Schlieffen Plan - The Schlieffen Plan

The Schlieffen Plan

After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, most of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, with a population that was culturally both French and German, were annexed by 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, the prospect of fighting a future war on two fronts simultaneously caused increasing unease among German leaders.

France, having been defeated in a matter of 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 were 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. 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.

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 favoured limited operations against France and a major effort against Russia. Schlieffen, on the other hand, would seek an immediate all-out victory against France.

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.

The plan envisaged a rapid German mobilization, disregard for 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," 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."