Explain how the Schlieffen Plan was meant to work.

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Coursework Assignment 1

The First World War

  1. Explain how the Schlieffen Plan was meant to work.

To understand how the Schlieffen Plan was supposed to work it first has to be considered what Germany wanted to achieve through it. In 1914 Germany believed that a war with Russia was almost certain. She also believed that if a war was fought against Russia a war would also have be fought against France, Russia’s ally. By fighting a war against both Russia and France, Germany would be fighting a war on two fronts. Through the Schlieffen Plan Germany hoped to avoid fighting a war on two fronts in order to overcome her problem of being encircled by her enemies, to enable her to win the war.

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The Schlieffen Plan was suppose to achieve this by dealing with France first and leaving Russia until later. This was based on an assumption that Russia would take at least six weeks to mobilise, by which time, according to the Schlieffen Plan, France would be knocked out of the war leaving the German army free to concentrate all its efforts on winning the war against Russia.

In order to be able to beat France in such a short period of time Germany had planned to surprise the French forces by attacking through Belgium rather than across the French/German border ...

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