1. Ludwig Beck was appointed Chief of Staff of the German Army shortly after the Nazi rise to power, supporting Hitler's rearmament of Germany and forceful denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles, although he believed Germany needed more time to prepare for another war.
Ludwig Beck was increasingly disillusioned with Hitler's aggressive foreign policy, the rising totalitarianism of the Nazi regime, and the influence of the SS over the army in military affairs.
Ludwig Beck became a leader of resistance to Nazism in military circles after retiring in 1938 due to public disagreements with Hitler on foreign policy, and later planned the 20 July plot with Claus von Stauffenberg.
Ludwig Beck was arrested by Friedrich Fromm when the plot failed and executed by one of Fromm's men after a botched suicide attempt.
Ludwig Beck served on the Western Front during the First World War as a staff officer.
In September and October 1930, Ludwig Beck was a leading defence witness at the trial in Leipzig of three junior Reichswehr officers: Lieutenant Richard Scheringer, Hans Friedrich Wendt and Hanns Ludin.
At the preliminary hearing, Ludwig Beck spoke on behalf of the three officers.
At the Leipzig trial of Ludin and Scheringer, Ludwig Beck testified to the good character of the accused, described the Nazi Party as a positive force in German life and proclaimed his belief that the Reichswehr ban on Nazi Party membership should be rescinded.
Historians such as Sir John Wheeler-Bennett have noted that Ludwig Beck was deliberately distorting the principle of Hans von Seeckt's Fuhrerarmee, which trained soldiers to be leaders for when the army would be expanded beyond the limits permitted by the Treaty of Versailles, by seeking to apply it to politics.
Ludwig Beck gained respect with the publication of his tactical manual, Truppenfuhrung.
Once Germany was sufficiently rearmed, Ludwig Beck thought that the Reich should wage a series of wars that would establish Germany as Europe's foremost power and place all of Central and Eastern Europe into the German sphere of influence.
In that role, Ludwig Beck was widely respected for his intelligence and work ethic but was often criticised by other officers for being too interested in administrative details.
In 1934, Ludwig Beck wrote a lengthy covering letter to a long report on the British Army armour manoeuvres as a way of encouraging interest in armoured warfare.
Ludwig Beck's views led to conflicts with War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, who resented Beck's efforts to diminish his powers.
In 1936, Ludwig Beck strongly supported Hitler during the remilitarisation of the Rhineland against Blomberg, who feared the French reaction to such a move.
Besides military attaches, Ludwig Beck recruited civilians for his private intelligence network, the most notable volunteer being Carl Goerdeler.
In May 1937, Ludwig Beck refused an order to draw up orders for executing Fall Otto, the German plan for an invasion of Austria, under the grounds that such a move might cause a world war before Germany was ready.
In Ludwig Beck's conception of power politics, war was a necessary part of restoring Germany to a great power if the wars were limited and if Germany possessed enough strength and had allies that were sufficiently strong.
Ludwig Beck resented Adolf Hitler for his efforts to curb the army's position of influence.
Ludwig Beck had no moral objection to the idea of a war of aggression to eliminate Czechoslovakia as a state.
However, Ludwig Beck felt that Germany needed more time to rearm before starting such a war.
From May 1938, Ludwig Beck had bombarded Hitler, Wilhelm Keitel and Walther von Brauchitsch with memoranda opposing Fall Grun, the plan for a war against Czechoslovakia.
Ludwig Beck believed "The French army is and remains intact and is at the moment the strongest in Europe".
Hitler commented that Ludwig Beck was "one of the officers still imprisoned in the idea of the hundred-thousand-man army".
On 28 May 1938, Ludwig Beck had a meeting with Hitler, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Admiral Erich Raeder, Hermann Goring, Wilhelm Keitel, and Walther von Brauchitsch, during which Hitler restated the views that he had first expressed in the Hossbach Memorandum.
However, Ludwig Beck argued that Germany was not strong enough to fight the general war that would result from an attack on Czechoslovakia in 1938 and urged Hitler to avoid a "premature war".
In particular, Ludwig Beck argued, "It is not accurate to judge Germany today as stronger than in 1914".
Ludwig Beck presented a detailed military case that more time was needed before the Wehrmacht would be as strong as the army of 1914.
At first, Ludwig Beck felt that Hitler's rush to war in 1938 was caused not by his personality but rather him receiving poor military advice, especially from Keitel.
Ludwig Beck advocated the need for a "continual, competent advising of the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht on questions of war leadership" and predicted that otherwise, "the future destiny of the Wehrmacht in peace and war, indeed the destiny of Germany in a future war, must be painted in the blackest of colors".
Together with the Abwehr chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and the German Foreign Office's State Secretary, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, Ludwig Beck was a leader of the "antiwar" group in the German government, which was determined to avoid a war in 1938 that it felt Germany would lose.
Ludwig Beck maintained that Czechoslovak defences were very formidable, Prague could mobilise at least 38 divisions and at least 30 German divisions would be needed to break through, which required a campaign of at least three weeks.
Ludwig Beck concluded that Hitler's assumptions about a limited war in 1938 were mistaken.
In late July 1938, Erich von Manstein, a leading protege of Ludwig Beck's, wrote to his mentor urging him to stay at his post and to place his faith in Hitler.
Ludwig Beck was replaced, as head of the General Staff, by General Franz Halder.
At Hitler's request, Ludwig Beck kept his resignation secret and thus nullified the protest value of his resignation.
Ludwig Beck increasingly came to rely on contacts with the British in the hope that London would successfully exert its influence on Hitler through threats and warnings, but he failed.
The Vatican considered Muller to be a representative of Ludwig Beck and agreed to offer the machinery for mediation between the plotters and the Allies.
In 1940 and 1941, Ludwig Beck spent much time discussing with Goerdeler, Hassell and Erwin von Witzleben aspects of the proposed state after the successful overthrow of the regime.
In 1943, Ludwig Beck planned two abortive attempts to kill Hitler by means of a bomb.
In May 1944, a memorandum by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel made it clear that his participation in the proposed putsch was based on the condition of Ludwig Beck serving as the head of state in the new government.
In 1944, Ludwig Beck was one of the driving forces of the 20 July plot, along with Carl Goerdeler and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
The plot failed and by the evening, Ludwig Beck was in the custody of General Friedrich Fromm.
Ludwig Beck requested permission to keep his private pistol with the intention to commit suicide to avoid torture by the Gestapo.
Ludwig Beck shot himself in the head but succeeded only in severely wounding himself, and one of Fromm's men was brought in to administer the coup de grace by shooting Beck in the back of the neck.
In Bremen on 12 May 1916, Ludwig Beck married Amalie Christine Auguste Luise Pagenstecher, who had been born in Bremen on 6 May 1893.
Ludwig Beck had been advised by its head, Dr Luebhard Saathoff, never to have children.
Ludwig Beck was serving on the Western Front at the time of his wife's death and had little interest in his five-year-old child.
In 1944, considering the risk from Allied bombing to be high, Ludwig Beck arranged for Gertrud and her daughter to stay with her Neubaur in-laws in Oberstdorf due to its remote location in the Bavarian Alps.