The theme of stab-in-the-back was articulated in 1919 most prominently by General Erich Ludendorff, one of the two top German commanders.

The transition to Erich Honecker ( General Secretary from 1971 to 1989 ) led to a change in the direction of national policy and efforts by the Politburo to pay closer attention to the grievances of the proletariat.

German General Erich Ludendorff later calls this the " black day of the German Army.

Erich Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994 ) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well after Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976.

As Germany's Chief of the General Staff from 1916, he and his deputy, Erich Ludendorff, rose in the German public's esteem until Hindenburg came to eclipse the Kaiser himself.

General Erich Ludendorff,

Although the battle actually took place close to Allenstein ( Olsztyn ), General Erich Ludendorff's aide, Colonel Max Hoffmann, suggested naming it after Tannenberg, in the interest of Pan-German ideology, to counter the defeat of the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald ( Tannenberg ) in 1410 by the Poles, Lithuanians and Tatars.

General Erich von Falkenhayn, agitated by the additional losses in one sector of the Somme front, sacked the Chief of Staff of the Second Army and replaced him with Colonel Fritz von Lossberg, his operations officer.

On 29 August the German Chief of the General Staff, Erich Falkenhayn, was replaced by General Paul von Hindenburg, with General Erich Ludendorff as his deputy, but in effect the operational commander.

His regiment became part of the German 1st Light Division under General Erich Hoepner, who had taken part in the plans for the September 1938 German Resistance coup, cut short by Hitler's unexpected diplomatic success in the Munich Agreement.

General Erich Ludendorff, Generalquartiermeister and joint head ( with von Hindenburg ) of Germany's war effort, stated that Russian communist elements working against the Tsar had betrayed Kitchener's travel plans to Germany.

As early as April 1915, the Polish Border Strip plan against Poland, which was first suggested by General Erich Ludendorff in 1914, was approved as a German war aim by the Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg.

Following the failed Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November 1923, Röhm, Hitler, General Erich Ludendorff, Lt-Colonel Kriebel and six others were tried in February 1924 on charges of treason.

His chief of staff was General Erich von Manstein, his chief of operations Colonel Günther Blumentritt.

By July 1940 Hitler was turning his mind to the invasion of the Soviet Union, commissioning General Erich Marcks to prepare preliminary plans.

After Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff replaced the more ineffectual Erich von Falkenhayn at the General Staff in the summer of 1916, his hopes for American President Woodrow Wilson's mediation at the end of 1916 came to nothing, and, over Bethmann Hollweg's objections, Hindenburg and Ludendorff forced the adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare in March 1917, which led to the United States's entry into the war the next month.

General Erich Ludendorff, a disciple of Schlieffen who applied his teachings of encirclement in the Battle of Tannenberg, once famously christened Schlieffen as " one of the greatest soldiers ever.

The 6. Panzer ended the campaign as a part of General Erich Höpner's Panzergruppe 4, acting as a reserve for Army Group Centre forces attempting to hold the line against fierce Soviet counterattacks.

It proposed both Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff as ' people's emperors ' of a military state whose legitimacy was based upon war and war aims instead of parliamentary government of the empire.

In the Battle of Abensberg on 19 – 20 April 1809, Napoleon gained a significant victory over the Austrians under Archduke Louis of Austria and General Johann von Hiller.

* 1914 – World War I: Battle of Stallupönen – The German army of General Hermann von François defeats the Russian force commanded by Paul von Rennenkampf near modern-day Nesterov, Russia.

* Also the Bavarian Major General and War Minister Moritz Ritter von Spies ( 1805 – 1862 ) was born in Ansbach.

He entered the Kriegsakademie ( also cited as " The German War School ," the " Military Academy in Berlin ," and the " Prussian Military Academy ") in Berlin in 1801 ( age 21 ), studied the writings of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and won the regard of General Gerhard von Scharnhorst, the future first chief of staff of the new Prussian Army ( appointed 1809 ).

In the latter part of the war, Germany was practically a military dictatorship, with the Supreme High Command ( German: OHL, " Oberste Heeresleitung ") and General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as commander-in-chief advising the Kaiser.

On November 18, von Hindenburg testified in front of this parliamentary commission, and cited a December 17, 1918 Neue Zürcher Zeitung article that summarized two earlier articles in the Daily Mail by British General Frederick Barton Maurice with the phrase that the German army had been ' dagger-stabbed from behind by the civilian populace ' (" von der Zivilbevölkerung von hinten erdolcht .").

* 1943 – World War II: Tunisia Campaign – General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim's Fifth Panzer Army launches a concerted attack against Allied positions in Tunisia.

* Ludolf von Alvensleben SS General

* Freiherr Karl von Eberstein SS General

He recruited regulars and assigned Baron and General Friedrich von Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff, to train them.

The next spring, however, the army emerged from Valley Forge in good order, thanks in part to a full-scale training program supervised by General von Steuben.

This image seems to have been popularized by the assassination of the former Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher in 1934.

General von Schleicher and his wife were gunned down in their Berlin home by three men dressed in black trench coats and wearing black fedoras.

The killers of General von Schleicher were widely believed to have been Gestapo men.

At a press conference held later the same day, Hermann Göring was asked by foreign correspondents to respond to a hot rumour that General von Schleicher had been murdered in his home.

Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defence, a position held by conservative General Werner von Blomberg.

German General Lothar von Trotha implemented an extermination policy at the Battle of Waterberg, which drove the Herero west of the Kalahari Desert.

He did not have authority over the 400, 000 regular German Army forces stationed in Norway which were the command of General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, but he did command a personal force of around 6, 000 men, of whom 800 were part of the secret police.

Their change of heart occurred after General Kurt von Schleicher ousted von Papen in December 1932.

Of the two references, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, the German military attaché in London, commented that Ribbentrop had been a brave soldier in World War I, while the wife of the Italian Ambassador to Germany, Elisabetta Cerruti, called Ribbentrop " one of the most diverting of the Nazis ".

Besides appointing Weizsäcker State Secretary, Ribbentrop fired Ulrich von Hassell as Ambassador to Italy and replaced him with Mackensen, appointed Herbert von Dirksen to London to serve as his successor as Ambassador to Britain and prompted the military attaché in Tokyo General Eugen Ott to Ambassador to replace Dirksen.

The Germans were aided by the element of surprise, as Stavka had not expected the German offensive to begin so soon, while General Vasilevsky was unable to detach the 2nd Guards Army to use it as a blocking force against Manstein's spearheads.

However, it was quickly reformed and used by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's Operation Winter Storm efforts to relieve General Friedrich Paulus ' trapped Sixth Army still in Stalingrad.