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Schlieffen Plan

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File:AlfredGrafVonSchlieffen.jpg
Alfred Graf von Schlieffen

The Schlieffen Plan was the German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory on the Western Front against France, and was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I; however, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris, the Battle of the Marne, ended the German offensive and guaranteed years of trench warfare. The controversial Plan has been fodder for historians and military scholars and analysts ever since.

Overview

The Schlieffen Plan takes its name from its author, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen. It envisioned a rapid German mobilization, disregard of Luxembourg and Belgian neutrality, and the overwhelming sweep of the powerful German right wing through Belgium and Northern France in a southwesterly direction, "letting the last man on the right brush the Channel with his sleeve," [1] in the words of Schlieffen, while maintaining only a defensive posture on the central and left wings, in Lorraine, the Vosges, and the Moselle. The raison d'etre of the plan was to win a two-front war quickly by first triumphing in the West before the "Russian Steamroller" would be able to mobilize and descend upon East Prussia -- the Plan scheduled 39 days for the fall of Paris [2].

The plan was made after the Entente Cordiale of 1904 was signed between Britain and France. Kaiser Wilhelm II asked Alfred Graf von Schlieffen to devise a plan which would allow Germany to fight a war on two fronts and in December 1905 von Schlieffen began circulating it.

Paris was not to be taken but 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.

A seed of disaster lurked in the conception of the plan: both Schlieffen and the man who would eventually implement his Plan, Moltke the Younger, 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.

As noted supra, Russian mobilization would supposedly be extremely slow, due to their 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 90% of the German troops to France and 10% to Russia. His goal was to defeat France in 6 weeks, the time it took for Russia to mobilize their army, and turn back to the Eastern Front before Russia could react. Kaiser Wilhlem II is quoted as having said "Paris for lunch, dinner at St. Petersburg."

File:Schlieffen plan map.jpg
Map of the Schlieffen Plan and planned French counter-offensives

Modifications to the Plan, 1911

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 abandon it completely. All he could do was modify it. Von Moltke decided to pull significant amounts of troops away from the main force entering France from the north, in order to fortify the forces in Alsace-Lorraine, and the forces at the Russian border. The other significant change he made was to not enter through the Netherlands, instead sending troops through Belgium alone. 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 didn't 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 Holland 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. A. Palmer, on the other hand, disagrees with this view. According to Palmer, 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.

The Schlieffen Plan in Action, and its Failure

Despite continual debate on the Schlieffen Plan and its perceived greatness, it failed to materialize a victory for the Germans. The ultimate failure of the Schlieffen Plan is said to have been due to four major reasons:

  • The Belgian resistance - Although the Belgian army was only a tenth the size of the German army, it still delayed the Germans for nearly a month. The Germans used their "Big Bertha" artillery to destroy Belgian forts, but the Belgians still fought back. Even after their army was crushed, Belgian civilians continued to slow the Germans by sabotaging their own infrastructure, sniping German soldiers in the streets, and just making a general nuisance of themselves. This caused the Germans to adopt a policy of killing 10 Belgian civilians for every German casualty caused by a Belgian.
  • The presence/effectiveness of the British Expeditionary Force - After the war, it was revealed by German documents that many German generals and politicians did not believe that Great Britain would enter the war. Because of the Treaty of London, the Triple Entente, and fear of German expansion, however, they did. While the BEF was generally routed throughout the hectic month of August, it provided enough resistance against the German First Army under Kluck to help induce the German General to break off the Plan and wheel southeastwards towards Compiegne instead of beyond Paris, showing his flank to the Garrison of Paris under Gallieni and making possible the "Miracle of the Marne."
  • The speed of Russian mobilization - The Russians moved faster than expected, gaining ground in Eastern Prussia quicker than the Germans wanted, giving them a bit of a shock. While the Russian advance may not have posed much real threat at the time, had they kept gaining ground at that pace, they were going to get dangerously close to Berlin. This caused the Germans to pull even more men from their main force, in order to reinforce the Eastern Front. This led to the devastating German victory at Tannenberg, but any thinning of the all-important right wing was problematic for the Plan.
  • The French railway system - Because of the delays caused by the British and Belgians, the French had more time to transfer troops from the border at Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans greatly underestimated how well they would be able to do this, especially with the extra time they were granted by the slowing of the German forces. The French sent some of their troops by train, some through taxis, and marched the rest of them. By the time the Germans got into France, the French were there waiting for them.

These four points ultimately ended in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, resulting in the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, a stalemate, Trench Warfare, and the one thing the Germans dreaded most—a two-front war.

What eventually occurred was a "mirror Schieffen." The Russian army, aided by the Romanian and Serbian armies and considered by the German command as far more dangerous than the Western Allies, were utterly crushed with relative ease. On the other hand, the Western Allies had equipment far superior to Central and East Allied weapons, and were better trained. When Russia and the Eastern Front collapsed in 1917/18, Germany sent many divisions of victory-flushed troops to fight the Western Allies in Italy and the Franco-Benelux theater. Eventually, however, Italy defeated Austria-Hungary and Austria withdrew from the war, exposing Germany's southern flank, while the defeat of Bulgaria also exposed Germany (and Austria) to an Allied advance up the Danube. The entrance of the United States on the side of the Allies in 1917, and the arrival of substantial US reinforcements, 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. Germany had to accept the Allies' armistice terms as the withdrawal from the war of her allies meant her position was ultimately hopeless.

Criticism

Several historians argue that the plan was infeasible 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". Liddell Hart, for instance, praised the The Schlieffen Plan as a “conception of Napoleonic boldness”, but concluded that: “The plan would again become possible in the next generation---when air power could paralyze the defending side’s attempt to switch its forces, while the development of mechanized forces greatly accelerated the speed of encircling moves, and extended their range. But Schlieffen’s plan had a very poor chance of success at the time it was conceived.” In addition, some historians, including Professor David Fromkin, author of Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? have recently 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. Schlieffen may not have intended 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 US Army along with other German war documents after World War One, that the memoranda 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. He further goes on to pin 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.

Additional Facts

  • Schlieffen's solution reversed that of his great predecessor, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, whose experiences in the Franco-Prussian War with modern warfare and concerns regarding the increasing lethality of weaponry, made him doubt that a swift success could be achieved. Moltke had accordingly favored limited operations against France and a major effort against Russia. Schlieffen, on the other hand, would seek an immediate all-out victory.
  • The absence of General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger from the Western Front was a crucial (though not decisive) factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. Communication was especially poor and, in addition, German forces sent wireless messages uncoded, allowing French forces under the command of General Joseph Joffre to pinpoint the location of the German advance.
  • Further, Moltke balked at the weakness of the Alsatian "hinge" region, fearing that the massive strength of the right wing's hammer would allow the French to break through the relatively sparsely-manned left-wing "anvil". This had been part of Schlieffen's design as well -- he had been willing to sacrifice some German territory in the short run to decisively destroy the French Army. Moltke refused to run the same risk and shifted some divisions from the right flank to the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine.
  • The rigidity of the Schlieffen Plan has also been a source of much criticism. The plan called for the defeat of France in precisely 42 days. Armed with an inflexible timetable, argue many scholars, the German General Staff was unable to improvise as the "fog" of war became more apparent. Thus, many scholars believe that the Schlieffen Plan was anti-Clausewitzian in concept. On the other hand, General Kluck made the decision at the front to wheel southeasterly instead of continuing on past Paris; German generals were taught to think for themselves, and in fact his decision to wheel inwards made orthodox military sense.
  • German troops were exhausted by the time they engaged French forces; many horses (towing artillery pieces) died, having eaten green corn.
  • German supply lines stretched 80 miles at the Marne; the front line of the German Army had already broken into retreat before the rear had even arrived.
  • After Germany's defeat at the Marne, there began a series of flanking maneuvers by both the Germans and the British and French Allies heading northwards in one last attempt to end the war quickly. However, by December, the two armies had built an elaborate series of trench fortifications stretching essentially from the English Channel to the Swiss border which would remain nearly static for four years. Schlieffen's great gamble would, ironically, result in the one outcome he had feared: A long, drawn-out war of attrition against a numerically stronger enemy.

References

  1. ^ Rosinski, Herbert, The German Army, London, Hogarth, 1939
  2. ^ Grenville, J.A.S., A History of the World in the 20th Century, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 21

Sources

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