Question: The Hindenburg Programme began after the sacking of which chief after the battle of Verdun?

<P0-S0> General Erich Georg Anton von Falkenhayn (11 September 1861 – 8 April 1922) was the Chief of the German General Staff during the First World War from September 1914 until 29 August 1916. <P0-S1>  He was removed in the late summer of 1916 after the failure at the battle of Verdun, the opening of the Allied offensive on the Somme, the Brusilov Offensive and the entry of Romania into the war. <P0-S2>  He was later given important field commands in Romania and Syria. <P0-S3>  His reputation as a war leader was attacked in Germany during and after the war, especially by the faction which supported Hindenburg. <P0-S4>  Falkenhayn held that Germany could not win the war by a decisive battle but would have to reach a compromise peace; his enemies said he lacked the resolve necessary to win a decisive victory. <P0-S5>  Falkenhayn's relations with the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg were troubled and undercut Falkenhayn's plans. <SEP> <P1-S0> Fort Douaumont (French "Fort de Douaumont") was the largest and highest fort on the ring of 19 large defensive forts protecting the city of Verdun, France since the 1890s. <P1-S1>  By 1915 the French General Staff had concluded that even the best-protected forts of Verdun could not resist bombardments from the German 420 mm (16.5 in) Gamma guns. <P1-S2>  These newly deployed giant howitzers had easily taken several large Belgian forts out of action in August 1914. <P1-S3>  As a result, Fort Douaumont and other Verdun forts were judged ineffective and had been partly disarmed and left virtually undefended since 1915. <P1-S4>  On 25 February 1916, Fort Douaumont was entered and occupied without a fight, by a small German raiding party comprising only 19 officers and 79 men. <P1-S5>  The easy fall of Fort Douaumont, only three days after the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, shocked the French Army. <P1-S6>  It set the stage for the rest of a battle which lasted nine months, at enormous human costs. <P1-S7>  Douaumont was finally recaptured by three infantry divisions of the French Second Army, during the First Offensive Battle of Verdun on 24 October 1916. <P1-S8>  This event brought closure to the Battle of Verdun in 1916. <SEP> <P2-S0> The Hindenburg Programme of August 1916 is the name given to the armaments and economic policy begun in late 1916 by the Third "Oberste Heeresleitung" ("OHL", the German General Staff), Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. <P2-S1>  The two were appointed after the sacking of General Erich von Falkenhayn on 28 August 1916 and intended to double German industrial production, greatly to increase the output of munitions and weapons. <SEP> <P3-S0> The Hindenburg Line ("Siegfriedstellung" or Siegfried Position) was a German defensive position of World War I, built during the winter of 1916–1917 on the Western Front, from Arras to Laffaux, near Soissons on the Aisne. <P3-S1>  In 1916, the German offensive at the Battle of Verdun had been a costly failure. <P3-S2>  The Anglo-French offensive at the Battle of the Somme had forced a defensive battle on the Germans, leaving the western armies ("Westheer") exhausted. <P3-S3>  On the Eastern Front, the Brusilov Offensive had inflicted huge losses on the Austro-Hungarian armies in Russia and forced the Germans to take over more of the front. <P3-S4>  The declaration of war by Romania had placed additional strain on the German army and war economy. <P3-S5>  Construction of the Hindenburg Line in France was begun by the Germans in September 1916, to make a retirement from the Somme front possible, to counter an anticipated increase in the power of Anglo-French attacks in 1917.