Paul von Hindenburg

Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg.}} (2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934), known as simply Paul von Hindenburg,.}} was an Imperial German military officer and statesman who led the Imperial German Army as Chief of the Great General Staff during World War I (1914-1918). and later became the second president of Germany from 1925 until his death in August 1934. He played a key role in the Nazi seizure of power the year before his death in January 1933, when under pressure from advisers, he appointed Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), leader / fuherer of the National Socialist German Workers Party ("Nazis") as chancellor of Germany.

Hindenburg was born to a family of minor Prussian nobility in the Grand Duchy of Posen (now located in modern Poland). Upon completing his education as a military academy cadet, he enlisted in the Third Regiment of Foot Guards as a second lieutenant in the Royal Prussian Army. He saw combat during the brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and subsequent Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. In 1873, he was admitted to the prestigious in the previous Royal Prussian capital city and now newly designated capital of the larger German Empire (1871-1918) of Berlin, where he studied before being appointed to the General Staff Corps. In 1885, he was promoted to major and became a member of the German General Staff. After teaching at the , Hindenburg rose to become a lieutenant general by 1900. Around the time of his promotion to General of the Infantry in 1905, Count Alfred von Schlieffen recommended Hindenburg succeed him as Chief of the Great General Staff, but the post went instead to Helmuth von Moltke in 1906. In 1911, Hindenburg retired from the Army after 46 years service.

After the First World War began in August 1914, Hindenburg was recalled to active duty and achieved fame on the Eastern Front against the Imperial Russian Army of the Russian Empire as victor of the Battle of Tannenberg. He oversaw crushing victories against the Russians that made him a national hero back in Germany and center of a personality cult. By 1916, his popularity had risen to the point, that he soon replaced General Erich von Falkenhayn as Chief of the Great General Staff (the position that Count von Schlieffen wanted him for that he missed out on several years earlier). He and General Erich Ludendorff exploited Emperor Wilhelm II's delegation of power to the Supreme Army Command to establish a ''de facto'' military dictatorship in the wartime German Empire. Under their leadership, Germany secured Russia's defeat in the East in 1917 and achieved the largest advance by the summer of 1918 on the Western Front since the conflict's outbreak four years before. However, improvements in Germany's fortunes were reversed, after its Imperial German Army was decisively defeated in the Second Battle of the Marne and the Allies' Hundred Days Offensive, and with the increasing fresh reinforcements of troops and supplies in the West from the United States who joined the Allies in April 1917 and began arriving overseas in great numbers by the end of that year. Upon the armistice, Hindenburg stepped down as commander-in-chief of the Great General Staff and retired once again in early 1919, as German troops were pulled back to the Fatherland to be discharged, naval vessels scurtled and war planes were being destroyed.

In 1925, Hindenburg returned to public life to compete in the 1925 German presidential election and was elected second president of the first German Republic (Weimar Republic), succeeding Friedrich Ebert who had died that year after six years in office. Opposed to the rise of Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) ideology and actions. Unfortunately and perhaps unwittingly, Hindenburg nonetheless played a major role in the political / economic and social instability that resulted in their rise to influence and power. After twice dissolving the lower chamber legislature of the Reichstag in 1932, the elderly and increasingly senile President Hindenburg agreed in January 1933 to appoint Hitler as chancellor in coalition with the another political party . In response to the February 1933 Fire disaster at the Reichstag capitol building, which was wrongly blamed on Communists or other in Berlin, President Hindenburg approved the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended various constitutional civil liberties. He signed the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave to the growing totalitarian dictatorship of the Nazi regime emergency powers. After Hindenburg died the following year, Chancellor Hitler combined the presidency with the chancellery before declaring himself ''Führer'' () of Germany and transforming the country into a totalitarian state. Provided by Wikipedia