Ludendorff's “Stab-in-the-Back” Legend

Many Germans still thought of their country as a strong power. The shock of defeat gave rise to a powerful “Stab-in-the-Back” legend. Assiduously propagated by Ludendorff, it held that the German army had not been conquered in the field but rather “stabbed in the back” by the treachery of Jews and socialists at home.

--Catherine Epstein, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, Wiley Short Histories (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 11.