Schlieffen Plan
Posted by Mitch Williamson in Doctrine on Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Germany’s infamous military deployment plan of 1914, named
after Alfred Count von Schlieffen, chief of the Prussian general staff from
1892–1905. By the time the plan was implemented in August 1914, it should more
aptly be called “Moltke-Plan,” as it had been changed and updated by
Schlieffen’s successor, Helmuth von Moltke, in the years 1906–1914.
Schlieffen’s war planning was conducted against the
background of international developments in Europe at the beginning of the
twentieth century. Germany felt itself “encircled” by hostile alliances, and
its military planners feared that it would most likely have to fight a war on
two fronts if a European war were to break out. Schlieffen attempted to find an
answer to the dilemma of how to win such a two-front war when faced with
superior enemy numbers. As chief of the general staff, he had changed his
predecessors’ strategy of concentrating on the enemy in the East—Russia.
Instead, he reversed years of planning by focusing on the enemy in the
West—France. Russia, he felt, could retreat into its vast terrain and avoid a
decisive battle, but Germany would be too stretched to fight on two fronts and
needed to secure an early victory, at least on one of those fronts. France
seemed to offer that chance; Russia would be slow to mobilize and could be
dealt with later. In 1905, faced with an enforced retirement, he put some of his
thoughts to paper in a now infamous memorandum, intended to point his
successor, the younger Helmuth von Moltke, in the right direction.
The timing of this memorandum is important, as it was
written against the background of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. As a
result of this conflict, which Russia lost, it was eliminated as a serious
threat to the European status quo for the foreseeable future. Russia would first
of all have to recover from defeat and revolution. For Germany’s military
leaders who feared Russia as a potential future enemy, this was a perfect time
to consider “preventive war,” for Germany still had a chance to defeat Russia
if it chose to become involved in a European war. In the not-too-
distant-future, Germany’s military planners predicted, Russia would become
invincible. The so-called Schlieffen Plan was developed against this background
and designed primarily as a war against France—and if necessary Britain—in
1905. France, allied to Russia, would not be able to count on its ally’s
support in 1905, so this constellation offered a real opportunity to Schlieffen
that Germany could avoid a two-front war altogether and concentrate solely on
fighting in the west. With one enemy removed, Russia would in future be much
less of a threat to Germany.
Schlieffen therefore saw Germany’s best chance of victory in
a swift offensive against France; in the east, the German army was initially to
be on the defensive. He counted on the fact that that German victory in the
west would move quickly and that Russian mobilization would be slow, so that a
small German force would suffice to hold back Russia until France was beaten.
After a swift victory in the west, the full force of the German army would be
redirected eastward against Russia. In effect, this strategy would turn the
threatening two-front war into two sequential one-front wars. The plan further
entailed that Germany would have to attack France while avoiding the heavy
fortifications along the Franco-German border. Instead of a “head-on” engagement,
which would lead to position warfare of inestimable length, the opponent should
be enveloped and its armies attacked on the flanks and rear, using the existing
railway lines, which would ensure a swift German deployment. In addition,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium were not expected to put up much
resistance and their neutrality would not be respected in a German advance.
Schlieffen intended to concentrate all effort on the right wing of the German
advancing armies. The plan involved violating the neutrality of Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, and Belgium; however, the political ramifications of this act of
aggression were considered insignificant.
This was the result of years of planning and of strategic
exercises designed to find the best solution to the problem of a two-front war.
Schlieffen put this version to paper in December 1905 in a memorandum written
on the eve of his retirement. In the following years, his plan was adapted to
changing international circumstances by his successor, the younger Helmuth von
Moltke. The underlying principle—that of seeking to fight France before
attempting to defeat Russia, and of attempting to envelope the
opponent—remained the same until August 1914, however, when Germany’s
deployment plan was put into action.
In 1914, the plan imposed severe restrictions on finding a
diplomatic solution to the July Crisis, particularly because of its narrow
timeframe for the initial deployment of troops into Luxemburg, Belgium, and
France. Particularly the need to capture the fortified town of Liège quickly
put severe time pressure on the German advance. The escalation of the
diplomatic crisis into full-scale war was in no small measure a consequence of
Germany’s offensive war plans.
Germany began the war with a deployment of the majority of
its troops in the west. Seven armies were deployed there, and one army was
deployed in the east, where the task of holding back the Russian army was to be
shared with the Austro- Hungarian troops. The quick victory in the west,
however, was not achieved; in the east the Russians were quicker to mobilize
and deploy than had been anticipated, and the much needed support from the
Austrians was less substantial than hoped for. What had seemed a sound strategy
for winning a war on two fronts ultimately failed in August and September 1914,
when trench warfare put an end to the idea of a quick victory on the western
front. Arguably, Germany could not win a long war against numerically superior
enemies, particularly once Britain entered the war and the naval blockade took
effect. Once Moltke’s interpretation of the Schlieffen Plan had failed, it
seemed only a matter of time before Germany would lose the war.
After the war was lost and the victors blamed Germany and
German militarism for its outbreak, details of the Schlieffen Plan were kept
secret. Official document collections made no mention of it. In private
correspondence and in their memoirs Germany’s failed military leaders and
former members of the general staff nonetheless frequently referred to
Schlieffen’s “recipe for victory,” which had, in their opinion, been squandered
by Moltke. Details of the memorandum did not become public until after World
War II, when the German historian Gerhard Ritter published it and other
documents in an effort to prove that German militarism was indeed to some
extent responsible for the outbreak of war. Since then, generations of
historians have come to accept that German military planning, epitomized by the
Schlieffen Plan, was one of the factors for the outbreak of hostilities in
August 1914.
This certainty has recently been questioned by the American
historian Terence Zuber, who denies the existence of the Schlieffen Plan.
Zuber’s contention is that the famous 1905 memorandum did not amount to a
military plan and that Schlieffen never intended to launch an attack on France
via Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. This thesis has provoked a heated debate
but has largely failed to convince critics that there was no Schlieffen Plan.
Equally, Zuber’s apologetic interpretation that Germany did not have an
offensive war plan in 1914 has found little support. Nevertheless, the debate
has reemphasized what others had already pointed out: that there never existed
a perfect recipe for victory, that Schlieffen’s hapless successor adulterated
his plan, and that it would be prudent to think carefully about the terminology
used to describe Germany’s military plans of the prewar years. The notion of
the Schlieffen Plan as a convenient way of summarizing German military strategy
in August 1914 is inaccurate. The responsibility for the plans that were put
into practice in August 1914 lay with Helmuth von Moltke, who had adapted
Schlieffen’s ideas to changing international and domestic conditions. Although
the principle remained the same, the plans differed in important ways, such as
Moltke’s planned coup de main on Liège, which was intended to avoid a violation
of Dutch neutrality. It would still be fair to say that the German war plan of
1914 contributed significantly to the outbreak of fighting, but to blame
Schlieffen for what followed thereafter is misleading.
FURTHER READING: Bucholz, Arden. Moltke, Schlieffen and
Prussian War Planning. New York: Berg, 1991; Ehlert, Hans, Michael Epkenhans,
and Gerhard P. Gross, eds. Der Schlieffenplan. Analyse und Dokumente.
Paderborn: Schöningh. 2006; Mombauer, Annika. Helmuth von Moltke and the
Origins of the First World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001;
Ritter, Gerhard. The Schlieffen Plan. Critique of a Myth. London: O. Wolff,
1958; Zuber, Terence. Inventing the Schlieffen Plan. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
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