Dragonslayer
The Legend of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich
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Average rating4
15
The Legend of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich
Ratings1
Average rating4
In this fascinating biography of the infamous ideologue Erich Ludendorff, Jay Lockenour complicates the classic depiction of this German World War I hero. Erich Ludendorff created for himself a persona that secured his place as one of the most prominent (and despicable) Germans of the twentieth century. With boundless energy and an obsession with detail, Ludendorff ascended to power and solidified a stable, public position among Germany's most influential. Between 1914 and his death in 1937, he was a war hero, a dictator, a right-wing activist, a failed putschist, a presidential candidate, a publisher, and a would-be prophet. He guided Germany's effort in the Great War between 1916 and 1918 and, importantly, set the tone for a politics of victimhood and revenge in the postwar era. Dragonslayer explores Ludendorff's life after 1918, arguing that the strange or unhinged personal traits most historians attribute to mental collapse were, in fact, integral to Ludendorff's political strategy. Lockenour asserts that Ludendorff patterned himself, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, on the dragonslayer of Germanic mythology, Siegfried—hero of the epic poem The Niebelungenlied and much admired by German nationalists. The symbolic power of this myth allowed Ludendorff to embody many Germans' fantasies of revenge after their defeat in 1918, keeping him relevant to political discourse despite his failure to hold high office or cultivate a mass following after World War I. Lockenour reveals the influence that Ludendorff's postwar career had on Germany's political culture and radical right during this tumultuous era. Dragonslayer is a tale as fabulist as fiction.
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It is something of an achievement to be so crazily conspiratorial that even the Nazis think that you are a nut.
This is a book about Eric Ludendorff. Ludendorff was, of course, a Wilhelmine German General. He was the architect of the brilliant German victory over the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg. Together with Gen. Paul Hindenberg, he became the virtual dictator of Germany for the last two years of World War I.
Losing the war may have caused a cog to slip in Ludendorff's mind. After the war, he became obsessed with exonerating himself for the loss by inventing or appropriating the “stab in the back” myth. Ludendorff went further in his conspiratorial ideology by creating a complicated nexus of “supranational powers” - Jews, Catholics, FreeMasons, Bolsheviks - who had undermined Germany and continued to oppress Germany.
Ludendorff is particularly noteworthy for his anti-Catholic animus. Hitler and the Nazis were also anti-Catholic, but they found it politically dangerous to attack Catholicism tout court. Ludendorff had no such compunctions. In this, Ludendorff was playing to a traditional strand of German anti-Catholicism going back to the Reformation.
Ludendorff was also an open “pagan.” He was heavily influenced by his second wife, who produced pagan tracts. This paganism was not a worship of Odin or Thor, but some kind of hazy deification of Germany/race.
I've been interested in Ludendorff's anti-Catholicism for a while. I'm not sure this is the book I've been looking for. The focus of the book is on Ludendorff's post-war life and we do get a fair introduction to Ludendorff's zany worldview, but the book feels like an overview rather than a deep dive.
One thing I did appreciate about this book was the significance of Ludendorff to early Weimar right-wing conspiracies. Ludendorff was involved in the Kapp Putsch, but more importantly, there probably wouldn't have been the climactic march during the Beer Hall Putsch without Ludendorff's encouragement. Without that march, there would have been no myth of the Nazi martyrs that became a substantial part of the Nazi mythos in later legend.
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1 released bookBattlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History is a 3-book series first released in 2021 with contributions by Jay Lockenour, Nicole Eaton, and 2 others.
