Erich von Falkenhayn

I was schooled in the Prussian army—plain habits, exact duty. Colonial service and a posting as military adviser in China taught me how supply and endurance decide campaigns. In 1913 I became Prussian War Minister; after the Marne, on 14 September 1914, the Kaiser placed me at the head of the General Staff.

Confronted with a two-front war, I judged annihilating victories illusory at acceptable cost. I preferred limited aims: contain Russia, strike opportunities in the West, spend shells and men only where the arithmetic favored us.

In December 1915 I set down a plan in a Christmas memorandum: choose a place the French must defend, compel them to come, and break them with artillery. I named it Operation Gericht—judgment. Verdun fixed their reserves and, as I wrote then, would ‘bleed the French Army white.’ It did not yield a decision; it yielded graves. On 29 August 1916 I was dismissed; Hindenburg and Ludendorff assumed command.

I remained a soldier. With the 9th Army, working alongside Mackensen, we defeated Romania and entered Bucharest on 6 December 1916. In 1917 I commanded under the Ottoman flag in Syria–Palestine, reorganizing defenses before British breakthroughs; later I returned to the Eastern Front. After the war I published my account, Die Oberste Heeresleitung 1914–1916, so that my reasoning, and its costs, would be on the record.