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Post by dohboy on Aug 11, 2021 12:14:26 GMT -6
They should have known better. Wasn't a single man named Gisgo in the whole German army.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 11, 2021 13:08:12 GMT -6
I now have an answer to my first question. Was there a Schlieffen Plan? Yes, it was first developed as an operational war plan in 1897 and continue development until 1905 when Schlieffen was forced to retire after falling off his horse. Now, after that retirement, he continued to write and submit Memorandums but these were not war plans, just ideas and suggestions. The actual planning was now in the hands of Von Molke the Younger and the German General Staff. The plan that was used in 1914 was conceptionally Von Schlieffen's, but practically it was all in the hands of Von Moltke the Younger.
Can we really attribute the plan and execution to Schlieffen after nine years of international changes, internal changes within nations in Eastern Europe, and between France, and Britain. I don't think that makes sense, it was now out of his hands completely.
I going to now move on to a question about why the 1914 plan might have failed. Schlieffen's final plan used a seven to one ratio of armies in the north to the armies of the south. The actual executed plan had reduced that to three to one.
I am continuing my research about this and logistics.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 11, 2021 13:46:26 GMT -6
The German's had assumed that the Belgian's would allow them to march through their country to invade France. But the Belgian's would have none of that and they fought back slowing the German advance and consuming more supplies. Their supply routes would now be moving through hostile country. Worse yet, attacking the Belgian's brought the British into the fight because they had pledged to the Belgian's to protect them. So, now Schlieffen's plan had two major obstacles that the plan had never tried to deal with in the planning. So almost immediately the German Schlieffen Plan had begun to fail and it would get worse logistically. Supply trains were almost eight miles behind the advancing forces, which is not good.
They had also not counted on the Russian's and the French combat abilities to be as good as they were. So would having a ratio of 7 to 1 in your force distribution have made a difference? Well, it give's you more troops to over come the Belgian's with, but it also would require more supplies and trains, both railed and wheeled, to maintain the forces. Neither of these were that good in Belgian so increasing the force distribution might not have made things better. I have to investigate this question.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 11, 2021 19:39:41 GMT -6
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Post by oldpop2000 on Aug 13, 2021 19:32:50 GMT -6
One last bit of information by Sir Liddell Hart who was again one of the best military historians and strategist. From his book, The Strategy of the Indirect Approach, he states that Schlieffen had failed to account for the different conditions of the Napoleonic times and this own.... the Railroad. The Scythe-sweep, as he calls it, was possible during Napoleonic times and would, in 1940 be possible again due to air power and mechanized land forces. He states however, that the Schlieffen plan had no real chance of success because the deeper into France the German Army went, the more the strength of the forces dwindled and lost its cohesion. It suffered from a shortage of supplies because their opponent demolished the railroads. This was especially true in Belgium who also destroyed the bridges over the Meuse River which really slowed things down.
I believe that the Battle of Marne probably confirms Hart's statement. Even if the German's had won the Battle of the Marne, their forces were spent.
However, Trevor N. Dupuy does, in my opinion, disagree with his conclusions. So there we have it, historians cannot agree on whether the plan, in its original configuration and deployment, would have succeeded or whether it would have failed none the less. We know that by August, 1914 the German's were now facing a fully mobilized Russian Army, better equipped and more mobile. They faced the same issues with the French who now had the British Army to help them. It was a no-win situation either way. The 1940 attack by the German Army seems to bring this out.
Anyway, I still believe that there was no Schlieffen plan by 1914. There was the concept of operation taken from Napoleon and Von Moltke the elder, but Schlieffen's plan had changed and was now Von Moltke the Younger's. He failed tactically at the Marne, but none the less, it probably would have failed anyway.
Those are my thoughts but I continue to study Friction in war by Clausewitz and logistical issues.
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