Hindenburg as Reichspräsident of the Weimar Republic

Abstract

When infantry general Paul von Beneckendorff von Hindenburg was appointed commander of the Eigth Army in East Prussia on 22 August 1914, he was a man of sixty-seven years and had been taken from retirement for his new position. With this begins his twenty-year period of historical importance. Back in 1905 he was already being considered Schlieffen’s successor, and he should have become Prussian War Minister in 1909. Hindenburg was the son of a Brandenburg officer and his wife, a doctor’s daughter; he was born in Posen, grew up in Neudeck (West Prussia) and Glogau (Silesia), and was trained in cadet schools in Wahlstatt and Berlin. He took part in the wars of 1866 and 1870–1 with the Third Prussian Guard Regiment, and he was present at the proclamation of the Kaiser in Versailles in 1871. At the age of thirty he was ordered into the General Staff (Grossen Generalstab), and ten years later Count Schlieffen provided the following character sketch of him: ‘Outstanding General Staff officer, who commands attention in a most advantageous manner by his lively interest in the service, his industrious activity, and his beneficial effect on younger officers. He is of a serious and energetic character, and he has a good understanding and quick comprehension.’ Count Waldersee, the later ‘World Marshal’, added, ‘distinguished and able General Staff officer, already suited to become Chief of the General Staff’. Old Fieldmarshal Moltke concluded, ‘Obviously.’ In 1898 Schlieffen gave Hindenburg the task of testing the vulnerability of the eastern border to Russian attack. Other facets of his pre-1914 career include troop command (from 1903 as commander of the Fourth Army Corps), teaching tactics at the Military Academy, and serving as a department chief in the War Ministry. All this requires special emphasis, because of widespread later misrepresentation of his early career.

Lecture delivered at Kansas University, Lawrence, in 1960; chaired by Professor Oswald P. Backus III, Department of History.