Erich Ludendorff - Political Career

Political Career

Ludendorff returned to Germany in February, 1919. The Weimar Republic planned to send him and several other noted German generals (von Mackensen, among others) to reform the National Revolutionary Army of China, but this was cancelled due to the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles and the image problems with selling such a noted general out as a mercenary. Throughout his life, Ludendorff maintained a strong distaste for politicians and found most of them to be lacking an energetic national spirit. However, Ludendorff's political philosophy and outlook on the war brought him into right-wing politics as a German nationalist and won his support that helped to pioneer the Nazi Party.

At Hitler's urging, Ludendorff took part in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The plot failed and in the trial that followed Ludendorff was acquitted. In 1924, he was elected to the Reichstag as a representative of the NSFB (a coalition of the German Völkisch Freedom Party and members of the Nazi Party), serving until 1928. He ran in the 1925 presidential election against former commander Paul von Hindenburg and received just 285,793 votes. Ludendorff's reputation may have been damaged by the Putsch, but he conducted very little campaigning of his own and remained aloof, relying almost entirely on his lasting image as a war hero, an attribute which Hindenburg also possessed.

Tipton notes that Ludendorff was a Social Darwinist who believed that war was the "foundation of human society" (p. 291), and that military dictatorship was the "normal" form of government in a society in which every resource must be mobilized. The historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson notes that after the War, Ludendorff wanted Germany to go to war against all of Europe, and that he became a pagan worshipper of the Nordic god Wotan; he detested not only Jews but also Christianity, which he regarded as a weakening force.