In 1911, he became an instructor at the War Academy for two years before he moved to the 112th Infantry Regiment, where he had a field and then a staff position and was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

He returned to the staff twenty months later before he was assigned as the first staff officer of the 1st Division, stationed in Königsberg, East Prussia. That led him to respond that the general was 'a yellow-skin' and that he was 'uncivilized if you don't let me go over that hill'. During that time, he is remembered for breaching protocol in the presence of other foreign observers when a Japanese general refused to allow him on to a hill to watch a battle. In 1904 the General Staff sent him to Manchuria as an observer with the Imperial Japanese Army in its war against the Imperial Russian Army. Two years later, he moved to command a company in the 33rd Fusilier Regiment. In 1901, he was promoted to captain and assigned as a staff officer to V Army Corps. He was on the General Staff from 1899 to 1901 in the First Department (Russia and the Nordic States). From 1895 to 1898, as a first lieutenant, he attended the Prussian War Academy and then was sent to Russia to study the Russian language. As an ensign, he studied at the Kriegsschule (Officer School) in Neisse from October 1887 to August 1888, graduated with an Imperial commendation and was commissioned second lieutenant. he exceeded them in his terrifying appetite'. One of his comrades affectionately recalled, 'He was almost the worst athlete, horseman and swordsman of them all. After his graduation, he volunteered for the 72nd Infantry Regiment. From 1879 to 1887, he studied at the gymnasium in the city of Nordhausen. Hoffmann was born in Homberg (Efze) and was the son of a district court judge. At the end of 1917, he negotiated with Russia to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.Įarly life and prewar military career įoreign officers in the Russo-Japanese War, with Hoffmann at the far left of the front row He then held the position of Chief of Staff of the Eastern Front.

Hoffmann, along with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, masterminded the devastating defeat of the Russian armies at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. As a staff officer at the beginning of World War I, he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the 8th Army, soon promoted Chief of Staff. Homberg (Efze), Kingdom of Prussia, North German Confederationīad Reichenhall, Bavaria, Weimar RepublicĬarl Adolf Maximilian Hoffmann (25 January 1869 – 8 July 1927) was a German military strategist.

Hindenburg tannenberg