Erich von Falkenhayn

Erich von Falkenhayn (1861–1922) was a Prussian general and Minister of War who served as Chief of the German General Staff from September 1914 to August 1916 during the critical middle years of World War I.

Rise to Prussian Minister of War

Born in West Prussia to an aristocratic Junker family with little wealth, Falkenhayn entered the military cadet corps at age ten and graduated from the Prussian War Academy in Berlin. Seeking active service abroad, he spent several years in China modernizing Chinese forces and serving on the Allied general staff during the Boxer Rebellion (1900). His organizational talent and courtly manner won the favor of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who appointed him Prussian Minister of War in July 1913. During the July Crisis of 1914, Falkenhayn participated in the Potsdam meetings that backed Austria-Hungary's hardline stance against Serbia.

Chief of the General Staff and the Strategy of Attrition

When the opening Schlieffen Plan collapsed at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, Helmuth von Moltke suffered a nervous breakdown and Falkenhayn secretly replaced him as Chief of the General Staff. After attempts to outflank the Allies during the 'Race to the Sea' ended in costly stalemate at Ypres, Falkenhayn concluded that a decisive breakthrough on the Western Front was no longer immediately possible. Throughout 1915, he clashed sharply with Eastern Front commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who demanded massive reinforcements to knock Russia out of the war; Falkenhayn allowed the successful Gorlice-Tarnów offensive in Poland, which pushed Russian forces back hundreds of kilometers, but refused to overextend German armies deep into the Russian interior.

The Verdun Meatgrinder and Later Campaigns

At the end of 1915, Falkenhayn turned his focus back to the West. Believing that Great Britain was Germany's most implacable enemy and France was 'Britain's best sword,' he devised Operation Gericht ('Judgment') against the historic fortress city of Verdun. Rather than aiming for a rapid territorial breakthrough, Falkenhayn sought to threaten a point of such national pride that the French army would be forced to throw in every man it had, allowing massed German artillery to 'bleed the French army white.'

Launched in February 1916, the ten-month Battle of Verdun turned into a mutual catastrophe. Under Philippe Pétain, French forces refused to yield, and German casualties mounted nearly as fast as French losses. When the Anglo-French Somme Offensive erupted in July and Romania entered the war on the Allied side in August 1916, Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed Falkenhayn and handed supreme command to Hindenburg. Stepping down to field command, Falkenhayn redeemed his tactical reputation by swiftly overrunning Bucharest as commander of the 9th Army in Romania, and later served in Ottoman Palestine and Belarus before retiring to his estate near Potsdam, where he died in 1922.