Between 1896 and 1903 Falkenhayn took a leave of absence and served Qing-Dynasty China as a military consultant and helped to establish some Chinese sea ports.

In 1889, he returned to German service in the new Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory in China, serving in a Seebataillon (Marine Battalion) until March 1899, when he became a Major in the Army.

[4] He saw action during the Boxer Rebellion as a general staff officer of Alfred von Waldersee and spent time in Manchuria and Korea.

[3] Service in Asia made Falkenhayn to be a favourite of the Kaiser and he became one of the military instructors of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia.

[6] On 8 July 1913 Falkenhayn became Prussian Minister of War, succeeding Josias von Heeringen, who was considered to be inactive.

[9][11][12] Falkenhayn succeeded Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, who was considered mentally unstable, as Chief of the Oberste Heeresleitung (the German General Staff) on 14 September 1914.

Falkenhayn recognized the pending failure of the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan and attempted to outflank the British and French in the Race to the Sea, a series of meeting engagements in northern France and Belgium, in which each side made reciprocal attempts to turn the other's flank, until they reached the North Sea coast and ran out of room for manoeuvre.

Neither Bethmann Hollweg nor the generals on the Eastern Front, such as Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff or Max Hoffmann, supported the idea since they believed that negotiation with the Russian Empire was impossible.

[9] While Helmuth von Moltke the Younger and Hindenburg were highly critical of Falkenhayn and sought to have him dismissed, the Emperor continued to support him.

The army had success during the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes but creating more new divisions was difficult because of the shortage of junior officers and equipment.

Falkenhayn noticed that the scepticism of the Ministry of War to airships, made by Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was justified.

[21] Wild von Hohenborn was appointed minister of war and on 20 January 1915, Falkenhayn was promoted to General der Infanterie.

[9] On 8 September 1915, Falkenhayn signed a military convention with Conrad von Hötzendorf, which called for an immediate attack on Serbia.

[9] According to Admiral Reinhard Scheer, Falkenhayn was an advocate of submarine warfare because countering Britain was an important war aim but this was opposed by Bethmann Hollweg.

Falkenhayn argued to the Kaiser that the war would end by causing many casualties to the French Army using methods that limited German losses.

[25] He ordered the Crown Prince to feint in Verdun and annihilate the French armies, which would try to defend the city by sending more troops.

Falkenhayn's strategy backfired, the Crown Prince and his chief of staff, Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf disobeyed the order and tried to seize the city.

The procession of divisions back and forth was analogous to the operation of a "noria", a type of water-wheel that continuously lifts water and empties it into a trough.

In the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, Falkenhayn failed to prevent the conquest of Jerusalem by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in December 1917 and was replaced by Otto Liman von Sanders.

[5] Falkenhayn is credited with avoiding a battle for the Old City of Jerusalem with its many holy sites, as well as with a crucial role in stopping the forced removal of the Jewish population of Palestine, which Governor Djemal Pasha had planned along the lines of the Armenian genocide.

[29] The evacuation of the population of Jerusalem during the harsh winter months had also been planned by Djemal Pasha and was thwarted by German officers including Falkenhayn.

[33] Falkenhayn in many ways typified the Prussian generals; a militarist in the literal sense, he had undeniable political and military competence and showed contempt for democracy and the representative Reichstag.

[36] Robert Foley wrote that Germany's enemies were far more able to apply a strategy of attrition, because they had greater amounts of manpower, industry and economic control over the world, resorting to many of the methods used by Falkenhayn in Russia in 1915 and France in 1916.