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Schlieffen Plan of the German General Staff


Дата публикации: 20 сентября 2007
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Schlieffen Plan of the German General Staff

Was the Schlieffen Plan of the German General Staff a sound war strategy?

Viewpoint: Yes. The various directives that made up the German war plan indicate a high level of flexibility and a willingness to respond to events.

Viewpoint: No. The Schlieffen Plan was predicated on an inexorable progression to an all-or-nothing victory.

Viewpoint: No. The Schlieffen Plan seriously underestimated the capabilities of enemy forces and did not take into account their tenacity and rapid deployment.

___________________________

Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1906, invited description, when not caricature, as an archetype of the specialist with tunnel vision, a man who would send staff problems to subordinates on Christmas Eve and expect a solution on his desk the morning of 26 December. The operational plan bearing his name is usually described in corresponding terms, as a comprehensive, detailed scheme for deploying the German army so as to conquer France by destroying the French army in one giant enveloping movement through the Low Countries.
In the years after the Great War supporters of the plan--most of them German officers--presented it as a design for victory, disrupted by the mistakes of Schlieffen's successor. Critics, whose numbers have steadily increased, describe it as a doomsday machine triggering general war by its emphasis on a first strike and as a military myth, requiring its details to go impossibly right in order to have any real chance of succeeding.
The Schlieffen Plan was no straitjacket, but a series of annually revised memoranda, reflecting current military and political developments as well as the results of particular staff inspections and maneuvers. The general outline, however, was shaped by Schlieffen's long-standing convictions that first, Germany could not win or indeed survive a general war of any length; and second, the developing alliance between France and Russia meant Germany must prepare for a two-front war as a military certainty. The French army, developed since the 1870s as a virtual carbon copy of the German original, was the enemy Schlieffen considered the easiest to defeat in a short time; a corresponding focus on Russia ran too great a risk of being sucked into the vast, undeveloped wastelands of the east.
To implement this strategy, Schlieffen concentrated on developing the offensive capacities of the army, including establishing a command system based on electronic technology that he expected would make possible the fine-tuning of large-unit movements from a central headquarters. He emphasized reducing as far as possible the time required to mobilize and concentrate a field army that grew ever larger--though not as large as Schlieffen considered necessary for his grand design. For the tactical advantage of gaining a few hours, he was willing to accept the risks of violating the neutrality of both Belgium and Holland. Above all, Schlieffen's approach denied the possibility of fine-tuning by diplomats and politicians. It was at best a strategic solution to a problem of policy.
Schlieffen's retirement in 1906 led to some modifications of his plan, but on the whole the German army and general staff accepted its principles and pursued its ends with a single-mindedness that came closer to success in 1914 than is generally realized. The problem was that the limitations of the plan were exposed by events while no military alternatives existed--which in turn threw added burdens on a political system ill equipped to cope with them.



Viewpoint: Yes. The various directives that made up the German war plan indicate a high level of flexibility and a willingness to respond to events.

Perhaps no other war plan has attracted as much attention as Alfred von Schlieffen's memorandum to his successor as Chief of the General Staff--the so-called Schlieffen Plan. In this memorandum, Schlieffen provided the outline for a future German deployment plan that envisioned the rapid and total defeat of the French army within weeks of the outbreak of war. Schlieffen aimed to achieve this decisive victory in the open field by marching the bulk of the German army through the neutral countries of Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands and thereby bypassing the heavily fortified Franco-German border. While Schlieffen wrote this document around the time of his retirement at the end of 1905, his memorandum served as the basis for the German war plan of 1914 and has excited commentators ever since.

Immediately after the German defeat in World War I, German officers began writing in support of the ideas embodied in Schlieffen's memorandum. The stature of these officers, most of whom had served in high-level staff posts during the war, lent credence to their assertions that had Schlieffen's plan been followed to the letter, then Germany would have won World War I in the first weeks of the conflict. Writers such as Wilhelm Groener, the head of the Railway Section of the General Staff from 1914 to 1916, and Hermann von Kuhl, the Chief of Staff to the First Army and later to Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht, castigated Schlieffen's successor, Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger), for altering Schlieffen's master plan and thereby causing the German defeat at the battle of the Marne (1914). By the beginning of World War II, this interpretation--that the Schlieffen Plan had been a sure recipe for success, but was tinkered with by an unworthy successor--had become standard. Most Germans, and indeed most other observers, held the Schlieffen Plan to be a brilliant plan worked out meticulously by a great mind years before the outbreak of hostilities.

It was only in the aftermath of the Nazi defeat in World War II that this interpretation began to be reexamined. In the 1950s Gerhard Ritter, a historian from Freiburg University, began publishing a monumental study of German "militarism." In the process of writing this work, he came across drafts of Schlieffen's plan in the documents captured by the Allies at the end of World War II. These he published, along with a biting attack on the standard interpretation of the Schlieffen Plan developed in the interwar years. In contrast to the retired officers writing in the 1920s and 1930s, Ritter maintained that the Schlieffen Plan far from being a sure recipe for success was, in fact, an act of desperation.

One error, however, links these two different interpretations of Schlieffen's eponymous plan. Both sides of the debate saw the Schlieffen Plan as being a scrupulously detailed prescription that was meant to be followed to the letter. The writers of the interwar period and those of the post-World War II era believed that Schlieffen had meant his plan to be used under all political circumstances and to be carried out exactly as he had written it down. However, a careful reading of Schlieffen's prewar writings and an examination of the orders issued by Moltke the Younger in 1914 proves this interpretation to be untrue. In fact, the Schlieffen Plan was meant to be utilized in specific strategic circumstances and was designed to provide overall guidance for a campaign that could unfold in several different ways. Rather than being prescriptive, the German war plan was intended to be applied with judgment based upon the situation.

First, it must be remembered that the Schlieffen Plan was in fact titled "War Against France," and was one of two plans worked up by Schlieffen and his subordinates on the General Staff in late 1905 and early 1906. Since 1900 Schlieffen had been developing two separate war plans, one for a war against France and Russia, for example, a two-front war, and the other for a war against France alone, a one-front war. Schlieffen's famous memorandum of 1905 was written to provide the guidance for the construction of the German plan for 1906-1907 for a one-front war against France unsupported by Russia. This maintenance of two plans would allow the German army to react as needed in the case of a war. If Germany found itself at war with France alone, then Aufmarschplan I(Deployment Plan I) would be used. On the other hand, if Germany found herself fighting France and Russia simultaneously, then Aufmarschplan II would be put into effect.

It is clear that by the time of his retirement in 1905, Schlieffen believed that Aufmarschplan II was not of great use. He favored a western offensive as such an attack would offer the best prospects for Germany to defeat the army of one of her foes quickly. However, he maintained the dual-plan system in order to be ready for all contingencies. Such a system was kept in place until 1913, when Schlieffen's successor as Chief of the General Staff, Moltke, decided to scrap Aufmarschplan II. While Schlieffen had felt this plan would not be used because of the poor quality of the Russian army and the time it would take for it to mobilize, Moltke decided it was unlikely to be used for other reasons. In the years between 1906 and 1913 Moltke had watched an increasing bond develop between the French and Russian armies. This cooperation manifested itself in an ever greater amount of aid being given by the French to improve the combat capability of the Russian army and, importantly, its ability to mobilize vast manpower reserves quickly. Thus, while Schlieffen could all but discount the Russian army in a future war, Moltke could only expect a more dangerous and rapid threat from the east. This apprehension led him to scrap his plan for a two-front war, as he believed it was no longer viable to divide the German army in the face of two capable foes.

Moltke's decision to concentrate on the west was built upon rational calculation of the changed strategic situation. He concentrated on improving the timing of Schlieffen's plan in an effort to ensure the defeat of the French army, and Moltke believed that this strategy could be accomplished rapidly. Despite Russian advances, the French army would still be fielded first. This situation offered the Germans the opportunity to engage the French before the Russians had completed their mobilization. Moreover, the French did not have the geographic space in which to withdraw in the face of a German attack. Thus, Moltke believed that they could be brought to battle and defeated decisively before the Russians could do serious damage in the east.

Despite the necessity for a faster victory in Moltke's time, however, he did not change the essence of Schlieffen's plan. The goal remained the destruction of the French army, wherever it might be found. In war games conducted during the writing of his plan, Schlieffen had experimented with a variety of scenarios for the defeat of the French army. In the wake of the defeat of the Russian army in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Schlieffen believed that the French would be unlikely to leave the safety of their fortresses and attack the German forces. Nonetheless, he, and Moltke after him, conducted war games with the French attacking Germany through several different routes. The results of all these games were the destruction of the French army by the powerful German right wing advocated by Schlieffen's plan that had advanced in various depths into France through neutral Belgium and Luxembourg. These projections demonstrate that, for Schlieffen and later for Moltke, it did not matter where the French army was destroyed so long as it was defeated quickly. The games proved that the strong right wing called for by Schlieffen's memorandum offered the best prospect of success for the German army whether the French attacked Germany or whether they remained on the defensive behind their fortress line.

This goal was reflected in the plan itself. Although Schlieffen's plan is often seen as being formulaic and as demanding the German army reach "phase lines" by specified times, this interpretation is not supported by a close reading of Schlieffen's 1905 memorandum. In fact, Schlieffen's plan merely outlined how the German army was to advance behind the fortified Franco-German border. How the decisive battle would be fought once the German army was in northern France was dependent upon French reaction. Although he made plans for a German advance on Paris, Schlieffen clearly hoped that the decisive encounter would take place long before German forces reached the strong French capital. Hence, his memorandum makes provision for a variety of possible scenarios in which the French stand at different points to fight the invading German army.

The fact that no firm guidance could be given by Schlieffen or Moltke as to where the decisive encounter with the French would take place influenced how they expected the German army to fight. German planners had to leave matters largely in the hands of the commanders of the operational units of the German army--the seven armies deployed in the west. In doing so, they were also following the long tradition of decentralized command within their army. This tradition maintained that commanders on the ground would invariably have better information than the commander in chief behind the fighting and should therefore be allowed to conduct operations as they saw fit within the overall intent of the commander in chief. Thus, when war broke out in August 1914, Moltke issued his army commanders "directives" that contained what he hoped to achieve (the destruction of the French army) and only as much detail as was needed to coordinate the advance of the seven separate armies. Where the French were to be engaged depended on what the French did. How they were to be engaged was left largely to the commanders in the field.

The Schlieffen Plan was not designed by its author to be the "secret to victory." Both Schlieffen and his successor Moltke viewed the plan as one that should be employed flexibly. The overall strategic situation was to dictate how and when it should be used. Until 1913 it was one of two plans and was meant to be employed in the case of a war against France alone. As the strategic situation changed, so Moltke changed German war plans and shelved Aufmarschplan II. Additionally, neither Schlieffen nor Moltke could be sure exactly how the French would react to a German invasion of France by way of Belgium; hence the plan itself was written to take into account several different possible scenarios once the German army began conducting operations, which was to be left to the discretion of the commanders of the seven Western armies. The course of the campaign was not to be dictated by a detailed plan drawn up during peacetime. Both Schlieffen and Moltke were well acquainted with Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder)'s dictum: "No plan survives first contact with the enemy."

-- Robert T. Foley, King's College, London


Viewpoint: No. The Schlieffen Plan was predicated on an inexorable progression to an all-or-nothing victory.

Once one of the constants in the ever-changing constellation of historical interpretation, historians' understanding of the Schlieffen Plan has recently come under question. Yet, while flawed in many respects, Gerhard Ritter's famous work, Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (1958), correctly characterizes the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan as a "daring, indeed an over-daring, gamble whose success depended upon many lucky accidents." For Ritter the plan demonstrated the consequences of rampant militarism and of military planning conducted without any reference to economic or political realities and without concern for political aims. He went so far as to call it a "curse" that ultimately brought catastrophe to Germany and Europe. One scholar, Terence Zuber, has exposed the flaws in Ritter's analysis, especially his conclusions about the time-phasing of the operation and the envelopment of Paris. However, Zuber's own contention--that the Schlieffen Plan was not a plan at all, but a ruse to influence the German parliament to increase the budget of the Imperial Army--is less than persuasive. Terence Holmes has successfully refuted Zuber's main argument by showing the many continuities that existed between the initial planning conducted before 1900 and that around 1905-1906, and Helmuth von Moltke's adjustments thereafter. However, in so doing Holmes has raised additional questions about the overall intent of what historian Dennis E. Showalter, in Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (1991), maintains should be called the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan after its two primary authors. Nonetheless, despite the contributions of recent scholarship, the evidence remains decisively in favor of the view that the German war plan of 1914 was a doomsday machine designed to gain an all-or-nothing victory for the Reich.

Count Alfred von Schlieffen began working on the plan shortly after he became Chief of Staff of the German Great General Staff in 1891. The age-old military problem of Germany had been how to avoid a war on two fronts. This dilemma--always a possibility--became a probability in 1890, when Friedrich von Holstein and others in the German Foreign Ministry advised against renewing the Russo-German Reinsurance Treaty (1887-1890) that the renowned Chancellor of the Reich, Otto von Bismarck, had established with Russia to protect the eastern flank of Germany. This strategic faux pas eventuated in a Russian-French rapprochement and the subsequent alliance of Russia with France and Great Britain, transforming the German "nightmare" of encirclement into a reality. Chancellor Bernard von Bülow's aggressive foreign policy, Weltpolitik (World Policy), and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's maritime strategy, Flottenpolitik (Fleet Policy), of making allies by intimidation, merely hardened that circle against Germany instead of providing the international prestige and alliance with Britain that the Kaiser desired. With a vengeful France in the west and the "Russian danger" in the east, the threat of a two-front war became greater every year. More important, it posed a near-insoluble problem for the war planners on the General Staff. In 1900, for example, Britain, France, and Russia outnumbered Germany and Austria-Hungary by more than 2.75 to 1 in military personnel (army and navy) and 5.2 to 1 in warship tonnage. By 1914 the gap had closed to 2 to 1 in personnel and 2.6 to 1 in warships. However, the central position of Germany and its inability to carry on a protracted war meant that the situation was still grave.

The key to success of the plan, as revealed in Schlieffen's Cannae essays, published in the General Staff's Quarterly between 1909 and 1913 and later as a collected volume, was based on a so-called strategy of annihilation-- Vernichtungsstrategie--that aimed at destroying the enemy's physical capacity to fight by totally defeating his army in the field, usually by means of a single or double envelopment that would cut their lines of reinforcement and retreat. To achieve this annihilation of the French army, Schlieffen Planned to launch his armies on a great wheeling motion through Belgium into northern France to cut off the French armies and crush them against the Swiss border. While in military usage, the German term Vernichtung did not equate to "extermination"--as translated in the English edition of the Cannae essays--Schlieffen's plan, nonetheless, called for "decisive" results, which essentially meant destroying enough of the French army (perhaps 75 percent) so as to remove it as an offensive threat, thereby permitting the bulk of the German forces to be shifted toward East Prussia to fight the Russians. Schlieffen himself admitted that, if it could be achieved, the total destruction of the enemy's force in a single blow--as Hannibal had effected against the Roman armies at Cannae (216 b.c.e.)--amounted to a work of the highest military genius. Although he admitted that such a battle was "very rarely possible," he eventually came to see it as the only hope for Germany. The envelopment of Paris was included as a contingency in the plan, but it would occur only if the French did not launch an offensive of their own, or chose not to stand and fight before or along the Oise and Aisne Rivers. The French could not be allowed to fall back in the direction of the Marne and Seine, otherwise, as Schlieffen concluded, the war would "be endless." Thus, in a manner of speaking, under Schlieffen's tutelage, the mentality within the General Staff was that what was desirable--the destruction of the French army--had become necessary; and what was necessary was possible.

Although Schlieffen's successor, Moltke the Younger, nephew of the elder Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, made significant modifications to the plan during his eight- year tenure (1906-1914). Moltke reduced the arc of the wheel so that the German advance did not violate Dutch neutrality; and he strengthened the German left wing against a possible French offensive in the south. He, therefore, essentially accepted the underlying premises of the Schlieffen Plan, especially the need to defeat France first. A fatalist who believed war was inevitable, Moltke kept a close eye on developments in Russia. The Russian army had recovered faster than expected from its thrashing at the hands of the Japanese in the war of 1904-1905. By 1910, German intelligence reports indicated that the Russians had received new equipment and undergone significant organizational and doctrinal reforms. A central reserve of seven new divisions had been created in European Russia, with plans to create eight more. By 1911 the Russian mobilization schedule had been shortened to only half what it had been in 1906. In 1912 a great railroad-building program was launched that was to result in ten thousand kilometers of new track by 1922. This new railroad system would better link the Russian interior with its borders, enabling the Russian army to reinforce critical areas more quickly. Hence, in Moltke's view, not only would a war in the east not yield decisive results because the Russians could retreat into their vast interior, it was only a matter of time before slim prospects for success had vanished altogether. The main effort of Germany, then, had to be against France.

Accordingly, Moltke began to push for war sooner than later. To wait only meant that chances for German victory would diminish further. In 1913 Moltke suspended all contingency planning for a conflict with Russia, effectively limiting the Reich to one war plan. Regardless of the actual political aims and the particular circumstances that could occasion the outbreak of the next European war, therefore, Germany would have to attack France and to do that, she would also have to invade Belgium and bring Britain into the war. Moltke appears to have known that his plan was a desperate gamble. He hoped--rather than expected or assumed--that France could be defeated quickly and that the war would be short. Operational estimates for the duration of the war ranged from one and one-half to four years, though economic and logistical preparations seem to have been for a much shorter period.

The Schlieffen-Moltke Plan put tremendous logistical and timing demands on the German armies, though the time-phasing of the plan was not as rigid as historians once believed. Army and corps commanders were to execute their assigned tasks according to the prescribed plan, though German actions were actually somewhat contingent upon the success (or failure) of enemy and friendly operations. To be sure, time was not on Schlieffen's or Moltke's side, and this situation precluded extending complete freedom of action to subordinate commanders. Whereas in the wars against Austria (1866) and France (1870-1871) Moltke the elder, Chief of Staff of the Great General Staff (1857-1888), could afford to wait for his opponent to make a mistake, the younger Moltke had to try to induce his adversary into making one. Moltke had to prevent the Entente armies from going to ground and drawing the German army into a stalemate, as that would ultimately prove disastrous. The political and military leadership of Germany feared that a long war might lead to a Socialist revolution and the overthrow of the political system of the Reich. The Entente did not have to fight an offensive war to defeat the Central Powers, though it intended to do so. It merely had to dig in behind defensive fieldworks in combination with a naval blockade to strangle the Central Powers slowly. Thus, the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan was an all-or-nothing gamble because its designers believed Germany had no other choice militarily. Anything less would have meant the inevitable eclipse of German military power.

-- Antulio Echevarria, Strategic Studies Institute


Viewpoint: No. The Schlieffen Plan seriously underestimated the capabilities of enemy forces and did not take into account their tenacity and rapid deployment.

The Schlieffen Plan, named after its architect Alfred von Schlieffen, German Chief of Staff from 1891 to 1906, was a product of several elements that grew from the wars of 1866 and 1870. Its direct inspiration was the growing realization by the General Staff that in any realistic scenario for a major continental war Germany must expect to be forced to fight on two widely separated fronts, against France and Russia, which had completed a mutual defense pact in 1894. These two countries were reacting to the status of Germany as the dominant power in Middle Europe after having thoroughly defeated France in 1870 and Austria in 1866. France, determined not to be humiliated militarily as it had been at mid century, had fortified its German frontier heavily with a system of formidable works such as Verdun and Belfort, designed to channel any invasion into preselected killing grounds. The thought of confronting the fortresses bristling along the French border triggered the preference of the German General Staff for envelopment over attack.

Schlieffen and his successors knew, moreover, they could not afford a long war on two fronts. Correspondingly, it was imperative to achieve a quick victory against either France or Russia, then turn against the remaining foe. Because of the vast distances involved and the general disorganization of the Russian army, the General Staff calculated that it would take at least forty days for Russia to mobilize fully. That lag time gave Germany a "window of opportunity" to swiftly and safely envelop the left flank of the French army, even though that strategy involved violating the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands. At the end of Schlieffen's projected maneuver, the German army would be outside Paris, free to attack the retreating French army from the rear, occupy Paris, and deal with any surviving French forces in the south and west, much as had been done in 1870-1871.

Once Schlieffen's grand strategy had been accepted, all else involved working out schedules and details. Railroads became the dominant element of mobilization because they made it possible to mobilize large numbers of reserve troops quickly and move them to the theater of war with unprecedented precision and rapidity. That mass, however, created its own problem: dealing with armies of unprecedented size. No general, no planning staff, had ever handled an army of three million men. The slightest error could create what modern chaos theory calls a "butterfly effect," with troops and trains piling up on every railroad line in Germany. It was scarcely remarkable that for the German General Staff war planning became a game of railroad timetables and telegraph operators. It was a plan of immense complexity. In the final version that was perfected by Schlieffen's successor Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, nephew of the first great Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, 200,000 telegraph employees and 100,000 telephone operators using 32,847 telephones were needed just to initiate the mobilization. The plan then called for 30,000 locomotives, 65,000 passenger cars, and 100,000 freight carriers to move 25 German army corps to disembarkation points.

Two-thirds of the available troops would be involved in the envelopment through Belgium, initially funneling into an area twelve miles wide because of Moltke's decision to respect Dutch neutrality for the sake of securing a window to the outside world. The end of the line came at frontier cities such as the ancient Carolingian capital, Aachen. Here the luxury of railroad travel ended and the joys of the march began. Each corps stretched out for almost forty miles, counting road space for guns and supply trains. The march plans were designed to enable the 40,000 men of a corps to enter battle in a single day, coordinating its movements with the three or four other corps that made up a field army. That was wargaming. Maps and sand tables incorporated train schedules, marching orders, and the logistics of providing 2 million tons of hay for the horses and 1 million rations a day for the troops. They did not incorporate broken axles, exhausted men, or horses with harness galls.

Nor did they allow for changing circumstances. In the last hours before the main troop movements began, German kaiser William II received information leading him to believe France might after all remain neutral. When he told Moltke that now Germany could just turn the whole army against Russia, the Chief of Staff went into shock. With great difficulty Moltke convinced the emperor that it was impossible to turn around or even slow the invasion without courting disaster. He took up field command of the invasion a broken man from the effort. The Schlieffen Plan as it had been constructed could not allow for anything but victory.

Based as it was on abstract theories of force and movement, the Schlieffen Plan ignored its opponents. It did not envision the tenacity of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Mons and Le Cateau. It did not allow for the coolness of French generalissimo Joseph Joffre, who detached troops facing the German infantry in Lorraine and brought them quickly in good order to the Marne. Schlieffen's grand design took no account of the French taxicabs that bought time by moving troops from the south through Paris without their meters running. Forced to consider withdrawing lest an emerging seventy-five-mile gap between his two armies be exploited by the French, Moltke and his successor Erich von Falkenhayn had no contingency plans and were forced to improvise their next moves. The eventual result was four years of stalemate.

On the Eastern Front the Schlieffen Plan ran into another set of difficulties and misjudgments. The plan postulated that Russia would not be able to mobilize its forces before the defeat of France enabled transferring the main German force to the Eastern Front. Russia, however, sufficiently improved its rail network and its mobilization plans that the High Command was able to send two full armies into East Prussia in less than two weeks. A badly shaken German army retreated toward the Vistula, its commander becoming the first field army chief in modern German history to be relieved. The new command team of Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff, and Max Hoffmann found their chance to reverse the situation when the First and Second Russian Armies, divided by the Masurian Lakes, lost contact with each other and allowed the Germans to concentrate against first one, then the other, defeating them in detail.

What was supposed to be a holding action became the first major victory for the German army in World War I. Even its immediate fruits were wasted as the German ally, Austria, marched into disaster. The intended role of Austria in the Schlieffen Plan was to hold Russia in check to the south. Instead, Habsburg chief of staff Conrad von Hötzendorff allowed his strategic reserve to dangle in space between the Balkan and Russian fronts, then sent his limited available forces blindly forward until flanked by the Russians and suffering nearly one million killed, wounded, or captured in a forced retreat back across the Austrian border.

The Schlieffen Plan was based on the model of a railroad timetable--or better put in modern terms, an airline schedule--on full bookings, cooperative weather, and standard operability. Even small, unexpected contingencies disrupt flights across a continent. The French and British were not supposed to be in position to do what they did in the Marne campaign. The outcome of that operation in turn forced a stalemate in the west. The Eastern Front, supposed to be a stalemate until victorious troops from the west arrived, instead became a killing field covering hundreds of square miles instead of thousands of square yards. The Schlieffen Plan, indeed, was a doomsday machine--but not the kind its creators intended.

-- John Wheatley, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota


A MASTER PLAN

Immediately following World War I, military officers and strategists throughout Europe reviewed the prewar plans of Germany. The following selection comes from a British military journal:

Schlieffen detailed 10 divisions for the Eastern front; Moltke, 8. Moltke, still less Schlieffen, never had the number of corps and divisions which the Schlieffen plan assumed to exist--the latter's plan was only a "project." But, taking the above figures: In Schlieffen's plan the defensive wing is to the offensive as 4 to 37 1/2 ( 1 to 9 3/8 ), in Moltke's 8 to 27 (1 to 3 3/8); but Schlieffen's with the forces available in 1914, would have been 4 to 31 (1 to 7 3/8). . . .

The reasons for strengthening the left wing are given by Dr. Bredt as follows: Moltke could not abandon Alsace, as Schlieffen designed to do, for the Italians might take part on the German side; General Pollio, the Italian Chief of Staff until his death in 1914, had assured him they would. As they were to be brought to Alsace, Moltke considered it necessary to hold that province with two corps. If the Italians did not appear, then the question of the transport of the two corps to the right wing would arise. As we know, the French attack towards Mulhausen fatally delayed this. These two corps, plus the two corps sent from France to Russia, would, if added to the right wing, have made it as strong as Schlieffen intended.

It emerges incidentally that the Schlieffen Plan was worked out for war on the Western front only; for when drawn up, Russia was still very weak as a result of the Manchurian War. It also contemplated additions to the army that did not take place. There was only a general statement that in the case of Russia intervening, ten divisions should be withdrawn from the Western front and sent to the East, without altering the proportion of the two wings.

More important than the changes in the technical details was the alteration of the plan politically. In the Schlieffen Plan "there was no ultimatum to Belgium, but the German army, without any notification, was first to deploy on the Dutch-Belgian frontier." As the German plan would be divulged by this, it was assumed that the French would take countermeasures. These, according to Schlieffen's views, could only be the occupation of the natural defensive position in the Meuse valley south of Namur; and thus the French would themselves violate Belgian neutrality. Such a plan must have been at least considered by the French, and in 1914 the German General Staff took it for granted that they would advance to the Meuse. All this presumed that Belgian neutrality would not be broken by Germany first. Such a step Graf Schlieffen desired, if possible, to avoid. He wished to leave sufficient time so that, in one way or another, the German statesmen would be able to evade the reproach of the violation of Belgian neutrality. "That Liege would always be captured sufficiently soon after the entry of the German army into Belgium, to serve as the railway junction for reinforcements and supply, could be accepted . . ."

"Schlieffen did not consider it out of the question, in view of the then [1905] political situation, as he judged it, that German diplomacy might succeed on the outbreak of war against England in obtaining from the Netherlands Government by an amicable arrangement ( auf geftlichen Wege) permission for the German army to cross the Dutch province of Limburg (Maastrich, Roermond). By this means the fortress of Liege would be avoided by passing north of it, and could quickly be brought to surrender by threatening it in the rear."

Moltke did not believe that Holland would give permission to traverse her territory, and dropped the idea of an advance of the German right wing by this route. On the other hand he feared that Liège could not be taken quickly enough by an accelerated artillery attack to prevent a delay in the general advance of the right wing. It was most important not to give the Belgians time to put the fortress in a state of defence, and in particular to construct defences in the intervals between the forts and destroy the important railways passing through Liege. It also appeared to him that it was impossible to march an army between Liege and the Dutch frontier. He therefore decided to take Liege by a coup de main carried out by troops of the peace establishment without mobilization immediately on outbreak of war. "Two days and the following night were allowed for the execution of the coup de main."

Source: The Army Quarterly, 18 (July 1929): 286-290, as found in the World War I Document Archive, Internet web site, http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/schlieffen.html.

FURTHER READINGS


References


Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen and Prussian War Planning (New York: Berg, 1991).

D. N. Collins, "The Franco-Russian Alliance and Russian Railways, 1891-1914," Historical Journal, 16 (1973): 777-788.

Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics From Wallenstein to Patton(Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

L. L. Farrar Jr., "The Short War Illusion: The Syndrome of German Strategy, August-December 1914," Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 31 (1972): 39-52.

Robert T. Foley, Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings (London: Frank Cass, 2002).

Foley, Attrition: Its Theory and Application in German Strategy, 1880-1916. Dissertation, Kings College, 1999.

Stig Förster, "Der deutsche Generalstab und die Illusionen des Kurzen Krieges, 1871-1914, Metakritik Eines Mythos," Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 54 (1995): 61-95.

Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (London & New York: Arnold, 1997).

Herwig, "From Tirpitz Plan to Schlieffen Plan: Some Observations on German Military Planning," Journal of Strategic Studies, 9 (1986): 53-63.

Terence M. Holmes, "The Reluctant March on Paris: A Reply to Terence Zuber's 'The Schlieffen Plan,'" War in History, 8 (2001): 208-232.

Paul M. Kennedy, ed., The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914 (London & Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1979).

Annika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth, translated by Andrew and Eva Wilson (London: Wolff, 1958).

Ritter, The Sword and the Sceptre: The Problem of Militarism in Germany, volume 2, European Powers and the Wilhelmine Empire, 1890-1914, translated by Heinz Norden (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1972).

Gunther Rothenberg, "Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment," in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, edited by Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 296-325.

Dennis E. Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1991).

David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904-1914 (Oxford & New York: Clarendon Press, 1996).

Jehuda L. Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their Impact on the German Conduct of Two World Wars(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986).

Terence Zuber, "The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered," War in History, 6 (1999): 262-303.

Опубликовано 20 сентября 2007 года

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