LUDWIG AUGUST THEODOR BECK was the Third Reich’s most enigmatic and tragic senior general. As the first chief of the resurrected German Army General Staff in 1935, he played a leading role in building the post-World War I rump-Reichswehr into the Wehrmacht of World War II. He was a brilliant military thinker and the primary author of the 1933 operations manual Truppenführung (Unit Command ), which remained the foundation of Germany’s war- fighting doctrine until 1945—and beyond. Yet Beck became a staunch anti-Nazi who opposed the politicization of the army and many of Hitler’s plans for large-scale wars of conquest. After retiring in protest in 1938, Beck became one of the leaders of the Widerstand—the German resistance.
He was born in a suburb of Wiesbaden, Germany, on June 29, 1880, a descendent from an old Hessian officer family. In 1898 he joined a Prussian field artillery regiment based in Strasbourg as an offi- cer candidate and received his commis- sion as a 2nd lieutenant the following year. From 1908 to 1911 he attended the highly selective Kriegsakademie (War College), where General Carl von Clause- witz once served as the director. In 1913 he became a full-f ledged member of the General Staff. During World War I he served as the General Staff Officer Ia (operations officer) of two different divi- sions. From 1916 to 1918 he was assigned to the General Staff of Army Group German Crown Prince on the Western Front. When the Armistice went into effect in November 1918, Beck was responsible for planning the orderly and controlled withdrawal of some 90 German divisions back across the Rhine. It was an overwhelming responsibility for a 38-year-old major.
Beck was a cultured man with an intellectual bent.
