Last Years and Death
After 1928, Ludendorff went into retirement, having fallen out with the Nazi party. He no longer approved of Hitler and began to regard him as just another manipulative politician, and perhaps worse. On the occasion of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor by President Hindenburg, Ludendorff told him, “I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done.”
In his later years, Ludendorff went into a relative seclusion with his second wife, Mathilde von Kemnitz (1874–1966), writing several books and leading the Tannenbergbund. He concluded that the world's problems were the result of Christians (especially of the Jesuits and Catholicism), Jews, and Freemasons. Together with Mathilde, he founded the de:Bund für Gotteserkenntnis (German) (Society for the Knowledge of God), a small and rather obscure esoterical society of Theists that survives to this day.
In an attempt to regain Ludendorff's favor, Hitler paid Ludendorff an unannounced visit to his home on Ludendorff's birthday in 1935 and offered to make him a field marshal if he came back into politics with the Nazi party. Infuriated, Ludendorff allegedly replied: "A field marshal is born, not made!" Ludendorff died in Tutzing on 20 December 1937 at age 72. He was given – against his explicit wishes – a state funeral attended by Hitler, who declined to speak at his eulogy. He was buried in the Neuer Friedhof in Tutzing.
Read more about this topic: Erich Ludendorff
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