The conflict between German Generals Falkenhayn and Ludendorff was over a lot more than military policy – indeed Falkenhayn made some horrible mistakes in military tactics, for example allowing himself to be pushed into continuing the Verdun offensive much longer than he intended (at least much longer than he later claimed had been his original intention), and insisting that General Fritz Von Below recapture any position he lost to the British in the Somme offensive – an order that led to terrible German casualties.
The conflict may have been presented as a military one (between the “Westerner” Falkenhayn and the “Easterner” Lundendorff ) over whether to concentrate German military resources in the West or the East – but it was really a lot more than a dispute over military policy. Nor was it really a dispute over the form of government – as neither Falkenhayn or Ludendorff was a democrat. It was fundamentally a MORAL (ethical) dispute.
General Lundendorff had absorbed (even more than Kaiser Wilhelm II had) the moral relativism and historicism that had become fashionable in the German elite in the decades running up to the First World War – ideas that can be traced all the way back to (in their different ways) such philosophers as Hegel and (far more) Fichte, whereas General Falkenhayn still clung to concepts of universal justice (morality) and rejected such things as the extermination or enslavement of whole races, and the destruction of historic civilisations such as that of Russia. Lundendorff, and those who thought like him, regarded Falkenhayn as hopelessly reactionary – for example thinking in terms of making peace with Russia on terms favourable to Germany, rather than destroying Russia and using the population as slaves. In the Middle East Falkenhayn came to hear of the Ottoman Turk plan to destroy the Jews (as the Armenian Christians had been destroyed), and he was horrified by the plan and worked to frustrate it. Advanced and Progressive thinkers, such as Ludnedorff, had great contempt for Reactionaries such as Falkenhayn who did not realise that ideas of universal justice and personal honour were “myths” only believed in by silly schoolgirls. Falkenhayn even took Christianity seriously, to Lundendorff this was clearly the mark of an inferior and uneducated mind. And Falkenhayn, for his part, came to think that his country (the Germany that he so loved) was under the influence of monsters – although while their plans to exterminate or enslave whole races and to control (in utter tyranny) every aspect of peacetime (not just wartime) life remained theoretical, he never had to make the final break.
The conflict continued into the next generation. Famously Admiral Canaris (head of German military intelligence) became an enemy of the National Socialists – not because he was a believer in a democratic form of government, but because he believed that the Nazis were a moral outrage violating the most basic principles of universal truth and justice. But the point of view in Germany opposed to men such as Admiral Canaris. the point of view that made itself felt in such things as the German Declaration of War upon France in 1914 – a pack of lies, and (perhaps more importantly) a deliberately OBVIOUS pack of lies (in order to make a philosophical point – as the President of France, a philosopher, noticed at once), had long had nothing but contempt for the very idea of universal objective truth and justice.
As the National Socialists put it with contempt “truth and justice” was the aim of the silly Superman comic produced by American Jews (no wonder, the Nazis said, the full line was “Truth, Justice and the American Way” – with the “American Way” really being the “Jewish Way”). But to men such as Admiral Canaris the alternative to “truth and justice” that the Nazis offered was Lies and Injustice. So Admiral Canaris did such things as help convince the Franco government in Spain NOT to allow the Germans to take Gibraltar – which, if it had been taken, would have closed the Mediterranean Sea to the British and led to the collapse of the British position in the Middle East making British defeat in the general war essentially inevitable. To Admiral Canaris the victory of the National Socialists would mean the end of Christian civilisation and of the memory of Classical Civilisation (of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius and ….) as well. Like Winston Churchill Admiral Canaris believed that victory for the Nazis would mean a new Dark Age – made worse, and more long lasting, by a “perverted science”. Some high ranking German officers came to feel the same way – among them General Henning Von Tresckow the son in law of the late General Falkenhayn.
Again Henning Von Tresckow was not someone obsessed with democracy – far from it, he was a Prussian military officer (although one with strong independence of mind and wide intellectual interests). He wanted Germany to be strong and loved the military (the balance between obedience and freedom was how he viewed it – with freedom of thought being the vital basis for informed consent and discipline) – but he came to see the National Socialists and the long term elements in German (and non-German) thought that they represented as a deadly threat to truth and justice – which he insisted were real things, not just words in an American comic or a British speech. For example the Nazi plans to exterminate or enslave whole races horrified him – something would have to be done, even if it meant the cost of his own life.
Henning Von Tresckow was always of the opinion that there was a strong possibility that Operation Valkyrie (the plan to kill Mr Hitler) would fail. That it would end in his own death and the death of his friends. However, he held that even failure was of great moral importance – “God told Abraham that if ten just men could be found in Sodom he would spare the city”. Men such as Von Tresckow wished Germany and the Germans to not just be remembered for mass murder. He wished to make, if need be, a blood sacrifice for truth and justice – the only blood he could rightfully offer, his own blood. A sign that at least some Germans could overcome the evil in society and the evil in themselves – the evil in all of us, German and non German alike. The “philosophy” of Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau (and so many others) does not understand such INDIVIDUALS. Does not understand the capacity of the individual human person (the soul – in the religious or non religious sense) to both find what is true and morally right, objectively true and morally right – and to freely CHOOSE to do what is morally right against the desire in all of us to do what is easy, easy and vile. To give in to the evil in society and the evil in ourselves.