Erich von Falkenhayn

Erich von Falkenhayn was a German general who served as Prussian Minister of War and, from September 1914, Chief of the German General Staff during the First World War. He took over as chief of staff after the failure of the Schlieffen Plan at the First Battle of the Marne, and in 1916 he planned and directed the Battle of Verdun, a deliberate war of attrition against the French army that produced enormous casualties on both sides and earned him the grim epithet the Blood-Miller of Verdun. He was removed as chief of staff in August 1916 after Verdun failed to achieve a decisive result and Romania entered the war against Germany, and he subsequently commanded German forces in Romania and in the Ottoman Empire for the remainder of the war.