Talk:Schlieffen Plan

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The contents of the article do not reflect the considerable debate among scholars regarding Moltke, Schlieffen, and the "Schlieffen Plan." There's doubt now about the viability of the Plan, whether Schlieffen meant it as a war plan, and as to just what Moltke was executing in August of 1914. I've placed the disputed tag on the article to reflect this, but I do intend to engage in re-write (see e.g. Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke) Criticism welcome and appreciated. Mackensen 02:45, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I didn't realize there's much dispute. Strachan and Keegan (separately) write explicitly that the Plan was totally detached from the realities of logistics and combat; the right wing could not have been any stronger than it was and could not have had the mobility and strength needed to encircle Paris. I agree that this article seems like tired conventional wisdom rather than a reflection of modern scholarship. I'll see what I can do.--ArminTamzarian 09:20, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps a seperate section would be useful outlining the current disputes, most notably those raised by Terence Zuber (as covered in Mackensen's Moltke article). Even if this interpretation proves to become prominent, a piece on the 'traditional' view of the Schlieffen Plan is still relevant, as it remains the basis for the majority of work on the German contribution to the outbreak of the First World War. --Alilaw 22:53, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've made an effort to clarify some of the key highlights of the Plan in the section titled "Schlieffen Plan in Action." I added the section titled "Additional Facts," and brought up the debate on whether the Plan was Clausewitzian or not (i.e., did it allow for the commander's genius to deal with the "fog of war"?). To my knowledge, the central debate among scholars is not "Why did the Schlieffen Plan fail?" but rather "Could the Schlieffen Plan have been made to work?" This debate, no doubt, focuses on the myriad revisions to the Plan made by Moltke, and whether these changes doomed the Schlieffen Plan. Some scholars (most notably David Stevenson) refer to the "Schlieffen-Moltke Plan" to reflect the significance of these changes. -- Af35 10:28, 10 Sept 2005 (UTC)

I'm slowly writing a new version of this article over at User:Mackensen/Schlieffen Plan, where I hope that all these issues can be addressed. Mackensen (talk) 16:35, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Mackensen: Nice article. Let me know if you need any help with anything. Most of my research is/was on WWI submarine warfare, but I've done small research projects on the opening offensives. I see you've located the two best articles on the SP: Ritter and Zuber. You may also find the following books to be useful (sometimes overlooked by historians as they are more often considered "Military Security" works: Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decisionmaking and the Disasters of 1914; Martin van Creveld, Supplying War. Also good is Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, eds. As an aside, an interesting issue is why Germany's opening offensive was unsuccessful in the West, but successful in the East (i.e., Tannenberg/Masurian Lakes -- the Battle of Gumbinnen is usually skipped with good reason). Debate typically focuses on (a) the force-to-space ratio; (b) quality of generalship (Moltke vs. Ludendorff/Hindenburg vs. Prittwitz vs. Samsonov), and (c) the use/misuse of lateral railways, etc. -- Af35 19:32, 11 Sept 2005 (UTC).


Kudos on the summary of the Plan. It's nice to come across a straight forward, accessible description of it. I'm amazed how frequently I see discussion of the Plan that contains no reference to the theme of it: defense as offense, aggressive annihilation as the only possible path to victory, etc. Dxco 05:15, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Dates

Surely if the Schlieffen Plan was made in 1905 it couldn't have been drawn up in response to the Triple Entente which was signed in 1907?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.245.28.240 (talk • contribs) 15:53, 10 January 2006.

You're right, I've edited it.--Johnbull 22:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)


vonMoltke was a traitor to his Fatherlands. He sent troops East "believing France was defeated"?? The reader is asked to understand that that quotation is an inference. Moltke's true inner thoughts not having been recorded, that is all one can do. Nevertheless, the only fact that can be observed is that Moltke pulled troops from the Western Front prematurely. As it would happen, that fact is also consistent with intentional sabotage. Again, that too is an inference. Again, Moltke's physical brainwaves were not recorded for posterity. All we know is he prematurely pulled troops East. Perhaps, yes, he truly "believed France was defeated". Perhaps also, however, he was willfully sabotaging the German war effort. And his desire to preserve the territorial integrity of the Netherlands makes little sense. With a 1 on 2 war versus 2 major powers, Germany needed every advantage it could manufacture. So keeping Netherlands friendly is a Red Herring, because Victory trumps all other concerns -- you can cope with supply difficulties more easily than armies, especially because fighting those armies demands additional supplies! Moreover, let's say Netherlands stays friendly. Great. Now England blockades the port. It's worthless, and you just wasted a battle advantage for squat. von Moltke = traitor (and certain people know it)—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.235.44.73 (talk • contribs) 04:23, 17 February 2006.

[edit] Modifications and failure

There was next to no info on Moltke's changes, and the main reasons for the plans failure. I added these, and removed a couple of bits where info was doubled-up. --- Guest User- 4th March 2006.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.7.176.133 (talk • contribs) 02:13, 4 March 2006. WELL TOO BE HONEST NOBODY GIVES A FUCKING SHIT SO GO AWAY.

[edit] Historical importance

It seems that the article fails to convey the full historical significance of the Schlieffen Plan. The eminent war historian John Keegan referred to it in his The First World War as arguably the most important document of the 20th Century in terms of global impact, yet there is no such discussion in the article. I am not an expert on the subject, so if someone more knowledgeable might add something to this effect, I'm sure the article would be improved. A.G. Pinkwater 01:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Why no discussion of the impact of this plan and its relative failure on subsequent German and European military thinking. Think about it - Put this plan upside down and backwards, i.e., clockwise instead of counter-clockwise and you have US general H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.'s plan to oust Iraq from Kuwait, with the lighter airborn units, helo-airborn units and light armor swinging to the northwest to descend upon Iraqi forces from the unsuspected northwest! SimonATL 04:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Rotate anything, and it can look like everything else :) Particularly when discussing this kind of topic, we should be wary of seeing too many similarities between things: a lot of stuff ends up looking smilar, at first glance, to other things. However, I agree with the commenters that the significance of the Plan is a topic truly worth delving into. While it can (and has) been argued that the Plan got morphed beyond recognition, it is the philosophy of the Plan that was both oddly persistent over time, and fascinatingly part of a long-term modification in thinking (which started far before it, and continued well beyond the Plan). Dxco 04:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Barbara Tuchman also goes in depth into the Schlieffen Plan in her book The Guns of August. She spends a great deal of time discussing the slow conversion of the plan from a single envelopment to the grander double envelopment used by Hannibal. I am surprised that her book is not cited in this article, as the various history professors I had in college all considered her an authority on the subject. My honors history prof went as far as to say that if Germany had followed Schlieffen's Plan, we would all be speaking German instead of English! - Bonnie 23:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The Schlieffen plan article is seriously out of date. 'The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered' in War in History in 1999 and 'Inventing the Schlieffen Plan'(OUP) in 2002 showed that the actual "Schlieffen Plan" was written in January 1906, after Schlieffen had retired. It required an army of 96 divisions and a one-front war against France alone. In 1906 the entire German army included only 72 divisions. Schlieffen was actually saying that a right-wing attack through Belgium would only work if the German army had 24 divisions that did not exist. The 'Schlieffen Plan' was an arguement for a vastly expanded German army. There is no evidence that it was ever the German war plan - where would the 24 non-existent divisions, more than two complete armies, come from? In 1914 the Germans were facing a two-front war and could initially deploy only 68 divisions in the west. The author discovered the war games that Schlieffen held while he was still Chief of the General Staff, which show that Schlieffen anticipated a coordinated Franco-Russian attack (which is what actually happened) and wanted to use German rail mobility to counterattack against these offensives. Therefore, Schlieffen never intended to plunge into either the interior of France or Russia, but to stay close to the German railheads. There is no evidence that in 1914 Moltke was attempting to employ the Schlieffen plan or anything like it. The "Schlieffen Plan" that everybody loves so well was a post-WWI fabrication, which the General Staff used as an excuse to explain why it lost the Battle of the Marne - Schlieffen had bequeathed an infallible plan to Moltke who never understood it and "watered it down". Ritter took the Schlieffen plan and used it as evidence for the evils of German militarism. Neither the General Staff nor Ritter had any interest in explaining the glaring inconsistencies in the plan. The "Schlieffen Plan" myth is satisfying because it is easy to understand: all you need are little maps with big arrows. Real strategy is much more complex and requires attention to detail, and neither 'The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered' nor 'Inventing the Schlieffen Plan' are light bedtime reading. Old Grunt 23:59, 13 February 2007 (UTC) Old Grunt

  • I couldn't agree more. I've been working on a draft article (User:Mackensen/Schlieffen Plan) that incorporates Zuber's criticisms but I confess that I have not progressed very far. Mackensen (talk) 00:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

"On the other hand, the Western Allies had equipment far superior to Central and East Allied weapons, and were better trained." This sentence is factually incorrect. A look at the casualty figures for each side makes it explicit: the German army was tremendously more effective than the Allies purely on kills to deaths ratio, but was forced to mobilize a much higher percentage of their population. They lost because they faced supremely more powerful enemies - the combined weight of the Allied forces, in terms of manpower, volume of equipment, etc, meant that their defeat would have come a LOT sooner had the Germans truly been less effective than the Allies. I believe that Niall Ferguson's 'The Pity Of War' elaborates on this theme. This and the above comments show that this article needs some serious revision. I'm surprised the apocryphal tale of Schlieffen's last words being "Make sure to keep the right flank nice and strong" was not included. 121.45.58.138 10:22, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 26 Years Later

The article states "While the German army of 1914 was not sufficiently mobile for the plan to succeed, only 26 years later the same concept executed with more mobile forces was extremely successful"

I think this is pretty misleading. To suggest the German invasion of France and the low countries in 1940 was anything like the same concept as the Schlieffen Plan (as the article seems to suggest) is a falsehood. In fact, the Germans relied on the Allies responding as if to a Schlieffen plan in 1940 thereby drawing Allied forces into the low countries and away from the Meuse and Sedan, the centre of gravity of the German advance..... Unless I have just gone totally mental or something, that is. Jonewer 16:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I wrote that part into the article, and here's how I saw the similarity: (1) avoid a southern advance, yet tie French forces by limited attacks, (2) void neutrality of the Low Countries, (3) maintain initiative, (4) envelop the enemy (though the decisive envelopment took place to the north, not south as envisioned by Schlieffen).
In practice the German attack was more successful than the planners had expected, and had Guderian and Rommel not taken advantage of battlefield opportunities in violation of their orders, the outcome might have been different. The Schwerpunkt through the Ardenne forest and the new techniques for dealing with fixed fortifications were effective at maintaining the initiative. But in the end, the fate of the Allied forces was sealed by the pivoting front that extended all the way to the Channel, and also represented the core of the Shlieffen plan. (In addition to incredibly poor French leadership, perhaps even worse than that of WWI.Aki Korhonen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aki009 (talk • contribs) 17:38, 31 August 2007 (UTC) Aki Korhonen 18:53, 31 August 2007 (UTC)