How the Schlieffen Plan was meant to work

The German Army Chief of Staff, Alfred Von Schlieffen, was given orders to devise a strategy to cope with the imminent joint attack. In 1905, he produced a scheme that would later be known as the Schlieffen Plan. In short, the plan was to attack and defeat France through Belgium before the Russians were ready, then turn back to fight the Russians. Schlieffen calculated that the Russian army, however large, would take about six weeks to organise its army for an attack. The reason for the lengthy estimation was that the Russian army had some problems. Russia was, at the time, a very poor country, thus the troops couldn't afford to be equipped as well as the Germans. It didn't help that Russia had a vast army, which meant even less supplies and equipment for each soldier, as well as more problems mobilising. Schlieffen also thought the German left would keep the main French army busy, whilst the German right would capture France through Belgium, cross Northern France and capture Paris. France would be defeated in six weeks and the German forces would turn to deal with Russia. 90% of the German army would attack France, whilst the other 10% were to defend the eastern border of Germany against Russian attack.

Britain had a treaty promising to protect Belgium as a neutral country, but this dated back a long time to 1839. Schlieffen assumed Britain would not fight over a "scrap of paper" (as the Kaiser put it), and would not take part even when Germany had invaded Belgium. It was expected Belgium would not put up any resistance against an invasion, being a neutral country. For tactical as well as political reasons, Schlieffen's original idea of reaching France via Holland as well as Belgium was discounted when General Von Moltke became chief army of staff in 1907 (Germany desires Dutch neutrality for as long as possible.) Passage through the flat Flanders plains of Belgium would offer the fastest route to France and victory. Paris was important to invade for two reasons. One reason was that it by conquering Paris, France would hopefully surrender and sign an agreement or treaty with Germany, giving them what they wanted. Another reason might have been that the Germans would have liked to make a symbolic gesture; i.e. Germany defeated France in the 1870 war and were now repeating History once more. The ports were also important to capture as the Germans could then block supplies from overseas arriving in the enemies' territory i.e. starving the enemy out by preventing food supplies, or blocking important industrial equipment like steel and coal. By doing this, the allies would be most likely to surrender under these dismal circumstances. Hence, the Germans would be in control of the Western Front and the barrier of stalemate would be broken.

Schlieffen's successor, von Moltke, was a courageous soldier but not a bold or daring Chief of the General Staff. He once stated, "I lack the capacity for risking all on a single throw...." He proceeded to modify the Schlieffen Plan, with disastrous consequences for Germany in 1914. He abandoned the planned German advance through Holland and the violation of Dutch neutrality. Moltke changed the relative weight of the German armies moving against France, reducing the size of the right wing and increasing the left wing on the Franco-German border.

Map of the original Schlieffen plan