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For the French counter-plan, see Plan XVII
The forensic plan was the German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory both on the
Western Front (World War I) against France and against Russia in the east, taking advantage of expected differences in the three countries' speed in preparing for war. It was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I; however, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris, the
First Battle of the Marne (combined with surprisingly speedy Russian offensives), ended the German offensive and resulted in years of
trench warfare. The plan has been the subject of debate among historians and military
scholars ever since.
The Schlieffen Plan was created by
Alfred Graf von Schlieffen.
The Plan
After the Franco-Prussian War of
1870, the French province of
Alsace-Lorraine, with a mixed population of both French and Germans, had been made part of the German Empire. The
French Third Republic revanchism vowed to regain the territories they had possessed for nearly 200 years. Due to Bismarck's alliances, France was initially isolated, but after young Kaiser Wilhelm II took over in 1888, he estranged Germany gradually from
Russian Empire and United Kingdom, so fears about having to fight a future war on two fronts simultaneously grew among German leaders.
France, having been beaten in a few weeks in 1870, was not considered as dangerous in the long run as the Russian Empire, which was expected to be hard to defeat if the Tsar were allowed the necessary time to mobilize his huge country to full extent. After the
Entente Cordiale of 1904 was signed between Britain and France, Kaiser Wilhelm asked Alfred Graf von Schlieffen to devise a plan which would allow Germany to fight a war on two fronts, and in December 1905 von Schlieffen began circulating it.
The idea of the plan was to win a two-front war quickly by first triumphing in the West again before the "Russian Steamroller" would be able to mobilize and descend upon East Prussia—the plan scheduled 39 days for the fall of Paris John Grenville,
A History of the World in the 20th Century, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 21. The plan depended on Germany's ability to invade France before France could mobilize its troops to defend itself, and then to turn on Russia, seen as the slowest of the three to mobilize, before the Russians were ready.
It envisioned a rapid German mobilization, disregard of the
Neutral country of Luxembourg and Belgium, and an overwhelming sweep of the powerful German right wing southwest through Belgium and Northern France, "letting the last man on the right brush the Channel with his sleeve," Rosinski, Herbert,
The German Army, London, Hogarth, 1939 in the words of Schlieffen, while maintaining only a defensive posture on the central and left wings, in Lorraine (région), the
Vosges mountains, and the Moselle River.
Paris was not to be taken (the Siege of Paris had lasted for months) but to be passed by the right wing to the west of the city. The intent of the plan was not to conquer cities or industry in order to weaken the French war efforts, but to capture most of the French Army and to force France to surrender, in essence a repeat of the strategy used to defeat France during the
Franco-Prussian War. The plan was that the French army would be hemmed in around Paris and forced to fight a decisive envelopment battle.
A seed of disaster lurked in the conception of the plan: both Schlieffen and the man who would eventually implement his Plan, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, were seduced by the possibility of the double envelopment of the entire French Army by the right wing coming from the north and west of France and the left wing coming from the east. The inspiration was the destruction of the
Military history of ancient Rome by Hannibal's forces at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, which was the object of meticulous study by Schlieffen. In essence, his plan was a very large scale strategic readdressing of Hannibal's tactics, capitalizing on the recent breakthroughs in communications and transport.
Politically, one of the major drawbacks of the Schlieffen Plan was that it called for the invasion of the neutral states of Belgium and the Netherlands. As it turned out, at least formally, it was the decision to invade Belgium which led to war with Great Britain.
As noted previously, Russian mobilization would supposedly be extremely slow, due to its poor railway system. Following the speedy defeat of France, the
German General Staff would switch German concentrations to the
Eastern Front (World War I). The plan called for sending 91% of the German troops to France and 9% to Russia. His goal was to defeat France in six weeks, the time it took for Russia to mobilize its army, and turn back to the Eastern Front before Russia could react. Kaiser Wilhelm II is quoted as having said "Paris for lunch, dinner at St. Petersburg."
Modifications to the Plan, 1906
Following the retirement of Schlieffen in 1906, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger became the German chief of staff. He disagreed with at least some of the Schlieffen Plan, thinking it to be too risky. The Plan, however, having been devised in 1905, was now too much a part of German military thinking to abandon it completely. All he could do was modify it. Von Moltke decided to pull significant numbers of troops away from the main force entering France from the north, in order to fortify the forces in
Alsace-Lorraine, and the forces at the Russian border. The other significant change he made was not to enter through the Netherlands, instead sending troops through Belgium alone. These changes have been the subject of much debate. L.C.F Turner in 1970 described von Moltke's changes as "
a substantial modification in the Schlieffen Plan and one which probably doomed the German campaign in the west before it was ever launched." Turner claims that by weakening the main German offensive, they did not have a real chance of defeating the French army quickly enough, hence they became stranded in a two-front-war. He also says that not going through the Netherlands not only created a bottleneck at the German-Belgian border, but also that not having the Dutch railways at their disposal created a huge supply problem, a problem which outweighed the benefits they gained by still having access to the Dutch ports.
The course of the war would have been different if the original concept had been followed. Early in the war, according to the directives of Plan XVII, the French mobilized and hurled their forces towards the German border in an ill-fated attempt to recapture
Alsace-Lorraine. This played exactly into Schlieffen's conception of a trap through double envelopment, which called for a loose defense of the border, and actually for retreats by which the French forces would have been lured further away from the main thrust of the German advance. However, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger's weakening of the German right, the defense of Alsace-Lorraine, and the transfer of three army corps and one cavalry division from the western front to help contain the Russian advance into East Prussia, all contributed to the failure of the German army to break through the Allied forces at the Marne. Without that break through, the plan was destroyed.
In essence, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen's audacious plan was never carried out. With the benefit of hindsight, there is evidence that it could have been successful.
Activation, and subsequent failure
Debate continues about the merits of the Schlieffen Plan and even on whether the Schlieffen Plan was ever truly executed, ultimately however the German invasion failed for six major reasons:
- Belgian resistance: Although the Belgian army was only a tenth the size of the German army, it still delayed the Germans for nearly a month, defending fortresses and cities. The Germans used their "Big Bertha (Howitzer)" artillery to destroy Belgian forts in Battle of Liège, Namur (city) and Antwerp, but the Belgians still fought back, creating a constant threat on German supply lines in the North. In addition, the German attack on neutral Belgium and reports about atrocities turned public opinion in many neutral countries against Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm.
- The presence/effectiveness of the British Expeditionary Force: The BEF (British Expeditionary Force) was small, numbering only 75,000 at the start of the war. The French mobilized millions of recruits, and their goal was to use this number to defeat the Germans quickly in Alsace. To this end, the French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre placed the small but highly trained BEF on the left flank, where he believed there would not be any fighting. Due to the rapid German advance through Belgium, the British were almost annihilated several times, but they managed to delay the Germans long enough for French and British reinforcements to arrive. While the BEF was forced into retreat throughout the month of August, it provided enough resistance against the German First Army under Alexander von Kluck to help induce the German general to break off the Plan. Instead, von Kluck turned south-east towards Compiegne, showing his flank to the Garrison of Paris under Joseph Gallieni, making possible the "First Battle of the Marne".
- The speed of Russian mobilization: The Russians moved faster than expected, gaining ground in Eastern Prussia more quickly than the Germans wanted, surprising them. While the Russian advance may not have posed much real threat at the time, had they kept gaining ground at that pace, they were going to get dangerously close to Berlin. This caused the Germans to pull even more men from their main force, in order to reinforce the Eastern Front. Afterwards this proved unnecessary, since the forces pulled from the Western Front were still in transit during Battle of Tannenberg (1914), while the battles on the Western front were being lost for Germany.
- The French railway system: Because of the delays caused by the British and Belgians, the French had more time to transfer troops from the border at Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans greatly underestimated how well they would be able to do this, especially with the extra time they were granted by the slowing of the German forces. The French sent some of their troops by train, some through taxis, and marched the rest of them. By the time the Germans got into France, the French were there waiting for them.
- The changing alliances of Central Powers allegiances: Before WWI, both kingdoms of History of Italy as a monarchy and in the World Wars and Kingdom of Romania were considered pro-Central. Initially, both stayed neutral, with Italy claiming that the Triple Alliance had only defensive purposes, and that the war was started by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since Schlieffen planned for Italy and Romania to act as allies, their refusal largely damaged the plan. Both countries eventually entered the war as enemies of Germany. By doing so, Romania actually helped the Central Powers because it was easily and quickly conquered and thus provided large amounts of coal, wheat, and oil, all of which the Central Powers desperately needed. Italy, however, made twelve attempts to win the Battles of the Isonzo and gained the territory of Province of Bolzano-Bozen only after the truce of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto had been signed. This also triggered the end of the war as it caused the Austria-Hungary to capitulate, after which Germany had to follow to prevent another front in the south.
- Moltke's changes to the plan: Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger made several changes to the Schlieffen Plan, initially reinforcing the east with 180,000 men from the right-wing armies, weakening the invasion force in favor of defense. Moltke also had ideological opposition for the proposed passage of the invading armies through the neutral Netherlands, the subsequent shift delayed his armies in Belgium and resulted in the "race to the sea" after the Marne. Moltke also further reinforced his left-wing with Corps from the right to prevent Allied forces from penetrating too far into Germany itself, an issue Schlieffen was not concerned with (Schlieffen's plan called for the invading French forces to be enveloped, putting the political concern of hostile invasions behind the strategic opportunity to destroy the invading armies). This proved problematic, because the German units who where supposed to fall back and lure the French away from Paris and the German right flank, were now driving the French before them. Rather than diverting the French forces from the action, this placed the French units much closer to the German 1st and 2nd armies threatening Paris. Moltke also chose to send 80,000 more men to the east to assist with the Russian invasion against the advisement of General Ludendorff (Two days before the reinforcements arrived the Germans had destroyed the Russians at Battle of Tannenberg (1914)). Ultimately Moltke reassigned 250,000 men (an entire army's worth) from the right-wing assault before finally abandoning the Schlieffen Plan. Repulsed by the left wing of Moltke's forces near Sarrebourg, the French retreated to the hills around the city of Nancy. Rather than sweeping around them and enveloping the French armies and Paris itself from the east, Moltke opted to directly attack their reinforced positions around Nancy which ended in an unmitigated failure.
The failures in the West resulted in defeat at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, a
stalemate,
trench warfare, and a two-front war for Germany.
What eventually occurred was a "reverse Schlieffen", in that Russia was defeated prior to the Western Allies. The Russian army, aided by the
Romania and
Serbia armies and considered by the German command as more dangerous than the Western Allies, was defeated with relative ease, thanks in no small part to the introduction of Lenin and the
Communist revolution to Russia. Meanwhile the Western Allies had a larger manpower base from which to feed the war of attrition taking place. Even though Germany sent many divisions to fight in Italy and the Franco-Benelux theater following the collapse of Russia and the Eastern Front in 1917/18, the Western Allies still defeated the Central Powers' forces. In the 1918 summer campaign Italy obtained a long sought decisive victory over
Austria-Hungary, and Austria withdrew from the war exposing Germany's southern flank. The defeat of
Bulgaria also exposed Germany (and Austria) to an Allied advance up the
Danube. Finally the entrance of the
United States on the side of the Allies in 1917, and the arrival of substantial US troops, coupled with the failure of the final German offensives in the West in early 1918, allowed the Allies to push the Germans out of France and into Belgium, towards the German border. Once the long-held static positions were lost, Germany accepted the Allies'
armistice terms.
Criticism
Several historians argue that the plan was unfeasible for its time, due to the recent advances in weaponry and the improved transportation of industrial warfare. Some would say the plan was "too good".
Basil Liddell Hart, for instance, praised the Schlieffen Plan as a
conception of Napoleonic boldness, but concluded that:
The plan would again become possible in the next generation—when air power could paralyze the defending side’s attempt to switch its forces, while the development of mechanized forces greatly accelerated the speed of encircling moves, and extended their range. But Schlieffen’s plan had a very poor chance of success at the time it was conceived.
In addition, some historians, including Professor David Fromkin, author of
Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? have recently made arguments that what is known as the Schlieffen Plan may not have been an actual plan as such, but instead was laid down in one 1905 hypothetical memorandum and a brief 1906 addition.
Schlieffen may not have intended to be carried out in the form he laid down, instead, seeing it as perhaps an intellectual exercise. Fromkin has argued that, given what historians have recently seen in Schlieffen's papers, captured by the
United States Army along with other German war documents after World War One, that the memoranda had never been refined into an operational program. No orders or operational details (such as specific units for each area of the offensive) were appended. He further goes on to pin much of the genesis of the plan as finally enacted on Moltke, who had seen the memorandum and believed it to be a fully-operational plan which he then proceeded to expand upon. Fromkin, in fact, has advocated referring to the "Moltke Plan" as opposed to the "Schlieffen Plan", as it may have been more a product of Moltke's misreading of the Schlieffen Memorandum of 1905 and its 1906 codicil.
According to the historian A. Palmer, however, closer inspection of documents regarding the German war plan reveal that Moltke's changes were not that great, and that the plan was basically flawed from the start. He claims that the Schlieffen plan does not deserve its high reputation, because it underestimated pretty much everyone—the Russians, French, British, and Belgians. However, this would tend to support the view of Professor Fromkin, in that a poor plan would indicate its origin as one not fully vetted.
The British military historian, John Keegan, in summarizing the debate over the plan, criticizes it for its lack of realism about the speed with which the right wing of the German army would be able to wheel through Belgium and the Netherlands in order to arrive outside of Paris on schedule. He observes that, regardless of the path taken, there were simply not enough roads for the masses of troops planned to reach Paris in the time required. In other words, the Plan required German forces to arrive on schedule and in sufficient force, but in reality only one or the other could be achieved, not both.
Keegan also points out to the Schlieffen Plan as a leading example of the separation between military war planning and political/diplomatic considerations which was one of the original causes of the war. Schlieffen conceived his Plan as the best possible solution to a strategic problem, while ignoring the political reality that violating Belgian neutrality was the thing most likely to invite British intervention and expand the conflict.
A factor in evaluating the significance of the Schlieffen plan is the misinformation that was widely disseminated during and after the war. Records were lost and material made up to paint the events in a light more acceptable to those making the decisions at the time.
Another view is also that both Palmer and Fromkin are correct. The Schlieffen plan could have been simply a document that spurred operational thinking and planning, and became the working name for a strategy of bypassing the bulk of the French forces through a flanking maneuver. While the German army of 1914 was not sufficiently mobile for the plan to succeed, only 26 years later the same concept executed with more mobile forces was extremely successful.The German army of 1940 was mostly similarly mobile as the army of 1914, depending on horses for mobility and marching on foot. A major difference was the availability of faster moving armored forces that could be used to effect geographic control while the non-mechanized elements followed, and the availability of aircraft for attack in depth, and close air support missions.
Additional facts
- Schlieffen's solution reversed that of his great predecessor, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, whose experiences in the Franco-Prussian War with modern warfare and concerns regarding the increasing lethality of weaponry, made him doubt that a swift success could be achieved. Moltke had accordingly favored limited operations against France and a major effort against Russia. Schlieffen, on the other hand, would seek an immediate all-out victory.
- The absence of General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger from the Western Front was a crucial (though not decisive) factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. Communication was especially poor and, in addition, German forces sent wireless messages uncoded, allowing French forces under the command of General Joseph Joffre to pinpoint the location of the German advance.
- Further, Moltke balked at the weakness of the Alsatian "hinge" region, fearing that the massive strength of the right wing's hammer would allow the French to break through the relatively sparsely-manned left-wing "anvil". This had been part of Schlieffen's design as well—he had been willing to sacrifice some German territory in the short run to decisively destroy the French Army. Moltke refused to run the same risk and shifted some divisions from the right flank to the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine.
- The rigidity of the Schlieffen Plan has also been a source of much criticism. The plan called for the defeat of France in precisely 42 days. Armed with an inflexible timetable, argue many scholars, the German General Staff was unable to improvise as the "fog" of war became more apparent. Thus, many scholars believe that the Schlieffen Plan was anti-Carl von Clausewitzian in concept. On the other hand, General Kluck made the decision at the front to wheel southeasterly instead of continuing on past Paris; German generals were taught to think for themselves, and in fact his decision to wheel inwards made orthodox military sense. However, it deprived Germany of the chance to force a decisive envelopment battle around Paris.
- German troops were exhausted by the time they engaged French forces; many horses (towing artillery pieces) died, having eaten green corn.
- German supply lines stretched at the Marne; the front line of the German Army had already broken into retreat before the rear had even arrived.
- After Germany's defeat at the Marne, there began a series of flanking maneuvers by both the Germans, and the British and French Allies heading northwards in one last attempt to end the war quickly. However, by December, the two armies had built an elaborate series of trench fortifications stretching essentially from the English Channel to the Switzerland border which would remain nearly static for four years. Schlieffen's great gamble would, ironically, result in the one outcome he had feared: A long, drawn-out war of attrition against a numerically stronger enemy.
- Before the Schlieffen plan, Britain was officially neutral - despite already being in the Triple Entente with Russia and France. But since it had signed the Treaty of London 1839 It was forced to engage in the fight against the Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Italians.
- A version of the plan was also used by Germany during its attack on France in World War II. Once again Germany quickly mobilized. Once again Germany attacked West first (having used diplomacy to protect their Eastern Front with a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union). And once again Germany invaded through Belgium to get to France.
The difference was that France and England were expecting this tactic and had their forces lined along the French/Belgian Border, with the main thrust to defend its left flank. But Germany had learned from its history as well, and using a mobilized unit (a division of tanks) smashed through the center of the English/French line. This cut the allied forces in two. One was able to escape to England at Dunkirk. The other was quickly defeated, and with it France.
In media
In
Harry Turtledove's alternate history (fiction) novel,
How Few Remain, set in an 1881 in which the Confederate States of America won the
American Civil War, Schlieffen is inspired by Robert E. Lee's capture of Philadelphia.
Notes
References
- Foley, Robert Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
- Foley, Robert T. "The Real Schlieffen Plan", War in History, Vol. 13, Issue 1. (2006), pp. 91–115.
- David Fromkin, Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? New York: Vintage Books, 2004. ISBN 0-375-72575-X
- Hull, Isabel V. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8014-4258-3
- Manuel de Landa. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. 1991.
- Mombauer, Annika, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- Gerhard Ritter The Schlieffen plan, Critique of a Myth, foreword by Basil Liddell Hart. London: O. Wolff, 1958.
- Rothenberg, Gunther E. "Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment." in Makers of Modern Strategy Peter Paret (Ed.). Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986.
- Stoneman, Mark R. “Wilhelm Groener, Officering, and the Schlieffen Plan.” PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2006. http://homepage.mac.com/markstoneman/diss.html abstract
- Terence Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan. OUP, 2002. ISBN 0-19-925016-2
For the French counter-plan, see Plan XVII
The forensic plan was the
German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory both on the Western Front (World War I) against France and against Russia in the east, taking advantage of expected differences in the three countries' speed in preparing for war. It was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I; however, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris, the
First Battle of the Marne (combined with surprisingly speedy Russian offensives), ended the German offensive and resulted in years of
trench warfare. The plan has been the subject of debate among historians and military scholars ever since.
The Schlieffen Plan was created by Alfred Graf von Schlieffen.
The Plan
After the
Franco-Prussian War of
1870, the French province of Alsace-Lorraine, with a mixed population of both French and Germans, had been made part of the German Empire. The
French Third Republic revanchism vowed to regain the territories they had possessed for nearly 200 years. Due to Bismarck's alliances,
France was initially isolated, but after young
Kaiser Wilhelm II took over in 1888, he estranged Germany gradually from Russian Empire and
United Kingdom, so fears about having to fight a future war on two fronts simultaneously grew among German leaders.
France, having been beaten in a few weeks in 1870, was not considered as dangerous in the long run as the Russian Empire, which was expected to be hard to defeat if the Tsar were allowed the necessary time to mobilize his huge country to full extent. After the
Entente Cordiale of 1904 was signed between Britain and France, Kaiser Wilhelm asked
Alfred Graf von Schlieffen to devise a plan which would allow Germany to fight a war on two fronts, and in December 1905 von Schlieffen began circulating it.
The idea of the plan was to win a two-front war quickly by first triumphing in the West again before the "
Russian Steamroller" would be able to mobilize and descend upon East Prussia—the plan scheduled 39 days for the fall of
Paris John Grenville,
A History of the World in the 20th Century, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 21. The plan depended on Germany's ability to invade France before France could mobilize its troops to defend itself, and then to turn on Russia, seen as the slowest of the three to mobilize, before the Russians were ready.
It envisioned a rapid German
mobilization, disregard of the Neutral country of
Luxembourg and
Belgium, and an overwhelming sweep of the powerful German right wing southwest through Belgium and Northern France, "letting the last man on the right brush the Channel with his sleeve," Rosinski, Herbert,
The German Army, London, Hogarth, 1939 in the words of Schlieffen, while maintaining only a defensive posture on the central and left wings, in Lorraine (région), the Vosges mountains, and the Moselle River.
Paris was not to be taken (the
Siege of Paris had lasted for months) but to be passed by the right wing to the west of the city. The intent of the plan was not to conquer cities or industry in order to weaken the French war efforts, but to capture most of the
French Army and to force France to surrender, in essence a repeat of the strategy used to defeat France during the
Franco-Prussian War. The plan was that the French army would be hemmed in around Paris and forced to fight a decisive envelopment battle.
A seed of disaster lurked in the conception of the plan: both Schlieffen and the man who would eventually implement his Plan, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, were seduced by the possibility of the
double envelopment of the entire French Army by the right wing coming from the north and west of France and the left wing coming from the east. The inspiration was the destruction of the Military history of ancient Rome by
Hannibal's forces at the
Battle of Cannae in
216 BC, which was the object of meticulous study by Schlieffen. In essence, his plan was a very large scale strategic readdressing of
Hannibal's tactics, capitalizing on the recent breakthroughs in communications and transport.
Politically, one of the major drawbacks of the Schlieffen Plan was that it called for the invasion of the neutral states of Belgium and the Netherlands. As it turned out, at least formally, it was the decision to invade Belgium which led to war with Great Britain.
As noted previously, Russian mobilization would supposedly be extremely slow, due to its poor railway system. Following the speedy defeat of France, the German General Staff would switch German concentrations to the
Eastern Front (World War I). The plan called for sending 91% of the German troops to France and 9% to Russia. His goal was to defeat France in six weeks, the time it took for Russia to mobilize its army, and turn back to the Eastern Front before Russia could react. Kaiser Wilhelm II is quoted as having said "Paris for lunch, dinner at St. Petersburg."
Modifications to the Plan, 1906
Following the retirement of Schlieffen in 1906, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger became the German chief of staff. He disagreed with at least some of the Schlieffen Plan, thinking it to be too risky. The Plan, however, having been devised in 1905, was now too much a part of German military thinking to abandon it completely. All he could do was modify it. Von Moltke decided to pull significant numbers of troops away from the main force entering France from the north, in order to fortify the forces in
Alsace-Lorraine, and the forces at the Russian border. The other significant change he made was not to enter through the Netherlands, instead sending troops through Belgium alone. These changes have been the subject of much debate. L.C.F Turner in 1970 described von Moltke's changes as "
a substantial modification in the Schlieffen Plan and one which probably doomed the German campaign in the west before it was ever launched." Turner claims that by weakening the main German offensive, they did not have a real chance of defeating the French army quickly enough, hence they became stranded in a two-front-war. He also says that not going through the Netherlands not only created a bottleneck at the German-Belgian border, but also that not having the Dutch railways at their disposal created a huge supply problem, a problem which outweighed the benefits they gained by still having access to the Dutch ports.
The course of the war would have been different if the original concept had been followed. Early in the war, according to the directives of
Plan XVII, the French mobilized and hurled their forces towards the German border in an ill-fated attempt to recapture
Alsace-Lorraine. This played exactly into Schlieffen's conception of a trap through double envelopment, which called for a loose defense of the border, and actually for retreats by which the French forces would have been lured further away from the main thrust of the German advance. However, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger's weakening of the German right, the defense of Alsace-Lorraine, and the transfer of three army corps and one cavalry division from the western front to help contain the Russian advance into East Prussia, all contributed to the failure of the German army to break through the
Allied forces at the Marne. Without that break through, the plan was destroyed.
In essence,
Alfred Graf von Schlieffen's audacious plan was never carried out. With the benefit of hindsight, there is evidence that it could have been successful.
Activation, and subsequent failure
Debate continues about the merits of the Schlieffen Plan and even on whether the Schlieffen Plan was ever truly executed, ultimately however the German invasion failed for six major reasons:
- Belgian resistance: Although the Belgian army was only a tenth the size of the German army, it still delayed the Germans for nearly a month, defending fortresses and cities. The Germans used their "Big Bertha (Howitzer)" artillery to destroy Belgian forts in Battle of Liège, Namur (city) and Antwerp, but the Belgians still fought back, creating a constant threat on German supply lines in the North. In addition, the German attack on neutral Belgium and reports about atrocities turned public opinion in many neutral countries against Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm.
- The presence/effectiveness of the British Expeditionary Force: The BEF (British Expeditionary Force) was small, numbering only 75,000 at the start of the war. The French mobilized millions of recruits, and their goal was to use this number to defeat the Germans quickly in Alsace. To this end, the French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre placed the small but highly trained BEF on the left flank, where he believed there would not be any fighting. Due to the rapid German advance through Belgium, the British were almost annihilated several times, but they managed to delay the Germans long enough for French and British reinforcements to arrive. While the BEF was forced into retreat throughout the month of August, it provided enough resistance against the German First Army under Alexander von Kluck to help induce the German general to break off the Plan. Instead, von Kluck turned south-east towards Compiegne, showing his flank to the Garrison of Paris under Joseph Gallieni, making possible the "First Battle of the Marne".
- The speed of Russian mobilization: The Russians moved faster than expected, gaining ground in Eastern Prussia more quickly than the Germans wanted, surprising them. While the Russian advance may not have posed much real threat at the time, had they kept gaining ground at that pace, they were going to get dangerously close to Berlin. This caused the Germans to pull even more men from their main force, in order to reinforce the Eastern Front. Afterwards this proved unnecessary, since the forces pulled from the Western Front were still in transit during Battle of Tannenberg (1914), while the battles on the Western front were being lost for Germany.
- The French railway system: Because of the delays caused by the British and Belgians, the French had more time to transfer troops from the border at Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans greatly underestimated how well they would be able to do this, especially with the extra time they were granted by the slowing of the German forces. The French sent some of their troops by train, some through taxis, and marched the rest of them. By the time the Germans got into France, the French were there waiting for them.
- The changing alliances of Central Powers allegiances: Before WWI, both kingdoms of History of Italy as a monarchy and in the World Wars and Kingdom of Romania were considered pro-Central. Initially, both stayed neutral, with Italy claiming that the Triple Alliance had only defensive purposes, and that the war was started by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since Schlieffen planned for Italy and Romania to act as allies, their refusal largely damaged the plan. Both countries eventually entered the war as enemies of Germany. By doing so, Romania actually helped the Central Powers because it was easily and quickly conquered and thus provided large amounts of coal, wheat, and oil, all of which the Central Powers desperately needed. Italy, however, made twelve attempts to win the Battles of the Isonzo and gained the territory of Province of Bolzano-Bozen only after the truce of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto had been signed. This also triggered the end of the war as it caused the Austria-Hungary to capitulate, after which Germany had to follow to prevent another front in the south.
- Moltke's changes to the plan: Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger made several changes to the Schlieffen Plan, initially reinforcing the east with 180,000 men from the right-wing armies, weakening the invasion force in favor of defense. Moltke also had ideological opposition for the proposed passage of the invading armies through the neutral Netherlands, the subsequent shift delayed his armies in Belgium and resulted in the "race to the sea" after the Marne. Moltke also further reinforced his left-wing with Corps from the right to prevent Allied forces from penetrating too far into Germany itself, an issue Schlieffen was not concerned with (Schlieffen's plan called for the invading French forces to be enveloped, putting the political concern of hostile invasions behind the strategic opportunity to destroy the invading armies). This proved problematic, because the German units who where supposed to fall back and lure the French away from Paris and the German right flank, were now driving the French before them. Rather than diverting the French forces from the action, this placed the French units much closer to the German 1st and 2nd armies threatening Paris. Moltke also chose to send 80,000 more men to the east to assist with the Russian invasion against the advisement of General Ludendorff (Two days before the reinforcements arrived the Germans had destroyed the Russians at Battle of Tannenberg (1914)). Ultimately Moltke reassigned 250,000 men (an entire army's worth) from the right-wing assault before finally abandoning the Schlieffen Plan. Repulsed by the left wing of Moltke's forces near Sarrebourg, the French retreated to the hills around the city of Nancy. Rather than sweeping around them and enveloping the French armies and Paris itself from the east, Moltke opted to directly attack their reinforced positions around Nancy which ended in an unmitigated failure.
The failures in the West resulted in defeat at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, a
stalemate,
trench warfare, and a two-front war for Germany.
What eventually occurred was a "reverse Schlieffen", in that Russia was defeated prior to the Western Allies. The Russian army, aided by the Romania and Serbia armies and considered by the German command as more dangerous than the Western Allies, was defeated with relative ease, thanks in no small part to the introduction of Lenin and the
Communist revolution to Russia. Meanwhile the Western Allies had a larger manpower base from which to feed the war of attrition taking place. Even though Germany sent many divisions to fight in
Italy and the Franco-Benelux theater following the collapse of Russia and the Eastern Front in 1917/18, the Western Allies still defeated the Central Powers' forces. In the 1918 summer campaign Italy obtained a long sought decisive victory over
Austria-Hungary, and Austria withdrew from the war exposing Germany's southern flank. The defeat of Bulgaria also exposed Germany (and Austria) to an Allied advance up the
Danube. Finally the entrance of the United States on the side of the Allies in 1917, and the arrival of substantial US troops, coupled with the failure of the final German offensives in the West in early 1918, allowed the Allies to push the Germans out of France and into Belgium, towards the German border. Once the long-held static positions were lost, Germany accepted the Allies' armistice terms.
Criticism
Several historians argue that the plan was unfeasible for its time, due to the recent advances in weaponry and the improved transportation of industrial warfare. Some would say the plan was "too good". Basil Liddell Hart, for instance, praised the Schlieffen Plan as a
conception of Napoleonic boldness, but concluded that:
The plan would again become possible in the next generation—when air power could paralyze the defending side’s attempt to switch its forces, while the development of mechanized forces greatly accelerated the speed of encircling moves, and extended their range. But Schlieffen’s plan had a very poor chance of success at the time it was conceived.
In addition, some historians, including Professor
David Fromkin, author of
Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? have recently made arguments that what is known as the Schlieffen Plan may not have been an actual plan as such, but instead was laid down in one 1905 hypothetical memorandum and a brief 1906 addition.
Schlieffen may not have intended to be carried out in the form he laid down, instead, seeing it as perhaps an intellectual exercise. Fromkin has argued that, given what historians have recently seen in Schlieffen's papers, captured by the United States Army along with other German war documents after World War One, that the memoranda had never been refined into an operational program. No orders or operational details (such as specific units for each area of the offensive) were appended. He further goes on to pin much of the genesis of the plan as finally enacted on Moltke, who had seen the memorandum and believed it to be a fully-operational plan which he then proceeded to expand upon. Fromkin, in fact, has advocated referring to the "Moltke Plan" as opposed to the "Schlieffen Plan", as it may have been more a product of Moltke's misreading of the Schlieffen Memorandum of 1905 and its 1906 codicil.
According to the historian A. Palmer, however, closer inspection of documents regarding the German war plan reveal that Moltke's changes were not that great, and that the plan was basically flawed from the start. He claims that the Schlieffen plan does not deserve its high reputation, because it underestimated pretty much everyone—the Russians, French, British, and Belgians. However, this would tend to support the view of Professor Fromkin, in that a poor plan would indicate its origin as one not fully vetted.
The British military historian, John Keegan, in summarizing the debate over the plan, criticizes it for its lack of realism about the speed with which the right wing of the German army would be able to wheel through Belgium and the Netherlands in order to arrive outside of Paris on schedule. He observes that, regardless of the path taken, there were simply not enough roads for the masses of troops planned to reach Paris in the time required. In other words, the Plan required German forces to arrive on schedule and in sufficient force, but in reality only one or the other could be achieved, not both.
Keegan also points out to the Schlieffen Plan as a leading example of the separation between military war planning and political/diplomatic considerations which was one of the original causes of the war. Schlieffen conceived his Plan as the best possible solution to a strategic problem, while ignoring the political reality that violating Belgian neutrality was the thing most likely to invite British intervention and expand the conflict.
A factor in evaluating the significance of the Schlieffen plan is the misinformation that was widely disseminated during and after the war. Records were lost and material made up to paint the events in a light more acceptable to those making the decisions at the time.
Another view is also that both Palmer and Fromkin are correct. The Schlieffen plan could have been simply a document that spurred operational thinking and planning, and became the working name for a strategy of bypassing the bulk of the French forces through a flanking maneuver. While the German army of 1914 was not sufficiently mobile for the plan to succeed, only 26 years later the same concept executed with more mobile forces was extremely successful.The German army of 1940 was mostly similarly mobile as the army of 1914, depending on horses for mobility and marching on foot. A major difference was the availability of faster moving armored forces that could be used to effect geographic control while the non-mechanized elements followed, and the availability of aircraft for attack in depth, and close air support missions.
Additional facts
- Schlieffen's solution reversed that of his great predecessor, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, whose experiences in the Franco-Prussian War with modern warfare and concerns regarding the increasing lethality of weaponry, made him doubt that a swift success could be achieved. Moltke had accordingly favored limited operations against France and a major effort against Russia. Schlieffen, on the other hand, would seek an immediate all-out victory.
- The absence of General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger from the Western Front was a crucial (though not decisive) factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. Communication was especially poor and, in addition, German forces sent wireless messages uncoded, allowing French forces under the command of General Joseph Joffre to pinpoint the location of the German advance.
- Further, Moltke balked at the weakness of the Alsatian "hinge" region, fearing that the massive strength of the right wing's hammer would allow the French to break through the relatively sparsely-manned left-wing "anvil". This had been part of Schlieffen's design as well—he had been willing to sacrifice some German territory in the short run to decisively destroy the French Army. Moltke refused to run the same risk and shifted some divisions from the right flank to the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine.
- The rigidity of the Schlieffen Plan has also been a source of much criticism. The plan called for the defeat of France in precisely 42 days. Armed with an inflexible timetable, argue many scholars, the German General Staff was unable to improvise as the "fog" of war became more apparent. Thus, many scholars believe that the Schlieffen Plan was anti-Carl von Clausewitzian in concept. On the other hand, General Kluck made the decision at the front to wheel southeasterly instead of continuing on past Paris; German generals were taught to think for themselves, and in fact his decision to wheel inwards made orthodox military sense. However, it deprived Germany of the chance to force a decisive envelopment battle around Paris.
- German troops were exhausted by the time they engaged French forces; many horses (towing artillery pieces) died, having eaten green corn.
- German supply lines stretched at the Marne; the front line of the German Army had already broken into retreat before the rear had even arrived.
- After Germany's defeat at the Marne, there began a series of flanking maneuvers by both the Germans, and the British and French Allies heading northwards in one last attempt to end the war quickly. However, by December, the two armies had built an elaborate series of trench fortifications stretching essentially from the English Channel to the Switzerland border which would remain nearly static for four years. Schlieffen's great gamble would, ironically, result in the one outcome he had feared: A long, drawn-out war of attrition against a numerically stronger enemy.
- Before the Schlieffen plan, Britain was officially neutral - despite already being in the Triple Entente with Russia and France. But since it had signed the Treaty of London 1839 It was forced to engage in the fight against the Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Italians.
- A version of the plan was also used by Germany during its attack on France in World War II. Once again Germany quickly mobilized. Once again Germany attacked West first (having used diplomacy to protect their Eastern Front with a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union). And once again Germany invaded through Belgium to get to France.
The difference was that France and England were expecting this tactic and had their forces lined along the French/Belgian Border, with the main thrust to defend its left flank. But Germany had learned from its history as well, and using a mobilized unit (a division of tanks) smashed through the center of the English/French line. This cut the allied forces in two. One was able to escape to England at Dunkirk. The other was quickly defeated, and with it France.
In media
In Harry Turtledove's
alternate history (fiction) novel, How Few Remain, set in an 1881 in which the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War, Schlieffen is inspired by Robert E. Lee's capture of Philadelphia.
Notes
References
- Foley, Robert Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
- Foley, Robert T. "The Real Schlieffen Plan", War in History, Vol. 13, Issue 1. (2006), pp. 91–115.
- David Fromkin, Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? New York: Vintage Books, 2004. ISBN 0-375-72575-X
- Hull, Isabel V. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8014-4258-3
- Manuel de Landa. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. 1991.
- Mombauer, Annika, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- Gerhard Ritter The Schlieffen plan, Critique of a Myth, foreword by Basil Liddell Hart. London: O. Wolff, 1958.
- Rothenberg, Gunther E. "Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment." in Makers of Modern Strategy Peter Paret (Ed.). Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986.
- Stoneman, Mark R. “Wilhelm Groener, Officering, and the Schlieffen Plan.” PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2006. http://homepage.mac.com/markstoneman/diss.html abstract
- Terence Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan. OUP, 2002. ISBN 0-19-925016-2
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