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(11.09.1861 - 08.04.1922) place of birth: Burg Belchau - Graudenz Westpreußen (Grydziadz, PL) Königreich Preußen: Kriegsminister, Generalstabschef, General der Infanterie Born to an impoverished but aristocratic Junker family in West Prussia (parents: Fedor von Falkenhayn and Franziska von Rosenberg), young Erich was commissioned as a second lieutenant by age 19. Twenty years later, in the early 1900s, Major von Falkenhayn found himself serving in China as a military instructor and on Count von Waldersee's general staff during the Boxer Rebellion. A favorite of Wilhelm II -- he had been one of young Crown Prince Willy's military instructors -- Falkenhayn returned to Germany, worked his way up through several staff positions and, one year prior to war's outbreak, was named Prussian War Minister. Following the Marne disaster during the first month of the war, Falkenhayn was selected to replace von Moltke as Chief of General Staff. He simultaneously held this position and that of Prussian War Minister for the next five months. Highly intelligent, but indecisive and aloof, his push for unrestricted submarine warfare brought him into conflict with Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. He also developed the perspective that the Western Front was the most crucial area of fighting, bringing him into bitter conflict with the heroes of the East, von Hindenburg and Ludendorff. He understood early on, however, that the war was a probably a lost cause, compelling him in 1916 to devise the desperate plan that would become the debacle of Verdun. Because of this, he was replaced by von Hindenburg as Chief of Staff, and thereafter demoted to commander the Ninth Army, a force which overran Romania within nine weeks. He was then transferred to Palestine to command Army Group Yildirim (1917-18) and recapture Mesopotamia, but his failure to halt General Allenby there saw him replaced by the capable Liman von Sanders and sent to the relatively obscure command of the Tenth Army in Lithuania, where he spent the last six months of the war. During the war, Falkenhayn was decorated with the Pour le Merite and the Schwarzer Adler-Orden (Order of the Black Eagle), Prussia's highest honor for chivalry. Soon after the war, General of Infantry von Falkenhayn went into retirement and secluded himself at Schloß Lindstedt near Potsdam in order to pen his memoirs. Before dying there on 8 April 1922, he wrote "Supreme Army Command 1914-1916 and its Most Noteworthy Decisions" and "The Ninth Army and its Campaigns Against the Romanians and Russians, 1916-1917". Von Falkenhayn's elder brother Eugen also served during the war as a corps-level commander. He died on 8 April 1922 in Lindsted and is buried at the Bornstedter Friedhof near Schloß Sanssouci in Potsdam.
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