User:Mackensen/Schlieffen Plan

File:AlfredGrafVonSchlieffen.jpg

Count Schlieffen
Chief of Staff, 1891–1906

The Schlieffen Plan is commonly held to have been the German General Staff's overall strategic plan for victory against France in the event of a two-front war in the years before the First World War. The reputed brainchild of then Chief of the General Staff Count Alfred von Schlieffen, it envisaged a rapid German mobilisation followed by a sweeping attack against France through the neutral territories of Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland. The bulk of the German Army would sweep through northern France and encircle and occupy Paris, the French capital, which presumably would force the French to surrender. The war in the west was to be over within six weeks, according to a rigid timetable.

Since the First World War the "Schlieffen Plan" has been a consistent source of controversy among generals, statesmen, and academics. Schlieffen's actual intentions remain a subject of debate, as do those of the German Army itself in 1914. By that point, Schlieffen had been dead for over a year, and in retirement for eight. Therefore, compounding the questions about Schlieffen's intentions are those of his successor, Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, often referred to simply as Moltke the Younger. Such debates began right after the First Battle of the Marne, and continued into the 1920ss, when former disciples of Schlieffen, referred to in academia as the "Schlieffen School," attacked the younger Moltke (who had died in 1916) for "betraying" the legacy of the great master and failing to execute his "perfect blueprint" for victory.

The Plan itself, in its canonical form, has attracted criticism from academics and statesmen for its supposed inflexibility and disregard for political realities. In particular, the violation of the neutrality of both Belgium and Holland has been singled out as an example of the excesses of Prusso-German militarism. It has also been criticised by some for being militarily impractical–most notably, for requiring more troops than the German army possessed at the time or later. This discusses both the plan itself and the historiography of the Plan, as the Plan and the history of it have become one in the same.

Introduction to pre-World War I planning

By the beginning of the 20th century every European army, with the important exception of the British, was based on the model of universal service.

The Canonical View

Map showing the proposed advance of the German Army (in red) according to the "Schlieffen Plan." Note that the extreme left wing of the German army crosses the Franco-Belgian border at Lille and passes to the west of Paris before wheeling south.

The canonical view of Schlieffen and Schlieffen's planning is perhaps best put by the prominent British military historian Sir John Keegan. In his The First World War, while discussing war planning, he presents us with this description of Schlieffen at work:

He recognized that a marching army of foot and horse would exhaust its impetus in the limitless room of the steppe. Hence his midnight vigils over the maps of Flanders and the Ile-de-France, a corps here, a flank march there, a river bridged, a fortress masked. His midnight pettifoggery had as its object an exact adjustment not of German numbers to those that the French could deploy, but to what the Belgian and French road network could carry.

Keegan creates the image of the master strategist, hunched over the map table, meticulously plotting the perfect invasion of France and Belgium, with Paris as the ultimate prize. To this description could be added Gordon Craig's portrait of Schlieffen himself, written in 1955:

Schlieffen...had neither the philosophical breadth nor the diversity of interest which had characterized Moltke's thinking. He was the professional soldier pure and simple, completely absorbed in his calling and impervious to anything that lay outside it.

Historical background

Count Moltke
Chief of Staff, 1858–1888

Moltke's 1859 plan

The idea of a two-front war against France and Russia was not new in Schlieffen's day; Count Moltke had played with the idea as early as 1859, only a year after Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, acting as regent for his ailing brother King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, appointed him Chief of the Prussian General Staff. A war against France and Russia was unlikely at the time, but the idea provided an excellent opportunity to test the possibilities of a two-front war. Moltke's plan was typical of the era: he discussed first what he thought were probable political combinations and then the military capabilities of Prussia's opponents.

Politically, Moltke thought it likely that Great Britain, Belgium, and the minor German states would intervene in the west on the side of Prussia, against France, while Austrian support in the east against Russia was doubtful. Therefore, while the French Army was judged the greater threat, the bulk of the Prussian Army would deploy around Thorn, in eastern Prussia, and advance on Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire. The goal of such a campaign, Moltke argued, would be the creation of a nominally independent Poland under the King of Prussia. An independent Poland could act as a buffer between Russia and Prussia.

Schlieffen's exercises

Count Waldersee
Chief of Staff, 1888-1891

Count Schlieffen became Chief of the German General Staff in 1891, on the dismissal of Count Waldersee. Waldersee had subjected the Kaiser's performance in the 1891 Kaisermanöveruver to honest criticism and got the sack for his trouble (Waldersee's penchant for political intrigue may have helped).

The Great Memorandum

The most important document in the so-called "Schlieffen Plan debate" is a document of some thirty pages know also known as the Große Denkschrift (Great Memorandum). Schlieffen composed it 1905, shortly before his retirement. Conventional historiography holds that this represents his ultimate work as Chief of the General Staff and was representative of his strategic thinking and of Germany's actual war plan at the time. These claims have faced numerous challenges since the end of the First World War.

The Reluctant Feldherrn

Helmuth von Moltke
Chief of Staff, 1906–1914

Schlieffen retired at the end of 1905. His successor was Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, nephew and namesake of Graf Moltke.

The Debate in the Interwar Years

Groener

Ludendorff

Bayerische Kriegsarchiv

Critique of a Myth

The eruption of the Second World War interrupted discussion of the Schlieffen Plan. In April of 1945 an Allied bombing raid destroyed most of the military archives at Potsdam, eliminating thousands upon thousands of documents and inhibiting the work of historians for generations. Those documents which survived the inferno were captured by advancing Soviet troops, a fact which was not known in the West until after the reunification of Germany.

This situation changed in 1953, when the German historian Gerhard Ritter discovered a copy of the "Great Memorandum" among Schlieffen's personal papers. Ritter brought out the complete text, with commentary, in 1954 as Der Schlieffen-Plan: Kritik Eines Mythos.

Debate after Ritter

One writer who challenged Ritter's analysis was Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy, a retired American army officer turned author. Dupuy had written a book, entitled A Genius for War: The German Army and the General Staff, 1807-1945, in which he investigated what he termed the "secret of institutionalizing military excellence."

Dupuy also asserted that by 1914 the German Army had grown to a mobilized strength of "more than 100 divisions," which would more than satisfy the manpower requirements of the plan. This contradicts all other sources which put the mobilized strength of the German Army at 87 infantry divisions, including reserve formations. Dupuy did not use footnotes in his work, and as a result it is impossible to say what on what grounds he made this assertion. It is possible that he included cavalry divisions in his total, but such usage would be misleading as planning calculations were always based on infantry divisions.

The Zuber Controversy

The July 1999 issue of the scholarly journal War in History contained a forty-page article by Terence Zuber, a retired American army officer then working on his doctorate at the University of Würzburg. Zuber, after a thorough investigation of available archival materials, including documents recently discovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall, had come to the controversial conclusion that the "Schlieffen Plan" was an ex post facto myth conjured up after the First World War by the German General Staff, in an effort to shift blame for Germany's defeat elsewhere. The 1905 Denkschrift, long taken to be the "Schlieffen Plan" or the basis for it, was actually just a policy paper, Zuber argued. This provoked much consternation in the academic world–the debate over the plan had always divided over whether it was workable or not (with the grudging consensus being that it was not)–no one had ever argued so forcefully that the plan itself was a fraud. Zuber's article provoked an on-going article war in War in History between himself and Terence M. Holmes, a retired lecturer, formerly at Swansea University.

Reactions in the historical community to Zuber's thesis have been mixed. Holger Herwig, in two of his most recent publications, has been wholly dismissive of Zuber. Herwig's criticism focuses only on Zuber's initial article owing to publishing deadlines. His explanatory footnote is roughly the same in both publications, quoted in full here:

Zuber bases much of his argument on an unpublished manuscript by Wilhelm Dieckmann entitled "Der Schlieffenplan." After studying all available documents (since destroyed or lost) in the 1920s, Dieckmann came to the conclusion that there in fact existed a Schlieffen plan. In any case, Dieckmann's manuscript ends with the year 1904-5 and hence does not address the critical winter 1905-6 Schlieffen memoranda [the Great Memorandum]. BA-MA, W-10/50220. As well, Zuber's claim that Schlieffen planned frontally "to break the great French fortress line" flies in the face of all available evidence.

Critics of Herwig charge that there was some kind of Schlieffen Plan is hardly in dispute—one presumes that Schlieffen was doing something between 1891 and 1906. Also, Zuber used the Dieckmann manuscript to demonstrate the Schlieffen's planning looked nothing like the 1905 Denkschrift; a point which Herwig does not discuss. Critics also inquire how Dieckmann knew there was a "Schlieffen Plan" if Dieckmann didn't see the 1905 Denkschrift.

Sources

Books

• Craig, Gordon (1964). The Politics of the Prussian Army. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Dupuy, Trevor (2002). A Genius for War. Garden City, New York: Military Book Club.
• Foley, Robert (2003). Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings.
• Keegan, John. The First World War. New York, 1999.
• Mombauer, Annika. Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War. Cambridge, 2001.
• Ritter, Gerhard. The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth. New York, 1958.
• Zuber, Terence. German War Planning, 1891-1914: Sources and Interpretations. Boydell Press, 2004.
• ----. Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German war planning, 1871-1914. Oxford, 2002.

Journal articles

• Flammer, Philip M. "The Schlieffen Plan and Plan XVII: A Short Critique." Military Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Winter, 1966-1967), pp. 207-212.
• Holmes, Terence M. "Classical blitzkrieg: The untimely modernity of Schlieffen's Cannae programme." The Journal of Military History 67/3 (July 2003) 745-771.
• ----. "'One throw of the gambler's dice': A comment on Holger Herwig's view of the Schlieffen plan." The Journal of Military History 67/2 (April 2003) 513-516.
• ----. "The Real Thing: A Reply to Terence Zuber's 'Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan'." War in History 9/1 (2002) 111-120
• ----. "The Reluctant March on Paris: A Reply to Terence Zuber's 'The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered'." War in History 8/2 (April 2001) 208-232.
• Zuber, Terence. "The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered." War in History 6/3 (1999) 262-306.
• ----. "The Schlieffen Plan Was an Orphan." War in History 11/2 (2004) 220-225.
• ----. "Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan." War in History 8/4 (2001) 468-476.
• ----. "Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan – Again." War in History 10/1 (April 2003) 92-101.

Book reviews

• Hinsley, F. H. Review of The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945, by Gordon Craig. Cambridge Historical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (1956), pp. 102-104.
• Hume, R. V. Review of The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth, by Gerhard Ritter. Translated by Andrew Wilson and Eva Wilson. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 34, No. 4. (Oct., 1958), pp. 500-501.
• Shapiro, Seymour. Review of The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth, by Gerhard Ritter. Translated by Andrew Wilson and Eva Wilson. Military Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Summer, 1959), pp. 107-108.
• Vagts, Alfred. Review of Der Schlieffen-Plan: Kritik Eines Mythos, by Gerhard Ritter. The American Historical Review, Vol. 62, No. 4. (Jul., 1957), pp. 908-909.