Dragonslayer

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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.