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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 6, 2017 8:28:46 GMT -6
The Schlieffen Plan The purpose of this thread is to discuss the origins and implementation of the Schlieffen Plan; an operational plan designed to eliminate France in case of a possible two front war. It was a part of the overall German War Plan which connected the strategic, political, and the economic circumstances of Germany with the conduct of the continent-wide war. It was named after Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen who was its author while the Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1891 to 1906. The campaign failed in its objective and trench warfare ensued for about four years until economic privation and the advances of the Allied armies forced the Kaiser to abdicate and the German’s sued for peace. I would like to focus on the who, what, when, where, why and how of the Schlieffen plan. It is hard eliminating politics from operational level discussions, but we should limit it to the context in which the plan was developed and executed. Here is a site with maps from the USMA, West Point about WW1. This whole site is excellent. I suggest that we use these maps as references in our discussion. However, if you have other maps and sources to use, please provide them as we can all learn. www.gwpda.org/maps/maps.html
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 7, 2017 9:59:00 GMT -6
The Beginnings of the Schlieffen Plan
The first question to ask is where did the Schlieffen plan originate and why? You develop war plans to deal with real or perceived threats. For Germany, that threat was France due to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when the French lost Alsace-Lorraine after the defeat at Sedan. After this defeat and peace terms, a permanent threat in hostility and resentment was generated. From the end of that war until 1890, Otto Von Bismarck the Chancellor attempted to isolate France and develop good relations with Russia. Obviously, Bismarck understood the two front war problem and attempted to use diplomacy to eliminate that problem for Germany. Unfortunately, in 1888, Frederick III died and William II took over as Emperor of Germany and he considered himself the master of Germany. In 1890, Bismarck was dismissed. This dismissal alarmed the French and they entered a discussion with the Russian in 1893. This would be the starting point for the requirements for the Schlieffen Plan. This does not mean that the German General Staff wasn't planning for any possible course of action, I would just say that this was probably the key incident that prompted a different plan. I would also say that Germany's vulnerable geostrategic position in the middle of the European continent and her desire to be a world power despite lack of resources probably was another reason why she developed a general staff and the Schlieffen plan.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 7, 2017 19:30:22 GMT -6
The next order of business is the where of the plan. For the question of the location, I am going to use a description from B. H. Liddell Hart’s book, Strategy of the Indirect Approach.
As Hart states, the Franco-German frontier was only 150 miles long, from the south-eastern end which abutted on Switzerland, then moved northwest through some flat country near Belfort, then ran 70 miles along the Vosges Mountains. There was a line of almost continuous fortresses at Epinal, Toul and Verdun. Beyond Verdun was the frontiers of Luxembourg and Belgium. As one can see, there was not much room for maneuvering the mass of army which was now being assembled by conscription. This should give us a good idea of why the Schlieffen Plan was designed the way it was.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 8, 2017 11:16:10 GMT -6
I've covered the where, and the why of the Schlieffen Plan, so let's dispense with the real easy ones: Who and when.
The who is the German army.
The when is August 3th, 1914 after Germany declares war on France and invades neutral Belgium. The Germans had asked the Belgians if they could move through their nation and attack France, but that request was refused. On August 4th, Great Britain sends an ultimatum and declares war on Germany.
We can now focus on the How and what of the plan. Keep in mind that plans such as this are designed for deployment. When executed, mobilization occurs of reserves, equipping of troops and then the movement to the front and their jump off points. It also means a railroad deployment plan is issued and railroads are then put into service for the military which does affect civilian movements and the movement of civilian supplies.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 11, 2017 17:20:40 GMT -6
Since the end of the First World War, historians have attributed the plan to attack France in 1914 to Alfred Schlieffen. Most histories and documentaries focus on the trenches, air warfare and the naval war but few have ever questioned whether the Schlieffen Plan ever existed. The GGS or German General Staff developed a new plan, every two years, destroying the papers for the old one; or so everyone thought. This made following the chain of evidence very difficult because the plans and paperwork for the Schlieffen plan and the war were thought to have been destroyed during WWII in Potsdam. However, some of the documents were discovered, having been in another building that was not destroyed. They were captured by the Soviets and later transferred to the German army historical archives where they were finally released. These documents were in fact the deployment plans for 1904-1915, the last being the plan that was executed. The US Army also captured some and there were in our historical archives. These are not complete, as the document for the wargames was not included in this collection. New information states that the original text of the plan, in the form of a memo, was in the hands of his daughters and was stored with the family photos. The evidence supposedly shows that there never was a Schlieffen Plan; that the plan as offered up after the war, was an attempt by the remaining officers in 1920 to cover-up their mistakes during the initial phases of the campaign. The concept was to blame Schlieffen's plan for the failure, not their execution. That assumption remains doubtful.
So, what was the plan and how was it to be executed. The Franco-German border was about 150 miles long. The GGS understood their army was not strong enough to attack the French Border fortifications and the French Army as a whole. So, how do you do it? Well, you can adopt a defensive-offensive strategy, reinforce your narrow front, let the enemy attack to regain Alsace-Lorraine, perform a fighting withdrawal and use attrition to wear out the enemy. After he depletes his forces, counter attack and overwhelm him. That was one of the options.
The alternative to the first, was to allow the French forces to attack into Alsace-Lorraine and perform a fighting withdrawal. This would draw French forces further away from the center of France and Paris. Once they were fully involved, then launch an attack on the flank, through Belgium and Luxembourg with a reinforced right wing. After moving through Belgium and Luxembourg, then move on Paris and encircling the French Army. Simplifying this, the Germans were aware by the summer of 1914 that they would not enjoy a superiority in numbers, in fact, they would be inferior, but they were counting on their superiority in weaponry and training to make up for that deficiency. The Aufmarsch 1914/1915 which was the title of the actual plan executed on August 1914, estimated that the Allies would have about seventy-five divisions in total. The German’s would deploy about sixty-eight divisions. The German plan was to annihilate the French Army in forty days. However, they really had no illusions about this. Ludendorff was later to say that they never had enough divisions to execute the plan successfully.
So, what happened, why did the plan fail. Failures of this magnitude have many reasons or as the saying goes: Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. When you examine the original memo that Schlieffen wrote and examine the map of what was executed you can see major differences and that is one source of the failure. There never was a sweeping lunge across the coast of France encircling the French Army pushing them against the Swiss Alpine mountains. The actual attack was more of movement across Belgium and a direct movement toward Paris. They did a lot of damage, but no annihilating blow and the actual plan exhausted the German Army. But even had they tried to accomplish what Schlieffen had put forth in his memo, they never had the troops to accomplish the purpose. There were never enough men to overlap the French to the west and turn their flank. It ended up being more of a frontal attack. Many historians state that even with the required number of divisions, there was never enough room in Northern France and Belgium to accommodate them. There were also issues of technology and intelligence. There was the fact that the French Commander-in-Chief Joffre, did attack into Alsace but then stopped and retreated his exhausted army to rest. When he noticed the attack on his flank, he moved at least one whole army to the Marne NE of Paris. This was not what the German’s expected, and with an exhausted army, the Miracle of the Marne occurred. After this, it was trench warfare.
Now the 64,000-dollar question; was there a Schlieffen Plan as such. Well, not a written one based on the new evidence, but these documents are not complete. I believe that the plan executed in 1914 was Schlieffen’s in-spirit only. The actual plan was the GGS and Von Moltke’s. We know that Schlieffen after he left the GGS, wrote a treatise on Cannae, Hannibal’s great victory over the Romans which was, in fact, a double envelopment. It was written in 1906, so could it have been the seed for the actual plan? There is that possibility. However, any plan he might have developed was only a plan for deployment, as I have said previously. He was not responsible for its execution, as Schlieffen had died in 1913. The actual execution belongs to the GGS and the generals in command of the forces. So, the failure was theirs, not Schlieffen’s.
Anyway, thanks for reading this.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 18, 2017 23:26:07 GMT -6
I want to present some more information and ideas about the famous Schlieffen Plan. A plan whose failure had much to do with the world and where it is today.
At the end of 1905, Schlieffen began to prepare a document that outlined how a campaign might be conducted in the west in order to defeat the French Army in a one-front war. He named his memo a "think piece" not a plan. I stress the last phrase; one-front war. Schlieffen passed away in 1913, but not before the Franco-Russian Alliance had essentially put the Germans in a two-front war. In my opinion, this made the concept of operations for the Schlieffen memo unworkable.
The Schlieffen "think piece" was not a real plan because it would have had objectives, both strategic and operational, organizational structure of the forces, designated areas for assemblage of forces, jump-off times and places and schedules for transportation of first, second and third line forces. It would have also had a tentative start time for the campaign. Schlieffen's memo had none of this information. It was technically, not a plan. Another factor in this piece was that it used all the German forces including some that were never available... ever. Keep in mind, the more you mobilize, the more you drain your civilian economy such as farming and factory production. This is always detrimental to your war effort especially for a country that isn't an economic powerhouse yet.
After the discovery and presentation of documents long thought to have been destroyed, many authors offered the idea that their never was a Schlieffen Plan. On the other hand, many authors believe that Schlieffen's real goal was to show the futility of attacking France in an offensive plan. Many say that he was trying to show that the best plan was to stay on the defensive in Alsace-Lorraine by a fighting retreat and when the French forces were worn out and tired, then counterattack. Neither of those ideas; that he was offering an offensive plan or that he was arguing for a defensive-offensive plan can ever be proven. There is just not enough evidence.
In the final analysis, we know that the August 1914 campaign was not based on the Schlieffen plan because there was no Schlieffen plan as such. We know that Von Moltke had to use the forces available and that was not ninety-six divisions, but fifty-five, which would never have been enough, even if mistakes in the actual conduct of the campaign hadn't been made. The time schedule for the actual plan was never realistic. We know that the French and Belgian's wrecked the train yards and bridges which slowed the movement of men and supplies; that the capture of Liege and Metz took over two weeks instead of two days and that the CinC of the French Army realized what the German's were doing, retreated out of Alsace-Lorraine and moved one whole army to the east of Paris and the Battle of the Marne occurred, which finally stopped the German's along with the Russians attacking in the east, because their mobilization was much faster than the GGS had ever suspected.
It is interesting when you examine a map of the actual plan as conducted, to see how it diverged from the Schlieffen memo or think piece. The major flaw in the actual plan was simply that the German's never had enough troops to outflank the French army following the coast to turn their flank. The whole idea was to overlap the French forces, capture the channel ports to prevent the British was landing and crushing the French army against the forces in Alsace-Lorraine. Many military historians calculating the room in Belgium and Northern France have stated that their never was enough space for the extra divisions in the first place let alone move along the coast.
So we come to final conclusion, based on skimpy evidence that there was a Schlieffen think piece that did offer a concept of operation with no details, about eight years before the actual campaign was to take place but that the necessary conditions and forces were never available to give the actual plan a chance for success, if it ever did have that chance.
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