Dragonslayer : : The Legend of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich / / Jay Lockenour.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Lockenour, Jay,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.) :; 22 b&w halftones, 2 maps

In this fascinating biography of the infamous ideologue Erich Ludendorff, Jay Lockenour complicates the classic depiction of this German World War I hero. Erich Ludendorff created for himself a persona that secured his place as one of the most prominent (and despicable) Germans of the twentieth century. With boundless energy and an obsession with detail, Ludendorff ascended to power and solidified a stable, public position among Germany's most influential. Between 1914 and his death in 1937, he was a war hero, a dictator, a right-wing activist, a failed putschist, a presidential candidate, a publisher, and a would-be prophet. He guided Germany's effort in the Great War between 1916 and 1918 and, importantly, set the tone for a politics of victimhood and revenge in the post-war era. Dragonslayer explores Ludendorff's life after 1918, arguing that the strange or unhinged personal traits most historians attribute to mental collapse were, in fact, integral to Ludendorff's political strategy. Lockenour asserts that Ludendorff patterned himself, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, on the dragon-slaying hero of Germanic mythology, Siegfried, hero of epic poem, the Niebelungenlied, and much admired by German nationalists. The symbolic power of this myth allowed Ludendorff to embody many Germans' fantasies of revenge after defeat in 1918, keeping him relevant to political discourse despite his failure to hold high office or cultivate a mass following post-World War I.Lockenour reveals the influence that Ludendorff's postwar career had on Germany's political culture and radical right during this tumultuous era. It is a tale as fabulist as fiction.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1. Mythic Life -- 2. Victor of Liège and Tannenberg -- 3. The Feldherr -- 4. Putschist -- 5. Prophet: Tannenberg League and Deutsche Gotterkenntnis -- 6. Duelist: Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Hitler -- 7. Ludendorff in the Third Reich -- 8. Siegfried’s Death -- Epilogue: Kriemhild’s Revenge -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index