). Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British armies, 1914–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52188-101-2.