WI: Ludendorff joins the Nazi party
- Thread starter Silver01
- Start date
wasnt he alrady a radical by 1930s just a diferent type of rigth wing radical
Garrison
Donor
Yes but like many other of his class and background he looked down on Hitler and the Nazi's.
I mean, Ludendorff was one of the leaders of the Beer Hall Putsch. It's why we call it the Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch in Germany. OTL Ludendorff was a far-right nutjob...he was just terrible at politics. After the NSDAP was banned following the failed coup, he was active in their splinter groups. He led the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (German Folkish Freedom Party) together with Gregor Strasser and Albrecht von Graefe, and was a Reichstag delegate for the Nationalsoziastische Freiheitspartei (National Socialist Freedom Party) from 1924 to 1928.
In 1925 he ran for Reich President...which meant he was running against Hindenburg. That helped kill his career. Then he got married, and his new wife Mathilde introduced him to all manners of absurd right-wing, neo-pagan and anti-Christian clap trap.
Ludendorff became convinced that he'd lost the election due to a malignant conspiracy composed of Jesuits, the Catholic Church, freemasons, the Comintern, the Dalai Lama and 'world Jewry'. This cabal was also supposedly responsible for the outbreak of World War One, the Russian Revolution, the November Revolution in Germany and the Treaty of Versailles. Later he also decided that Hitler, and the Nazi party were tools of the same conspiracy.
Ludendorff ended up being a completely marginal figure on the far-right outside of a couple cultists. And because he'd publicly criticised Hindenburg and claimed that he, not the field marshal, had been the true 'military genius', the old conservatives didn't like him either. And so he ended up losing out to a 'Bohemian corporal' he looked down on.
After the Nazis came to power and his cult (the Tannenbergbund) was banned, Ludendorff changed his tune and became more conciliatory to the Nazis. Indeed, his Bund für deutsche Gotterkenntnis was legalised. Hitler offered to make him a field marshal and give him an estate, but Ludendorff refused because he didn't want to receive the title from a mere corporal. It would've just been ceremonial anyway.
In 1925 he ran for Reich President...which meant he was running against Hindenburg. That helped kill his career. Then he got married, and his new wife Mathilde introduced him to all manners of absurd right-wing, neo-pagan and anti-Christian clap trap.
Ludendorff became convinced that he'd lost the election due to a malignant conspiracy composed of Jesuits, the Catholic Church, freemasons, the Comintern, the Dalai Lama and 'world Jewry'. This cabal was also supposedly responsible for the outbreak of World War One, the Russian Revolution, the November Revolution in Germany and the Treaty of Versailles. Later he also decided that Hitler, and the Nazi party were tools of the same conspiracy.
Ludendorff ended up being a completely marginal figure on the far-right outside of a couple cultists. And because he'd publicly criticised Hindenburg and claimed that he, not the field marshal, had been the true 'military genius', the old conservatives didn't like him either. And so he ended up losing out to a 'Bohemian corporal' he looked down on.
After the Nazis came to power and his cult (the Tannenbergbund) was banned, Ludendorff changed his tune and became more conciliatory to the Nazis. Indeed, his Bund für deutsche Gotterkenntnis was legalised. Hitler offered to make him a field marshal and give him an estate, but Ludendorff refused because he didn't want to receive the title from a mere corporal. It would've just been ceremonial anyway.
is this not true? i always though tannenberg was luddendorff
so in a way luddendorf joinin the nazis changes little? if that is the case would it change something if he joined the nazis and then lived a little longer say till 1940? would he be given a command or not
Yes, between the two of them, Ludendorff was the one with the ideas, but it was not politic to say that. See, Hindenburg was the public face of the duo. Indeed, he even got his own cult of personality. His popularity surpassed that of the Kaiser. Successes were attributed to him, failures blamed on other people. The Hindenburg cult was so successful it survived the war, when the terrible two managed to blame everything that had gone wrong on 'backstabbers'. So when Ludendorff turned on Hindenburg, he committed a big faux pas.
Ludendorff was very unhappy when Hindenburg entered the election for Reich President, and broke off relatons with him. He even refused to stand besides his former boss at the dedication of the Tannenberg memorial, and aggressively attacked him in the press with hate-filled tirades. None of this was a good look.
As for Ludendorff, in OTL he died of liver cancer in 1937. By then he was 72 years old. I don't think butterflies would change that much. In OTL Hitler was interested in using for propaganda purposes after he'd consolidated power. But assuming everything else remains the same, Ludendorff agreeing to that will probably change little.
That said, I'm not ruling out an alternate scenario where Ludendorff doesn't become a joke, though I don't think that's compatible with a scenario where everything else stays the same. He was originally quite important in the far right. Back then, the Nazi party was just one small fish in a big pond. Ludendorff's 60th birthday was celebrated by massed bands and a parade, and that was after the failed coup. It's been speculated that Hitler encouraged Ludendorff to run for president in order to undermine him. It certainly damaged his prospects quite seriously (he got 1.1 per cent of the vote), as did writing angry tirades against Hindenburg and going off the deep end to a point where even Alfred Rosenberg, who's the exact opposite of a poster child of lucidity, thought he was weird (pot, kettle, I know!).
Last edited:
I think he will not be as important he will probably be told to keep down more wacky paganist theories, maybe he will be given control of some army but he died in 1937 IOTL,
He was as extreme in his beliefs, maybe more
kham_coc
Banned
That's actually a more interesting PoD, what if he had good relations with Hindenburg, and Hindenburg endorsed him instead of running for reelection?
Historians have told the story about Ludendorf visiting the headquarters of the Battle of Tannenberg in the late 1920s or early 1930s and showing Hindenburg's bed to tourists, saying: "In this bed Hindenburg slept before, during and after the battle" Hinting that Hindenburg was already in 1914 unfit to lead.
I thought that was Max Hoffman, when he was an instructor after WWI... he never shied away from taking the occasional pot-shot at the Dynamic Duo
