Explain how the Schlieffen Plan was meant to work?

The Schlieffen Plan had calculated that the invasion of France would take less than six weeks; this would allow the German army to travel to the Eastern Front to where Russia was still mobilizing troops. One main idea of the Schliffen Plan was that the Right Wing Army, one of the five armies which would invade France through Belgium. This army was twice the size of all the other armies as it had a lot more distance to cover because it was supposed to take the channel ports and Paris. The Germans wanted the channel ports as they had built a good navy but only had a small coast line from which to attack from and get supplies. Having the French coastline would give them more control of the sea. The sea would allow them to ship in supplies and also stop the British arriving with troops and supplies.  

Germany was aware that in 1839 Britain had signed a treaty with Belgium promising to defend the country against any attacker, but the Schliffen Plan assumed that the British would probably ignore the treaty as it was so old. Even if Britain did send troops, the German Army were sure they could defeat them easily as the British army would not be very big. The Schliffen Plan originally planned for the German soldiers to get to France through Holland as well as Belgium as this would allow the soldiers to arrive in France more quickly as there would be more space to manoeuvre the troops. This would result in less hold-ups. In the end Helmuth Von Moltke became Chief of the General Secretary in 1906 and dropped the idea of going through Holland because he believed it was better to keep good relations with Holland as it had sea ports which Germany used for trade.

The Schlieffen Plan was based on a number of assumptions. First, that Russia would take at least six weeks to mobilize. In fact Russia had become uneasy about Germany for a while before the war so had been making preparations for war before it was declared. Secondly, that all the French would be fighting in Alsace Lorraine. The Schliffen Plan did not realise how passionately France felt about Paris. The French were prepared to fight until the death and so quickly travelled up France to fight the Germans. Thirdly, the Germans thought that Britain may get involved to uphold the treaty with Belgium but they assumed the army would be quite small and could easily be defeated. In fact Britain joined the war quite quickly and produced a small but highly trained army, which challenged the Germans.

The Schlieffen Plan was a plan to avoid Germany having to fight a war on two fronts. It involved attacking France by surprise by going through Belgium. France would them fall before Russia was even mobilized. Germany would then be free to concentrate on winning the war on the Eastern Front.