The Schlieffen Plan was the German General Staff's early 20th century overall strategic plan for victory in a possible future war in which the German Empire might find itself fighting on two fronts: France to the west and Russia to the east. The First World War later became such a war, with both a Western Front and an Eastern Front.
The plan took advantage of expected differences in the three countries' speed in preparing for war. In short, it was the German plan to avoid a two-front war by concentrating troops in the west and quickly defeating the French and then, if necessary, rushing those troops by rail to the east to face the Russians before they had time to mobilize fully. The Schlieffen Plan was created by Count Alfred von Schlieffen and modified by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after Schlieffen's retirement; it was Moltke who actually implemented the plan at the outset of World War I. In modified form, it was executed to near victory in the first month of the war. However, the modifications to the original plan, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris (the Battle of the Marne), and surprisingly speedy Russian offensives ended the German offensive and resulted in years of trench warfare. The plan has been the subject of intense debate among historians and military scholars ever since. Schlieffen's last words were "remember to keep the right flank strong," which was significant in that Moltke strengthened the left flank in his modification.
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After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the French province of Alsace-Lorraine, with a mixed population of both French and Germans, was annexed to the new German Empire. The revanchist French vowed to regain these territories, which France had possessed for nearly 200 years. Due to alliances orchestrated by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, France was initially isolated, but after Kaiser Wilhelm II took the throne in 1888 and gradually estranged Germany from Russia and Britain, fears about having to fight a future war on two fronts simultaneously grew among German leaders.
France, having been defeated in a few weeks in 1870, was not considered as dangerous in the long run as the Russians, who were expected to be difficult to defeat if the Tsar was allowed the necessary time to mobilize his huge country to the fullest extent. After Britain and France concluded the Entente Cordiale in 1904, Wilhelm asked Count Schlieffen to devise a plan which would allow Germany to fight a war on two fronts, and in December 1905 Schlieffen began circulating it.
The idea of the plan was to win a two-front war by first quickly defeating France in the west – the plan scheduled 39 days for the fall of Paris and 42 for the capitulation of France – before the "Russian Steamroller" would be able to mobilize and descend upon East Prussia.[1] The plan depended on Germany's ability to quickly mobilize troops and invade France before the French could fully mobilize their troops and defend their territory, and then to turn on Russia, seen as the slowest of the three to mobilize, before the Russians were ready.
According to Cpt. Douglas Cohn, USA (ret.), the Japanese victory in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War had discredited the Russian military, and the Schlieffen Plan, finalized less than three months after the end of that war, clearly took this into account. The German victory over the numerically superior Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 validated this point. Further, had Moltke not depleted the right flank on the Western Front, Kluck's 1st German Army would not have been forced away from the sea, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) would have been overwhelmed, and the French armies would have been trapped between Paris and France's eastern frontiers. The idea that logistics would have prevented this was disproven by the German supply improvisations that actually occurred.
It envisaged a rapid German mobilization, disregard of the neutrality of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, and an overwhelming sweep of the powerful German right wing southwest through Belgium and Northern France, "letting the last man on the right, brush the Channel with his sleeve,"[2] in the words of Schlieffen, while maintaining only a defensive posture on the central and left wings, in Lorraine, the Vosges, and the Moselle.
Paris was not to be taken (in 1870, the Siege of Paris had lasted for months) but was to be passed by the right wing to the west of the city. The intent of the plan was not to conquer cities or industry in order to weaken the French war efforts, but to capture most of the French Army and to force France to surrender, in essence a repeat of the strategy used to defeat France during the Franco-Prussian War. The plan was that the French Army would be hemmed in around Paris and forced to fight a decisive envelopment battle.
However, a seed of disaster lurked in the conception of the plan: both Schlieffen and Moltke were seduced by the possibility of the double envelopment of the entire French Army by the right wing coming from the north and west of France and the left wing coming from the east. The inspiration was the destruction of the Roman Army by Hannibal's forces at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, which was the object of meticulous study by Schlieffen. In essence, his plan was a very large scale strategic readdressing of Hannibal's tactics, capitalizing on the recent breakthroughs in communications and transport. Hans Delbrück's seminal study of the battle had a profound influence on subsequent German military theorists, in particular on Schlieffen. Through his writings, Schlieffen taught that the "Cannae model" would continue to be applicable in maneuver warfare throughout the 20th century:
"A battle of annihilation can be carried out today according to the same plan devised by Hannibal in long forgotten times. The enemy front is not the goal of the principal attack. The mass of the troops and the reserves should not be concentrated against the enemy front; the essential is that the flanks be crushed. The wings should not be sought at the advanced points of the front but rather along the entire depth and extension of the enemy formation. The annihilation is completed through an attack against the enemy's rear... To bring about a decisive and annihilating victory requires an attack against the front and against one or both flanks..."
Schlieffen later developed his own operational doctrine in a series of articles, many of which were later translated and published in a work entitled "Cannae".
Politically, one of the major drawbacks of the Schlieffen Plan was that it called for the invasion of neutral states in order to pass through German troops to France. As it turned out, at least formally, it was the decision to invade Belgium which led to war with Great Britain. In the US, the manner in which Belgium was invaded had much to do with turning popular sentiment against Germany, and facilitated the entrance of the US into war against Germany in April 1917.
As noted previously, Russian mobilization would supposedly be extremely slow, due to its poor railway system. Following the speedy defeat of France, the German General Staff would switch German concentrations to the Eastern Front. The plan called for sending 91% of the German troops to France and 9% to Russia. His goal was to defeat France in six weeks, the time it took for Russia to mobilize its army, and turn back to the Eastern Front before Russia could react. Kaiser Wilhelm II is quoted as having said "Paris for lunch, dinner at St. Petersburg."
Following the retirement of Schlieffen in 1906, Helmuth von Moltke became the German chief of staff. He disagreed with at least some of the Schlieffen Plan, thinking it to be too risky. The Plan, however, having been devised in 1905, was now too much a part of German military thinking to be abandoned completely, so all Moltke could do was modify it.
These changes have been the subject of much debate. L.C.F Turner in 1970 described von Moltke's changes as "a substantial modification in the Schlieffen Plan and one which probably doomed the German campaign in the west before it was ever launched." Turner claims that by weakening the main German offensive, they did not have a real chance of defeating the French army quickly enough; hence they became stranded in a two-front-war. He also says that not going through the Netherlands not only created a bottleneck at the German-Belgian border, but also that not having the Dutch railways at their disposal created a huge supply problem, a problem which outweighed the benefits they gained by still having access to the Dutch ports.
However, in 1977, Martin van Creveld, analyzing the role of logistics in the plan, felt that the effects of Moltke's alteration to avoid invading Dutch neutrality were more apparent than real, since two corps of troops which had been allocated to contain the 90,000-strong Dutch Army could instead be used for the invasion of France. Further, van Creveld points out that while Schlieffen had assigned five corps for the investment of Antwerp, Moltke made do with only two. "Though it is therefore quite true that Moltke's right wing was not as strong as Schlieffen had planned to make it, this loss was more than compensated for by the economies effected in [Moltke's] version of the plan."[3] Early in the war, according to the directives of Plan XVII, the French mobilized and hurled their forces towards the German border in an ill-fated attempt to recapture Alsace-Lorraine. This played exactly into Schlieffen's conception of a trap through double envelopment, which called for a loose defense of the border, and actually for retreats by which the French forces would have been lured further away from the main thrust of the German advance. However, Moltke's weakening of the German right, the defense of Alsace-Lorraine, and the transfer of three army corps and one cavalry division from the western front to help contain the Russian advance into East Prussia, all contributed to the failure of the German army to break through the Allied forces at the Marne. Without that breakthrough, the plan was destroyed.
Though debate continues about the merits of the Schlieffen Plan and even on whether the Schlieffen Plan was ever truly executed, ultimately the German invasion failed for seven major reasons:
He concludes that, overall, the logistical shortcomings of the Plan did not contribute to the German defeat on the Marne. However,...Schlieffen does not appear to have devoted much attention to logistics when he evolved his great Plan. He well understood the difficulties likely to be encountered, but made no systematic effort to solve them. Had he done so, he might well have reached the conclusion that the operation was impracticable. ... Moltke did much to improve the logistic side of the Plan. Under his direction, the problem was seriously studied for the first time and officers trained in the 'technics' of warfare ... He did, it is true, make a number of changes in the Plan. From an exclusively logistic point of view, some of these were beneficial, but most were harmful. Nevertheless, taking his period of office as a whole, he probably did more to improve the Plan than to damage its prospects.[3]
In van Creveld's view the design of the Plan was not characterized by the kind of thoroughness and detailed planning that is usually thought to be the hallmark of the German General Staff, but by "an ostrich-like refusal on Schlieffen's part to face even those problems which, after forty years of peace, could be foreseen." Although Moltke did improve the Plan somewhat in this respect, it was not methodical advanced planning which enabled the German advance to succeed, but "furious improvisation"Had the battle gone in Germany's favour ... there is every reason to believe that the advance would have petered out. The prime factors would have been the inability of the railheads to keep up with the advance, the lack of fodder, and sheer exhaustion. In this sense, but no other, it is true to say that the Schlieffen Plan was logistically impracticable.[3]
That the Army achieved as much as it did, at a time when the standing orders could only be said to have caused no actual harm, is remarkable indeed. Critics of the advance would do well to keep this in mind.[3]
The failures in the West resulted in defeat at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, a stalemate, trench warfare, and a two-front war for Germany.
What eventually occurred was a "reverse Schlieffen", in that Russia was defeated prior to the Western Allies. The Russian army, aided by the Romanian and Serbian armies and considered by the German command as more dangerous than the Western Allies, was defeated with relative ease. Meanwhile the Western Allies had a larger manpower base from which to feed the war of attrition taking place. Even though Germany sent many divisions to fight in Italy and the Franco-Benelux theater following the collapse of Russia and the Eastern Front in 1917/18, the Western Allies still defeated the Central Powers' forces. In the 1918 summer campaign, Italy obtained a long sought decisive victory over Austria-Hungary, and Austria withdrew from the war exposing Germany's southern flank. The defeat of Bulgaria also exposed Germany (and Austria) to an Allied advance up the Danube. Finally the entrance of the United States on the side of the Allies in 1917, and the arrival of substantial U.S. troops, coupled with the failure of the final German offensives in the West in early 1918, allowed the Allies to push the Germans out of France and into Belgium, towards the German border. Once the long-held static positions were lost, Germany accepted the Allies' armistice terms.
Several historians argue that the plan was unfeasible for its time, due to the recent advances in weaponry and the improved transportation of industrial warfare. Some would say the plan was "too good". B.H. Liddell Hart, for instance, praised the Schlieffen Plan as a conception of Napoleonic boldness, but concluded that:
In addition, some historians, including David Fromkin, author of Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?, and David Stevenson, author of Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, have made arguments that what is known as the Schlieffen Plan may not have been an actual plan as such, but instead was laid down in one 1905 hypothetical memorandum and a brief 1906 addition.[5]
Schlieffen may not have intended his concept to be carried out in the form he laid down, instead, seeing it as perhaps an intellectual exercise. Fromkin has argued that, given what historians have recently seen in Schlieffen's papers, captured by the U.S. Army along with other German war documents, that the memorandum had never been refined into an operational program. No orders or operational details (such as specific units for each area of the offensive) were appended. Furthermore, Fromkin says that the memorandum acknowledges the fact that for the plan to work the German Army needs more divisions, and there needs to be more parallel roads through Belgium. Fromkin continues by putting much of the genesis of the plan, as finally enacted, on Moltke, who had seen the memorandum and believed it to be a fully operational plan which he then proceeded to expand upon. Fromkin, in fact, has advocated referring to the "Moltke Plan" as opposed to the "Schlieffen Plan", as it may have been more a product of Moltke's misreading of the Schlieffen Memorandum of 1905 and its 1906 codicil.
According to the historian A. Palmer, however, closer inspection of documents regarding the German war plan reveal that Moltke's changes were not that great, and that the plan was basically flawed from the start. He claims that the Schlieffen plan does not deserve its high reputation, because it underestimated pretty much everyone—the Russians, French, British, and Belgians. However, this would tend to support the view of Professor Fromkin, in that a poor plan would indicate its origin as one not fully vetted.
The British military historian John Keegan in summarizing the debate over the plan, criticizes it for its lack of realism about the speed with which the right wing of the German army would be able to wheel through Belgium and the Netherlands in order to arrive outside of Paris on schedule. He observes that, regardless of the path taken, there were simply not enough roads for the masses of troops planned to reach Paris in the time required. In other words, the Plan required German forces to arrive on schedule and in sufficient force, but in reality only one or the other could be achieved, not both.
Keegan also points to the Schlieffen Plan as a leading example of the separation between military war planning and political/diplomatic considerations which was one of the original causes of the war. Schlieffen conceived his Plan as the best possible solution to a strategic problem, while ignoring the political reality that violating Belgian neutrality was the thing most likely to invite British intervention and expand the conflict.
A factor in evaluating the significance of the Schlieffen plan is the misinformation that was widely disseminated during and after the war. Records were lost and material made up to paint the events in a light more acceptable to those making the decisions at the time.[6]
Another view is that both Palmer and Fromkin are correct. The Schlieffen plan could have been simply a document that spurred operational thinking and planning, and became the working name for a strategy of bypassing the bulk of the French forces through a flanking maneuver.