The Schlieffen plan consisted of Germany invading through Belgium and defeating France quickly so that they could turn there attention to Russia, the Germans estimated that it would take Russia up to 6 weeks to fully mobilize their army, mainly due to the countries poor infrastructure and huge army- it was very hard to get all of the troops into one place, it took time. once all of the army was put into place and started to march towards Germany, the Germans had a few small army’s to just slow down the Russian army a bit, they knew that the Russians would easily defeat these few small armies but it would give the Germans some more time which could prove crucial the plan heavily relied on the timing of events.
The German army would spit into two divisions when attacking France, there was the decisive wing and the holding wing. The decisive wing consisted of 37 and a half divisions and its job was to travel along the coast of France taking all of the ports along the way- this gave them control over the docks and meant that it would be much harder for Britain to help out Belgium
after getting control of the ports they would come around to Paris and take over the capital, the Germans would stop all communications and transport in the country and would completely destroy the morale of the country and ultimately circum to Germany defeating France.
The holding wings job was to literally hold the French army in place at Alsace Lorain – the Germans knew that France would want Alsace Lorain back from the Germans who gained control of it in the last war and that the French would have there minds set on taking back Alsace Lorain, if anything the Germans wanted to be pushed back a little by the French, they were prepared to give a little to the French to keep them moving forward and moving away from Paris, this meant that the decisive wing which was seven times the size of the holding wing could come around the back and take Paris, and after they had gained control of Paris they would come up behind the French soldiers at Alsace Lorain and defeat them. Germany knew the land very well as they had fought there in the Franco Prussian war in 1870- 1871 this strengthened there plan even more.
The Germans assumed that Britain would not get involved because they thought that the British would not go to war over what the Kaiser called “a scrap of paper” referring to the treaty signed between Britain and Belgium in 1839 where Britain promised to help Belgium if they were to get invaded, and with control of the ports they thought that there was no way that even if Britain decided to enter the war that they could prevent them from defeating the French.
Germany decided to attack France by invading Belgium because Belgium was a very easy country to invade, it was flat and clear- there were hardly any hills or big forests that would tire out the German soldiers, they could just swiftly move in and out of Belgium with little problems at all, the Germans knew that Belgium would put up some resistance but not enough to halt the German advance.
The Germans knew that it was almost inevitable that the second they invaded France, the French would almost certainly launch an attack through Alsace Lorain again that was why the holding wing was in place, if the holding wing did there job and held off the attack by the French then the decisive wing would come from behind and take over the best invasion route between France and Germany, this would prevent the French from launching another attack on the Germans in the near future.
