The First Nazi

The gripping biography of the First World War General who inspired Hitler's rise to power

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General Erich Ludendorff was one of the most important military commanders of the last century, yet today, is one of the least known. One of the top two German generals of the First World War, Ludendorff dominated not only his superior - General Paul von Hindenburg - but also Kaiser Wilhelm II. For years, he was the de facto military dictator of Germany. Ludendorff not only controlled all aspects of the First World War, he refused any opportunity to make peace; he antagonised the Americans until they declared war; he sent Lenin into Russia to forge a revolution in order to shut down the Russian front; and then he pushed for total military victory in 1918, in a rabid slaughter known as `The Ludendorff Offensive'. Shortly after Germany lost the war in 1918, Ludendorff created the murderous legend that Germany had lost only because Jews had conspired on the home front. He soon forged an alliance with Hitler, endorsed the Nazis and wrote manically about how Germans needed a new world war to redeem the Fatherland. This savage man had staggering designs to build a gigantic state that would dwarf even the British Empire. Ludendorff quite simply wanted the world - and changed the 20th century beyond recognition.