Born: October 2, 1847
Died: 1934
Place of Birth: Posen (now Poznan, Poland),
Military University: Cadet school in Berlin
Wars Fought:
-Seven Weeks' War
-Franco-Prussian War
-World War I
World War I:
In August 1914, on the outbreak of World War I, he accepted the command of the German Eighth Army on the Russian border. He and his chief of staff, General Erich Ludendorff, a master strategist, led the Germans to an overwhelming victory over numerically superior Russian troops at Tannenberg. Hindenburg was promoted to field marshal, and in 1916 he succeeded General Erich von Falkenhayn as chief of the German general staff and, still with Ludendorff at his side, became responsible for the direction of all German forces. In March 1917 Hindenburg established the German armies in Western Europe in a system of trenches across northern France known as the "Hindenburg Line," which the Allied armies did not break until October 1918.