The Schlieffen Plan

As Max Hastings notes in 'Catastrophe' “It was peculiarly ironic that Schlieffen, the most influential of all German planners, never took part in any fighting- not even during the Franco-German war, though he was already a serving officer.” Not all accounts agree with this, but Count Alfred Graf von Schlieffen was undoubtedly a strategic planner rather than a front line soldier.  Schlieffen was German Chief of Staff from 1891 to 1906, during which he developed his famous plan for a rapid victory in the west to enable full forces to be applied to a longer battle in the east, should Germany be involved simultaneously in war with the Entente alliance of Russia and France. The right wing of the German army would sweep through Belgium and northern France, encircle Paris and join with left wing, crushing the entire French army in a classic pincer movement. The boldness of the plan was not matched by practicality. It required large forces of men to march and equipment to be moved very large distances over a short time, and this ultimately would prove its undoing.  

Von Schlieffen and (R) his plan

The 1870 Franco Prussian war was a crushing defeat for France who lost national pride and esteem as well as Alsace and Lorraine. When the Franco-Russian alliance was declared in 1892, the elder Moltke, victor of the 1870 war, had proposed to defend the narrow French frontier with its strong fortifications, while the bulk of the German army defeated the Russians. His successor, Schlieffen, rejected this strategy. Like everyone else, he doubted whether a defensive campaign could succeed. In any case, the defeat of Russia would not be decisive. Great Russian armies would remain somewhere in Russia's vast space, and the Germans would be entangled in a prolonged campaign, while the French broke through in the west. Schlieffen therefore proposed to fight the western battle first.

Originally, when Schlieffen switched the weight of German attack from east to west, he thought only of a battle of the frontiers, just as the French did. Soon he decided that the French line of fortresses was too strong to be broken in a hurry, and, with Russian armies massing in the east, the Germans would have no time to spare. "The French line would therefore have to be outflanked on either south or north.”(AJP Taylor)

“Schlieffen’s fatal limitation was that he lacked the grasp of logistics fundamental to all modern military operations: the daily weight of supply necessary to support an army in the field had doubled even since 1870. Rather than a strategist of genius, Schlieffen proved to be a fantasist who brought doom upon his foolish disciples.” (Hastings)

Still, the Schlieffen plan was all the Germans had. "When Schlieffen retired, he was succeeded by Moltke's nephew, and this younger Moltke, a courtier not a strategist, simply relied on the drafts which he found in Schlieffen's drawer." (AJP Taylor)

However, after Schlieffen’s death, his original plan was watered down somewhat, probably for very good reasons, but this led to the plan falling short at the Marne. It was widely thought that Schlieffen's last words on his deathbed were 'keep the right strong' because he foresaw any weakening of the northern forces would cause the plan to fail. There is apparently no evidence that he uttered them. If he did, they were prophetic. 

Nevertheless, the German General Staff foresaw a war on two fronts; they had the immediate preponderance of numbers, and owing to the perfection of their railways they had the means of using them. They committed to the modified Schlieffen plan by Germany's ultimatum to Belgium and the move of its troops through Luxembourg and to the Belgian frontier.