Hindenburg

I

IT was in the natural order of things that Hindenburg should have made his name in the outer Marches of the Prussian frontier, and that throughout the war his eyes should have been turned toward the ancient enemy in the east. For centuries his forbears had wielded their swords in the long struggle between Teuton and Slav, and from Tannenberg onward he was fighting over an ancestral battleground. ‘There were many who bore my name,’ he writes, ‘among the Teutonic knights who went out as Brothers of the Order, or “War Guests,” to fight against heathendom and Poland.’ The fight is not over yet — although at one time Hindenburg himself seemed to have brought it to a final conclusion by gathering Poland and the Baltic provinces into the German realm after the great Drang nach Osten of 1915. More recent generations of these warring ancestors had carried on the old campaign as officers in the Prussian army, and it is quite in line with this family tradition that Reichspräsident von Hindenburg to-day finds the mobilization plans of the German army concentrating upon the Polish frontier.

The family of Beneckendorff, from which Hindenburg descends in the paternal line, had settled before 1300 in western Prussia, and thence, ‘ following the trend of the times,’ as he puts it, had pursued eastward the fortunes of frontier wars and acquired lands in the new Prussia conquered from the Slavs. In 1789, on inheriting the estates of a maternal ancestor, the family added the name of Hindenburg to their own, and by degrees it came to be used in place of the doubled ‘von Beneckendorff und Hindenburg,’ which remains, nevertheless, the full name to-day.

Paul von Hindenburg, who brought the name into renown, was born in 1847 at Posen, where his father, a lieutenant of infantry, was then stationed with his regiment. His boyhood was passed in various garrison towns, and his own military career began at the age of eleven, in the Cadet Academy at Wahlstatt. Soon afterward his father left the service, to settle down on the family estate at Neumark, in the ‘simple, not to say hard, life of a Prussian country gentleman in modest circumstances.’ The son could count on neither wealth nor distinguished family position to help him forward, but Bismarck and von Moltke were then preparing a field of abundant opportunity for diligent and ambitious spirits in the Prussian Cadet Corps. The youthful ‘war guest’ was soon promoted to the school at Berlin, and at the age of seventeen won his commission in a crack Guard regiment, just in time for Bismarck’s next move, the Austrian war of 1866. He was wounded at Königgrätz, and decorated for gallantry in action. In 1870 he was in action only at St. Privat, but served through the campaign as battalion adjutant, still in the Third Foot Guards.

After this brisk beginning, Hindenburg set to work at the serious business of his professional career; he stood successfully for the Kriegsakademie, and three years later duly received his Staff Officer’s certificate. ‘ Full of confidence and sure of himself,’ one of his professors there noted in regard to him, ‘he fixes his own goal and chooses his own path in his professional education. He acquires readily a knowledge of whatever he recognizes as useful, and leaves to one side whatever may not fit in with his ideas or might risk occupying his time and energy to no purpose.’ In 1877, soon after graduation, he was assigned to the General Staff; and thenceforward for more than twenty years most of his time was passed in Staff appointments, as one of the chosen corps of the army.

His first assignments took him for some years to Stettin and to East Prussia, where he served under Verdy du Vernois, a brilliant officer of wide repute in the army, ‘who had,’ he tells us, ‘a most inspiring influence upon me in many directions.’ For one thing, du Vernois was a specialist in matters of the Russian front, and under his guidance Hindenburg gained a first-hand experience in the military problems of the region where he was to make his name later on. These early years, however, were his only period of service in the east; and the familiar statement that he devised the manœuvre of Tannenberg while Commander of this Corps area in peace time is quite in error. In 1885 Hindenburg, now a Major, was transferred to the Great General Staff at Berlin. He was assigned to von Schlieffen’s department, but had the good fortune of a wide variety of employment in other branches, and for five years taught tactics at the Kriegsakademie. One of his pupils recalls him as ‘a most human personality, with a quiet, distinguished manner — more like a friendly elder comrade than a senior officer, and very tolerant of officers whose views differed from his own.’ In 1885 Verdy du Vernois was called in to reorganize the Ministry of War, and summoned to aid him in the task his former subordinate in East Prussia. For some years Hindenburg held an important post in the Department; and after a period in command of an infantry regiment this phase of his general training was completed by three years as Chief of Staff of a Corps. He then received the promotion due an officer who had made good his record in the Staff. In 1900 he was made a division commander, and in 1905 was given command of the Fourth Army Corps, at Magdeburg. Not long afterward — so a high official has revealed to us since the war — his name was included in a list of five generals presented to the Kaiser as qualified to succeed von Schlieffen in the command of the army. The Kaiser took none of them, but chose his own man, the ersatz Moltke.

At Magdeburg, Hindenburg gradually drifted out of the current. He did not enjoy the Kaiser’s favor; Waldersee and von Schlieffen and the generation he had known at Berlin no longer directed the General Staff; and he saw himself being passed over in appointments to the highest posts of the service. Seeing the writing on the wall, in 1911, at the age of sixty-four, Hindenburg applied for his retirement.

‘My military career,’ he writes, ‘had carried me further than I had ever dared to hope’ — and in fact the great Corps commands may fairly be considered as marking a successful peacetime career in the German army. Hindenburg had not become an outstanding figure; he was unknown to the public at large and had not reached the inner circle of those who shaped the course of the army. He was remembered by his own generation as a solidly dependable officer, but seems to have left no very marked reputation behind him in the service. When he was sent out to East Prussia in August 1914, the senior Staff Officer there had never heard of him.

Yet he had gained a thorough professional training and a wide experience in the vast German military organization, ranging from the specialized duties of the Staff and the bureaucratic machinery of the War Department to the actual command of large units. Incidentally, this plain, blunt soldier had seen a good deal of the world and of court life, not only at Berlin, but at the Grand Ducal courts of Baden, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and others, which had been near neighbors of his various commands. It was a phase of experience not provided by the comprehensive training of the General Staff, — one which Ludendorff never enjoyed, — and the time came when it stood Hindenburg in good stead. All in all, this first career proved a not inadequate preparation for the greater rôle which followed.

By August 1914, nevertheless, Hindenburg was not only retired but forgotten. His offer of his services at the outbreak of the war brought no response; and when the bad news from East Prussia revived the recollection of his name at General Headquarters, he had more or less disappeared from the official files. A summons was dispatched to him on the same day as to Ludendorff, but when the latter reported at von Moltke’s headquarters he was told that it was ‘not known where General von Hindenburg was to be found or whether he would accept the post.’ Hindenburg, needless to say, turned up. Ludendorff found him waiting at the Hanover station when their special train rolled in at 4 A.M., and together the great pair, who had never set eyes on each other before, went forward on their journey to Tannenberg. Within a month Hindenburg was the most famous man in Germany.

II

Thus began the ‘happy marriage,’ as Hindenburg terms it, of complementary qualities, that singular combination of talent and character which was to dominate the whole power of the Central Empires and on which was to rest the turn of German fortunes in the war. History offers far greater men than either of them, or, for that matter, than both together; but never were two outstanding figures so completely identified in a single rôle. Even in the after event, when their joint rule had led to utter disaster, Hindenburg bears witness to ‘the harmony of our military and political convictions,’ and to their having been ‘one in thought and action.’ From that standpoint the fusion is complete, and as regards their responsibility for the course taken it is impossible to draw any practical line of distinction. The accurate course is to follow the practice of English military writers and refer to them as Hindenburg-Ludcndorff— a joint personality.

In character and temperament the contrast between the two is obvious enough. Hindenburg is a serenely philosophical person, patient and eventempered and of a genial, buoyant disposition; deferential in manner; untroubled by pride, and without vanity or egotism. Ludendorff is filled with himself: impulsive, arrogant,and domineering, and kept in a perpetual state of incandescence by his craving for power. Never wholly trusted, never quite carrying conviction, he was the more peremptory and downright in asserting his own positive judgment. In the after event he concedes nothing to experience, but digs in on his old positions with a sort of blind, tragic defiance, and turns with redoubled vindictiveness against his opponents — his allies and his own countrymen above all. As a corollary to this boldness and omniscience, we find him, in the extreme point of crisis, hesitant and uncertain as a leader in the field, and collapsing altogether when faced by defeat. The personification of system and method and industry, Ludendorff stood out by quantity rather than by quality; by the amount of work he could do rather than by the fineness of his mind; by force of will rather than by strength of character.

Hindenburg, roughly speaking, is the exact opposite. He has no unpleasant characteristics. Without Ludendorff’s versatility, with a less active mind and much more obvious limitations, he yet seems to have been endowed with the more reliable gifts: common sense, for one thing — of which Ludendorff was wholly innocent. The event proved that Hindenburg’s judgment was not equal to the occasion, but for all that he has natural intuitions, a certain skepticism and a respect for common experience, which give him an instinctive basis of wisdom. His memoirs show that he can conceive another side to a question, and view things with a certain detachment. Like Ludendorff, he cannot go so far as to give credit to his opponents in the field, and he ascribes their success not to generalship but to extraneous circumstances. But the story of his own failure is set forth without rancor or bitterness. It falls far short of frankness, but has at least a sort of philosophical resignation. He is charitable to his disappointing allies, and refers to his personal antagonists — Falkenhayn and Bethmann-Hollweg, for instance — with the respect due fallen enemies.

Remembering the unflinching serenity with which he struck down these and other figures who stood in his way, and the irresistible stride with which he rose within three years from obscurity to supreme power in the State, it would be rash to affirm Hindenburg unselfish or without personal ambition. But his ambition has always been within the bounds of reason, and above all in this general contrast to Ludendorff he shows a character ever under control; both in his conduct and in the way in which he reveals himself there is always something in reserve. Ludendorff, tortuous as he is, bares himself nakedly, especially when there is something to conceal. Hindenburg always gives the desired impression. Furthermore, he discerns with rare shrewdness the impression to be given. For some years the German people swore by him as an invincible military genius, and to-day, with the same conviction, American bankers and Chambers of Commerce assure themselves of his practical, businesslike ambition of restoring the economic welfare of his country.

The two volumes of Aus meinem Leben give, on first reading, an impression of entire candor, of an almost naive ingenuousness of character. There is a disarming simplicity even in his romantic touches and his observance of long-abandoned rituals of German propaganda. But to read immediately afterward Grant’s Personal Memoirs, for instance, produces an impression of appalling contrast: the Teutonic confession stands forth as a pitiful quibble. When one checks it up as a military and political narrative, it is seen to be a most artistic work of fiction. In an offhand and artless literary style this experienced author smooths rough edges, rounds off difficult corners, glides imperceptibly away from dangerous ground, and at a pinch boldly substitutes black for white or white for black, all with the most skillful adroitness and an extraordinary sense of discretion. Even at the end, sitting down to write his story when the game was up and his career — a second time — seemed definitely over, Hindenburg still played the game. Instead of relieving his feelings or striking out in his own defense, he presented the view of things that was useful, judicious, politic. In this lies the real contrast between the two. Ludendorff, although an unsuccessful campaigner, is a military type in the strictest and narrowest and most rigid sense of the word. Hindenburg, a thorough soldier and formed within the experience of his profession, has essentially a political mind, with the objective judgment, the intuitions, and even the instinctive technique of a politician.

III

After this inventory of personal characteristics, we must return to the practical question of Hindenburg’s actual rôle. To put it bluntly, the question is, Did Hindenburg count at all, or was he a mere covering phrase under which Ludendorff was the solid reality? Ludendorff himself accepts the latter hypothesis. In his memoirs he narrates their joint labors in the first person singular and presents the FieldMarshal as an august figurehead in the background, acquiescing automatically — a sort of Great Seal, conferring the formal stamp of authority on Ludendorff s decisions.

As regards the conduct of military operations, this may have been pretty much the fact. The office of Chief of Staff formed the corner stone of the German system of military command in all echelons, and the men selected for it were expected to take charge of things and assume the active responsibility. In his first summons to Ludendorff, von Moltke had written: ‘I know no other man in whom I have such absolute trust. You may be able to save the situation in the East. . . . So answer this new call, which is the greatest compliment that can be paid any soldier.’ Such words leave no doubt as to which chief was relied on to fill the leading rôle; and in taking it Ludendorff only did what was expected of him. Hindenburg clearly understood the status and stood in much the same position as other German Commanding Officers. With due allowance for the personal equation, this relation was the normal rule throughout the army. The peculiarity of this case was that Ludendorff was an exceptional Chief of Staff, and that Hindenburg was able to recognize it and give him a free hand. Chance too played its part: the remoteness of the Eastern command and the course of military events in 1914 combined to stimulate Ludendorff’s initiative and desire for authority, to increase his influence with his own Chief, and to give him a reputation in his own name throughout the army.

In the second phase, when the two rose to the Supreme Command, this position was officially recognized. Ludendorff was offered the post of Second Chief of the General Staff, but chose the title of First Generalquartiermeister as ‘more appropriate.’ Under either title the post was a special creation for the particular case: Ludendorff stood nominally under Hindenburg, but actually beside him. ‘I was expressly assured that I should have joint responsibility in all decisions and measures that might be taken.’ The two were no less closely identified than before, but Ludendorff, in addition to carrying on the immense burden of routine work, now issued orders in his own name and on his own authority.

That he was the one who took decisions was a matter of common knowledge— especially after a weakening illness Hindenburg suffered, in the winter that followed.

On account of the intimate workingrelations between them, it is impossible to discern how far the elder may have influenced his more assertive partner, and it is unlikely that any written documents bear record of it. Quite possibly his influence was far greater than is now supposed; and from their taking a common stand it does not follow that Hindenburg had no mind of his own. His memoirs bear witness to an independent judgment and to a clearer and broader grasp of events than Ludendorff’s feverish version; and in the future it may appear that he by no means merely sat in the office and waited for things to happen. Be that as it may, we find at present little to indicate that in the conduct of operations Hindenburg ever acted on his own, or put forward plans different from Ludendorff’s, or that, whatever his private judgment, he ever failed to support Ludendorff’s line of action with the utmost firmness. To all practical intents and purposes it was Ludendorff who filled the rôle of Commander-inChief. Hindenburg recognizes this fairly enough: ‘I realized that one of my principal tasks was to give free scope to the intellectual powers, the almost superhuman capacity for work, and the untiring resolution of my Chief of Staff, and, if necessary, clear the way for him.’

IV

It may appear, nevertheless, that Hindenburg made the greater and more successful contribution to their common achievement. To ‘clear the way’ for Ludendorff proved to be a vast and ceaseless undertaking, and in achieving it he provided the basis for their whole position. Bluntly, it was Hindenburg who built up the immense authority which Ludendorff exercised.

Even if Ludendorff constituted the military brains of the two, he did not provide a record of military success to carry them into power. Had their career depended upon this, it would have withered at the start. After the brilliant début at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, fortune did not smile on their arms in the East. Their next operations — Augustowo, the advance on Warsaw, and the second invasion of Poland — left a record of disappointment, while the costly winter battle of Masuria registered the failure of their whole strategical project. After this, Falkenhayn took things into his own hands. He cast their plan aside, chose another general and a plan the direct opposite of their own, and launched Mackensen upon the Russian campaign of 1915, which was on the whole the most successful achievement of German arms in the war. In this Hindenburg-Ludendorff played only a subordinate part — and that in so grumbling and insubordinate a fashion as to thwart Falkenhayn’s strategy and allow the Russians to escape disaster. Throughout the campaign they carried on a wrangling altercation with their Commander-in-Chief, which culminated in a defiant, taunting letter from Hindenburg and an appeal to Cæsar. There was a show-down; the Kaiser stood by Falkenhayn, and the latter administered to Hindenburg a reprimand that made him hold his peace for eight months thereafter. Had it been anyone else, there can be little doubt that still more drastic action would have been taken.

But the aureole of Tannenberg was bright enough to obscure these subsequent misadventures. It had descended upon Hindenburg at a time when no other German general had achieved much glory and when it was high time that at least one conquering hero should come forward. A decisive victory in itself, Tannenberg had also served to obscure the failure at the Marne, and under the circumstances neither the Government nor the public was disposed to be critical. It was just after his brisk retreat from Warsaw that Hindenburg was made FieldMarshal. With the most eager official sanction he was formally deified as the national hero of the war, and a population hungering for an idol was encouraged to worship with quaint rites before his colossal wooden image, standing high above the heads of Berliners. To this first flush of prestige was gradually added a very real and lasting popularity. With his reassuring imperturbable manner and the solid German bulk of his square figure, there was something about Hindenburg which took, some quality which appealed to the popular imagination and made him stand out as a human personality amid the official figures of the military hierarchy. The paternal sobriquet given him in early days by the soldiers of Tannenberg spread abroad, and by the people of all Germany he was confidingly acclaimed as unser Hindenburg.

Few leaders would disregard the advantages of such a position, and Hindenburg turned it to prompt effect. His headquarters became a place of pilgrimage for persons of every rank, from the Imperial Chancellor down to newspaper artists, and before long there developed a widespread conviction that the war must be won in the East, and that Hindenburg was the man to win it. This was in fact Hindenburg’s own view, and among the converts he gained to it was the Chancellor himself. Falkenhayn held wholly different strategical convictions, and he complained bitterly that ‘even people in high leading circles joined in the effort to force his hand.’ As a matter of fact, with this popular favor and political support to count on, Hindenburg’s headquarters assumed the character of an independent and rival command, and he himself, as early as January 1915, went so far as to propose to the Kaiser that Falkenhayn be dismissed altogether. For the rest of the year his conduct toward his Chief rested on the confident assumption that he could override him.

Hindenburg failed, as we have seen, for the time being, but in his next attempt he succeeded; and his popular prestige in no way suffered in the meantime. His campaigns, even when strategical failures, could show victorious battles, imposing captures of prisoners, and undeniable advances into Russian territory. They stood out in brilliant contrast to the despairing clamor from the Austrian front. The German public knew nothing of the strategical disappointments or of the wrangle with Falkenhayn, and indeed gave Hindenburg most of the credit for Falkenhayn’s campaign. In that triumphant advance the leading rôle was naturally enough ascribed to the Commander-in-Chief in the East, whereas Falkenhayn managed things from a distance and did not appear in the communiqué. In the winter of 1915—1916 we find Hindenburg boldly summoning the Imperial Chancellor in a letter published in the press — to alleviate the hardships of his soldiers’ families. This open appeal to public favor over the heads of all his superiors was a significant warning that he had become an independent power within the State, stronger in point of popular confidence than any other authority, military or political.

It was in formal recognition of this fact that six months later Hindenburg was called to the Supreme Command.

This decision, though led up to by military events, was the solution of a political crisis and inspired chiefly by political factors. Falkenhayn, before being relieved, had succeeded in meeting the military crisis. But with the long slaughter at Verdun leading only to the agony of the Somme and the terrifying collapse of the Austrian front, in the eyes of the country the whole conduct of the war appeared a tragic record of failure, of which the blame fell back alike upon the High Command, the Government, and the Dynasty. Over against this drab horizon in the west stood out — ex oriente lux — the reassuring figure of the victor of Tannenberg, whom all Germans believed to be an invincible commander. He became the rallyingpoint of all the elements in opposition, all the voices of criticism and complaint against those in control. ‘The nation was convinced that he alone could lead us to victory,’ BethmannHollweg records, and adds, frankly enough, that during the summer he warned the Kaiser in the strongest terms of the ‘ psychological importance’ of this state of things. The Rumanian declaration of war then threw the country into a sudden crise de nerfs. In their weakness and bewilderment, Kaiser and Chancellor alike turned to the strength Hindenburg offered, exactly as a tottering French Cabinet seeks the support of a new leader and a more secure majority. The public, for its part, welcomed him the more eagerly because he was ‘a soldier and not a politician,’ and for this same reason the voters of the Republic turned to him again later on.

V

What followed was not so much a change of strategy as a change of Government. At Headquarters, Hindenburg-Ludendorff took over Falkenhayn’s staff and the strategical dispositions Falkenhayn bequeathed them; and for the year following they conceived nothing more adventurous than to dig in on the Hindenburg Line and send forth the U-boats to win the war. The real change was that the Supreme Command now ruled the Government, and that Hindenburg, instead of Kaiser or Chancellor, came to hold the supreme political power in the State. So open and avowed had been the political motive in turning to the Field-Marshal that the Chancellor at once put upon him the responsibility for the great issue then facing Germany, announcing to the Reichstag that unrestricted submarine warfare ‘ would depend on the declaration of the Field-Marshal — that is to say, would start when the Field-Marshal wished it to start.’ He could hardly complain that Hindenburg took him at his word and presently asserted his wish over the Chancellor’s opposition. Fortified by Hindenburg’s presence, the country that had been thrown into a nervous crisis six months before by Rumania entering the field now accepted war with America without a tremor. Bethmann-Hollweg was of course surprised to find he had turned from King Log to King Stork. He had, as Ludendorff says, ‘brought the Supreme Command into politics in order to support the Government.’ But neither of the two commanders had any intention of accepting such a rôle. Bankrupt politically, the Government had put itself in their hands, and forthwith they took it over. ‘The conduct of military operations had been entrusted to me,’Hindenburg explains, ‘and for my task I needed all the resources of the Fatherland’; and with the same Olympian simplicity he proceeded to take them — not merely men and things, but power and political authority. With the Kaiser, Chancellor, and Reichstag sometimes acquiescing, sometimes in impotent opposition, he and Ludendorff gradually took over the whole control of affairs at home and abroad, determining not only the conduct of the war, but the ends for which the war was waged.

In all this Ludendorff was no doubt the inspiring force and the controlling will: no other human being would have conceived gathering to himself such vast responsibilities. But again it was Hindenburg who put the power into Ludendorff’s hands, and, what was still more difficult, maintained it there. Ludendorff himself was forever destroying his authority by the way he used it; his peremptory, interfering manner aroused universal resentment, and bound him to what the Crown Prince terms ‘an unceasing struggle amid untold antagonisms.’ Hated and distrusted in governmental circles as by the working class, long before the end his retirement would have given widespread relief. He held his ground by the threat that the Field-Marshal would stand or fall with him, and in all quarters it was accepted that Hindenburg’s resignation would have been a catastrophe.

Hindenburg, on the other hand, was patient, persuasive, conciliatory, and made invariably a good impression. When distinguished personages visited Headquarters, he was, so to speak, the life of the party; and he sent away, soothed and reassured, those who had heard Ludendorff speak out with rasping bluntness. At Berlin he carried his points without, as he puts it, ‘getting mixed up in party wrangles or even being appropriated by one of the existing parties,’ for with his shrewd political instinct he gathered all parties behind him with serene impartiality. His political influence was all the greater because it was masked by his general prestige and popularity, and on all sides he was given the credit of not mixing in politics. Avoiding constant assertion of himself, he thus became a sort of final reserve in the endless struggle waged against the Government, intervening only when necessary, and then with irresistible effect. In controverting the common view that Hindenburg played merely a decorative part, the Crown Prince observes: ‘His composure . . . communicated itself to everyone who came into contact with him, convinced everyone that the fate of the armies was well cared for in that calm, firm hand, watched over by those earnest, yet ever friendly eyes. When he spoke, one was impressed by the fluency of his measured, thoughtful, and deliberate speech. The conviction was confirmed that the speaker was absolute master of the situation and expressed views that might be thoroughly relied on.’ He was, in fact, master of the situation, and his views were relied on. Not only the mainstay of the Ludendorff régime, but the corner stone of popular faith and confidence in the war, Hindenburg was a figurehead to the same degree as is Mr. Coolidge in the present Administration.

This taking over control by the Supreme Command is commonly referred to as an unconstitutional act of force, like the coup d’état of some military junta. It was, quite the contrary, a straight political operation. Hindenburg was able to brush aside the Kaiser and override an unwilling Government, not because he had the army in his hand, but because in the last resort the German people were behind him. The impotence of politicians and of the political Government was due to the fact that the FieldMarshal had beaten them at their own game. He could appeal over the heads of the Government to the Reichstag, and over the Reichstag to the country; and in the end he succeeded in leading the country to reverse its own convictions and follow him.

When the Reichstag, echoing the general despair of 1917, passed its famous resolutions for peace without annexations or indemnities, Hindenburg-Ludendorff calmly dismissed the Chancellor, brought the peace movement to an abrupt halt, vetoed the Government’s decision to relinquish Belgium, and proceeded to annex the Baltic States and Poland. With this trophy in their hands, they put squarely before the country the programme they had already forced upon the Government: one more year of battle for the sake of complete victory and an all-German peace, generous indemnities and wholesale annexations of territory both to west and east.

Colonel Buchan has recorded for us the terms of this singular bargain. ‘Ludendorff and Hindenburg met the Reichstag in secret session and explained their plan. They promised victory, complete and absolute victory in the field, before the autumn. . . . But a price must be paid for such losses. The Army Chiefs put it at a million German losses; on reconsideration, they increased their estimate to a million and a half.’

Those about to die did not take part in the vote, but the Reichstag gave its blessing. Every party, even the Socialists, accepted this brilliant prospectus. Wilson or Clemenceau never surpassed this feat of Hindenburg’s in uniting the country behind him; and the wave of confident exultation that surged through the German people was a final tribute to his prowess as a popular leader. This point settled, Hindenburg and Ludendorff strode forth together to the Kaiserschlacht — the battle of battles.

There remained in opposition, it is true, Sir Douglas Haig — and Haig always could hold his own against skillful politicians.

VI

In the eight months’ military catastrophe that followed, we find no trace of Hindenburg taking any distinguishable part. He had cleared the way for Ludendorff, once for all, and in this final trial stood loyally beside him. But he could not make Ludendorff greater than he was. Ludendorff failed, and both together were not great enough for this occasion. As defeat gradually rose up before them, Hindenburg alone stood the test of character, justifying fully the instinct which had led Germans to put their trust in the one rather than the other; few in the end unser Hindenburg stayed to face the music, while the iron Ludendorff skipped the country.

Only toward the final collapse does Hindenburg emerge in his own person, and in this extreme crisis he reveals not only soundness of character but also his habitual political sense of realities. To the very last Ludendorff brandished the threat that the FieldMarshal would stand or fall beside him, but when the time came the FieldMarshal stood pat; he accepted with businesslike calm the departure of his alter ego, and apparently has never seen him since. In the same practical spirit he watched the Kaiser walk the plank a fortnight later. He himself brought to an end the last flutterings of that distracted monarch with the curt message that ‘His Majesty must start for Holland without delay.’ For one with his convictions it was a strange mission, but, after all, it was only a logical final step. Long before this he himself had stripped the last shreds of authority from ‘my all-highest War Lord, Emperor, King, and Master.’

Although the sudden volatilization of the Hohenzollerns and the appearance of a Council of Commissioners of the People in their place upset for Hindenburg the whole scheme of things, he wasted no time in a futile protest against facts. With the eyes of the army turning to him for guidance, he instantly placed himself under the orders of the new Government and stayed at his post, broadcasting an appeal to the troops to stand by him.

No one thought of rejecting him. Of all the pillars of the old régime, Hindenburg alone retained his credit after the fall. The Socialist Chancellor of an insurrectionary Republic grasped at his support no less eagerly than Bethmann-Hollweg and the Kaiser had done two years before. At a time when things were touch-and-go, it made all the difference; and in the eyes not only of his brother officers but of some millions of bewildered countrymen his allegiance to a perilous and rickety status quo gave it the necessary air of legitimacy. Nor was Hindenburg’s contribution to the Republic confined to this formal allegiance. When the Kaiser had imagined wild projects of leading the army home to fight the Revolution, the FieldMarshal had refused flatly to make war upon Germans; but when Ebert called for help he sent ten of his best divisions on this same mission. By the Flammenwerfer and machine-guns of these Hindenburg-Republicans, in grim street fighting, the German people affirmed their devotion to the democratic régime over which he presides to-day. The Field-Marshal himself was entrusted with the command on the Eastern front, where once more had arisen the greatest threat of danger. Here, on his old front, his war record ended; and for the second time he settled down on the retired list at Hanover.

His third career — on which he has now entered — is less paradoxical than it first appeared to an astonished world. Whatever his sympathies, and for all his protesting affirmations of loyalty to the Hohenzollerns, at the critical moment he did his best to make the new régime a fact, a thing of substance and authority rather than a chaotic project. Royalist as he is, from the standpoint of the Republic Hindenburg can hardly be called a convert of the last hour, or an unfamiliar outsider. In the duties assigned him by the Constitution his hand is pretty thoroughly practised. Consultations with refractory Ministers, negotiations with party leaders and Reichstag committees, Ministerial crises — all these are an old story: he has turned Chancellors out of office himself. President of the Reich, he is formally installed at the head of a State of which he was the ruler de facto during a far more difficult period, and looks out over a political background that must be strangely familiar.