Erich von Falkenhayn

Falkenhayn was born in Burg Belchau near Graudenz, West Prussia (now Białochowo, Poland) to Fedor von Falkenhayn (1814–1896) and Franziska von Falkenhayn, née von Rosenberg (1826–1888). His brother Arthur (1857–1929) became tutor of Crown Prince Wilhelm while Eugen (1853–1934) became a Prussian General of Cavalry. His only sister Olga von Falkenhayn was the mother of Fieldmarshall Fedor von Bock.[2]

Becoming a cadet at the age of 11, he joined the Army in 1880. He served as an infantry and staff officer and became a career soldier.

Between 1896 and 1903, Falkenhayn served in Qing-Dynasty China on leave for several years and saw action during the Boxer Rebellion. He also spent time in Manchuria and Korea.

After his service in Asia, the army posted him to Brunswick, Metz and Magdeburg; he became a major-general in 1912.

In 1919, he retired from the army and withdrew to his estate, where he wrote his autobiography and several books on war and strategy. His war memoirs were translated into English as The German General staff and Its Critical Decisions, 1914–1916 (1919).[6] With the benefit of hindsight, he remarked that the German declarations of war on Russia and France in 1914 were "justifiable but overly-hasty and unnecessary".[7] Falkenhayn died in 1922, at Schloss Lindstedt, near Potsdam.

In 1886 Falkenhayn married Ida Selkmann, with whom he had a son Fritz Georg Adalbert von Falkenhayn (1890–1973) and a daughter Erika Karola Olga von Falkenhayn (1904–1975) who married Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944), an officer who helped organise the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler.

Falkenhayn in many ways typified the Prussian generals; a militarist in the literal sense, he had undeniable political and military competence and showed contempt for democracy and the representative Reichstag. He addressed the Reichstag in 1914 as follows:

Only through the fact that the Prussian army is removed by the constitution from the party struggle and the influence of ambitious party leaders has it become what it is: the secure defence of peace at home and abroad.

— Falkenhayn[8]

Militarily, Falkenhayn had a mixed record. His offensive at Verdun proved a strategic failure. During the campaign against Romania in 1916 Falkenhayn demonstrated considerable skill in command of the German 9th Army, driving the Romanians from Transylvania, breaking through the Southern Carpathians and forcing the shattered Romanian forces northeast into Moldavia.[9] His defence of Palestine in 1917 was also a failure but his forces, overwhelmingly Ottoman in composition, were outnumbered and outclassed and casualties were fairly equal.

Winston Churchill considered him to be the ablest by far of the German generals in World War I. Dupuy also ranked him near the top of the German commanders, just below Hindenburg and Ludendorff.[10] Foley wrote that Germany's enemies were far more able to apply a strategy of attrition, because they had greater amounts of manpower, industry and economic control over the world, resorting to many of the methods used by Falkenhayn in Russia in 1915 and France in 1916. As the cost of fighting the war increased, the war aims of the Entente expanded, to include the overthrow of the political elites of the Central Powers and the ability to dictate peace to a comprehensively defeated enemy, which was achieved by a strategy of attrition.[11]

All sources portray Falkenhayn as a loyal, honest and punctilious friend and superior. His positive legacy is his conduct during the war in Palestine in 1917. As his biographer Holger Afflerbach wrote,

An inhuman excess against the Jews in Palestine was prevented only by Falkenhayn's conduct, which against the background of the German history of the 20th century has a special meaning, and one that distinguishes Falkenhayn.

— Afflerbach[12]

• Order of the Black Eagle
• Pour le Merite (16 February 1915)
  • Oak Leaves (3 June 1915)
• Iron Cross (1914)
  • 2nd Class
  • 1st Class
• Commander of the Military Order of Max Joseph (Bavaria)
• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Military Merit with Swords (Bavaria)
• Knight of the Military Order of St. Henry (Saxony)
• Gold Military Merit Medal ("Signum Laudis", Austria-Hungary) (11 October 1916)

• Douaumont Ossuary Verdun

• Ritter, Gerhard (1972). The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany: The Tragedy of Statesmanship–Bethmann Hollweg as War Chancellor [Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk: das Problem des Militarismus in Deutschland. Dritter Band: Die Tragödie der Staatskunst Bethmann Hollweg als Kriegskanzler (1914–1917)]. III (trans. ed.). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press. ISBN 978-0-87024-182-6.
• Watson, Alexander (2008). Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British armies, 1914–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52188-101-2.

• Newspaper clippings about Erich von Falkenhayn in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW