Erich Georg von Falkenhayn

Erich Georg von Falkenhayn (1861–1922) was a career Prussian officer who rose to the top of the German military hierarchy during the First World War. A veteran of colonial service and a military adviser in China, he became Prussian Minister of War in 1913 and, after the Battle of the Marne, succeeded Helmuth von Moltke the Younger as Chief of the General Staff (OHL) in September 1914.

Confronted with a two-front war, Falkenhayn sought limited aims and a strategy of attrition rather than sweeping annihilation. He argued that Germany could not force a decisive breakthrough in the West at acceptable cost and instead aimed to exhaust enemy manpower and will, while containing Russia and exploiting opportunities as they arose.

His name is most closely linked to Verdun (1916), where he launched Operation Gericht intending to draw the French Army into a battle of attrition and “bleed it white.” Though Verdun fixed vast Allied resources and inflicted heavy casualties, the offensive failed to achieve a strategic decision and became a symbol of the grinding, industrial slaughter of the war. Mounting losses and political pressure culminated in his dismissal on 29 August 1916, when Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff assumed supreme command.

Falkenhayn remained a capable field commander. He led the German 9th Army in the Romanian campaign of 1916, coordinating with August von Mackensen to defeat Romanian forces, occupy much of the country, and capture Bucharest. In 1917 he took command of Army Group F in Palestine under the Ottoman alliance, reorganizing defenses although ultimately outmatched by British offensives; he was later reassigned to command on the Eastern Front.

After the war, Falkenhayn published a detailed apologia and analysis of his tenure, Die Oberste Heeresleitung 1914–1916 in ihren wichtigsten Entschlüssen (1920), defending his strategic choices while acknowledging their human and political costs. He died in Potsdam in 1922, remembered as a disciplined, austere strategist whose advocacy of attrition shaped—and scarred—the conduct of modern warfare.

Key Legacies

• Architect of the Verdun strategy and proponent of attrition warfare.
• Operational leadership in the Romanian campaign (1916) leading to major Central Powers gains.
• Influential postwar memoir offering an insider’s account of German high command.