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With his victory over the Russian army at the battle of Tannenberg in August 1914, Paul von Hindenburg became a German national hero. By 1916, he had parlayed an exaggerated reputation for decisive victory into near dictatorial powers. After Germany`s defeat at Verdun and War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn`s dismissal, Hindenburg, along with his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, took over strategic direction of the war. The eponymous Hindenburg Program attemptted with some success to mobilize Germany`s economy for war. He also oversaw many of Germany`s most important wartime decisions, including the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, Bethmann-Hollweg`s dismissal as chancellor, Russia`s defeat and negotiation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the ``Ludendorff Offensives`` of 1918, which sought decisive victory on the Western Front but ended in Germany`s catastrophic defeat. After the war, Hindenburg played a crucial role in creating the DolchstoBlegende (the myth that the German Army had been ``stabbed in the back`` by a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy on the homefront), in leading Germany as president of the Weimar Republic, and most tragically, in acquiescing to Adolf Hitler`s rise to power.
ISBN 9788182744295
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