The schlieffen plan "What was meant to happen"

THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN

Almost all European countries, even today, posses at least some armed forces. At very least, they are supposed to defend their countries against outside attack. It follows that every army needs to plan carefully what it would do In the event of war. Most armies have specialist units; made up of senior officers, whose job it is to produce such plans: these units are usually known as general staff. In the years before the First World War the German army had a General staff. At its head, unit 1906 was count Alfred von schlieffen.

Schlieffen was appointed Chief of the general staffing 1881. At once he began to think about Germany’s future in the event of war. His thinking resulted in two plans. Both assumed that one day there would be war against Russia. Ever since the 1880’s relations between Germany and Russia had been growing ore hostile. This became worse when In 1894 Russia signed a treaty with France. Schlieffen did not need to be much of a prophet then to predict that war with Russia would become immanent.

Schlieffen’s first plan was based on the possibility that Russia alone would be involved. In that case, Schlieffen planned to send the German Army across Germany’s north-east border on a direct attack on the Russian capital, St Petersburg. This he called the great eastern offensive plan.

The second plan was more important, and was the one which most Germans always believed would be the one used in wartime. In this plan, schlieffen assumed that Germany would be attacked by France as well as Russia. Schlieffen knew that if both these enemies attacked simultaneously then Germany would find it difficult, if not impossible, to defend itself successfully.

This led to the first principle of the plan. Germany must attack before either of its enemies mobilise. Other countries, schlieffen reasoned, could afford to wait while they got their armies should move the moment that mobilisation began.

Where should ...

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Where should these forces go? The answer to this became the second principle of the plan. Schlieffen decided that Germany must attack with all its might against first one enemy, and then the other. He had no doubt which should be the first victim.

There were several reasons for choosing to attack in this order. First schlieffen believed that it would be comparatively easy to defeat France rapidly because they thought France would be taken by surprise, and they could easily encircle Paris. Also the French army was much smaller than the Russian army so it would be quicker and easier to defeat France. The Germans had in fact done this in 1870-71, a victory in which schlieffen himself had taken part. Second, schlieffen believed that he would have quite a long time – perhaps two months – to destroy the French army. He did not believe that the Russians could organise an attack against Germany in that time. If Germany could defeat France quickly, it would be able to transfer its victorious army against the Russians and launch an offensive against St Petersburg.

Naturally, there were many risks attached to this plan, and Schlieffen was well aware of them. The most obvious was that it might take longer than two months to defeat the French. If it did then the whole of Germany’s eastern frontier would lie open to a Russian attack.

Despite his worries, Schlieffen refused to solve this problem by leaving large German forces in the east to prevent a Russian attack if things went wrong. He reasoned that by doing so he would reduce the number of men available for the attack on France, and might by doing so bring about the very problem he feared.

Instead schlieffen decided to try to guarantee a speedy victory in France. He knew that the common border between France and Germany was well defended with major forts, such as Nancy and Verdun. Trying to take these forts would take time. Schlieffen reckoned that he could avoid tem altogether – by sending the bulk of the German forces through Belgium. In this way he could guarantee no hold-ups. Even better, the Germans were likely to be able to get behind the French armies guarding the border.

This was a clever solution, but led to two more problems. Schlieffen was unable to suggest any solution to these. One problem was that by attacking through Belgium, Germany would almost certainly involve Great Britain in the war. Since 1839 Great Britain, with most other European nations, had promised to protect Belgium from foreign attack. Schlieffen realised this, but he was not particularly worried. He was unimpressed by Britain’s tiny army, and did not think that it could arrive in France in time to upset the plan.

Accordingly, in 1905, just before his retirement, he made important changes to the plan. First, he decided that the German army must advance through Holland, as well as Belgium. This would give a better chance of avoiding a bottleneck. Second, he decided that more soldiers must be left to defend Germany’s eastern frontier. He knew that this would weaken the attack on France, and this certainly played on his mind.

In 1906 schlieffen was replaced as chief of the general staff by Helmuth von Moltke. Moltke was unimpressed by thee changes that schlieffen had made to the plan. In 1911 he produced the third and final version. In this the attack on Holland was dropped.. Moltke never satisfactorily explained this decision. He also ignored Schlieffen’s deathbed instructions – he withdrew soldiers from armies which were to attack in the west and placed them on Germany’s eastern border to help guard against Russian attack. But he went even further. He removed still more men from the attacking force, and moved them to face France’s border with Germany. He hoped that he could use them to attack France from another direction as well, and maybe even trap the French in a giant pincer movement. This was very optimistic, and it seriously weakened the force that was to go through Belgium. Nevertheless, this was the plan that Germany was to put into operation in 1914.