The Schlieffen Plan!

 Alfred Von Schlieffen (1833 – 1913). Chief of the Imperial German General Staff: 1891 – 1906.
 Plan was designed to compensate for the belief that German forces would be outnumbered and thus a war of attrition would
not be winnable. It was an offensive plan.
 It was an ambitious plan designed to avoid Germany having to fight a two-front war against France and Russia.
 The plan was to invade France and capture Paris before the Russians could mobilize.

Original Plan:

 Schlieffen believed that due to the terrible state of the country’s road and its inefficient railways, Russia would take about six
weeks to mobilise.
 In the meantime, the German armies would quickly knock France out of the war and then deal
with Russia.
 Von Schlieffen decided to attack through Belgium as the Belgium army was small. Britain had
promised in 1834 to protect the neutrality of Belgium if she was ever attacked. The German
generals gambled that Britain would not keep her promise to defend Belgium.

 The plan was that German armies would 1) circumvent the strong French defences on the
Franco-German border by sweeping through Belgium and the Netherlands into northern France.
 The remaining troops would be at the Franco-German border and would draw the French into
battles with them and then would get outflanked from the north, encircle Paris and drive the remaining forces to the south.
 After this swift success, they could then send most of the troops over to fight against Russia.
 There are no plan in place for dealing with Russia though, just the French part.

What did it need to succeed?

The plan made several assumptions:

 The Belgians would not resist, or if they did, they would be easily defeated and the German armies would quickly advance
through the country.
 The French would attack through Alsace-Lorraine and would be too slow to realise their mistake and disrupt the German
Plan.
 Russia would take at least six weeks to mobilise and Germany would only need to send, at first, a small force to the east.
 The British Expeditionary Force would arrive too late to stop the German advance.

The plan relied on:

German speed
Slow Russian mobilization (6 weeks?)
Britain staying out of the war.
Reasons for the failure of the Schlieffen Plan:

 One of the biggest mistakes was misinterpreting how things would be in the east.
 The original Schlieffen plan dismissed Russia as a strong enemy because Russia had just lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese
War, and the version of the plan in 1914 essentially ignored how much Russia had modernized in the past decade. The plan
relied on the assumption that Russia would take at least 6 weeks to mobilize but in reality, Russia mobilized much more rapidly
(10 days) adding additional time pressure on Moltke in the force and forcing him to send troops from the western front to the
eastern front, which weakened the main attack on Paris.

1. Changes to the plan:

 Von Schlieffen died in 1913 and his dying words were ‘keep the right wing strong’. He urged that the right wing of the German
army should be six times stronger than any other.
 The new German commander, Von Moltke, ignored this advice and the army was not strong enough to carry out the plan.
The German armies that invaded Belgium were 100,000 soldiers short because von Moltke sent additional forces to reinforce
the Russian Front.
 Schlieffen also wanted a wide sweep through the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. This was changed to a narrower
sweep attack through Belgium and Luxembourg. In addition, German armies were supposed to encircle Paris. This plan was
abandoned in early September and they moved to the east, leading to the Battle of the Marne.

2. Belgian Resistance:
 On 3rd August an army of over one million Germans marched into Belgium.
 The Belgians, using their forts, resisted and slowed down the German advance.
 Deep concrete forts protecting Antwerp, Liege and Namur delayed the Germans.
 For ten days at the Battle of Liege the small Belgian army resisted the German advance. When it was clear the Belgian army
couldn't hold out any longer, the King of Belgian ordered that the destruction of the drainage systems which kept his low-
lying country free from flooding. The bravery and self-sacrifice of this defensive strategy earned the country the nickname
'Plucky (brave) Little Belgium'.
 Heavy guns had to be brought up to pound the defences to rubble.
 The Belgian forts at Liége held out for 12 days and Brussels was not occupied until 20th August. Antwerp did not surrender
until October.
 Belgian resistance gave the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) time to arrive (Linking!) and they had sabotaged the lightning
speed on which the success of the Schlieffen plan rested.

3. The British Expeditionary Forces:

 The Kaiser had dismissed the BEF as a ‘contemptible little army’.
 However the British sent the BEF, of 80,000 men to Belgium under the command of Sir John French on 18th August, more
quickly than the Germans expected.
 It was small but excellently trained. Von Moltke had to transfer troops from the Eastern Front to face the BEF.
 British intervention at Mons (area in Belgium) shocked the Germans who were not expecting it.
 The BEF held the Germans up at the Battle of Mons on 23 August 1914. Although they (BEF) were outnumbered and had to
retreat, they delayed the German advance and managed to inflict heavy casualties. Three days later there was a further Battle
at Le Cateu. Again the British retreated but the German were slowed down.
 With his army exhausted and many of his best forces killed, Moltke was defeated at the Battle of the Marne on 6-10
September 1914. "Sir, we have lost the war," he told the Kaiser.

4. French Resistance – Battle of Marne.

 The French attacked Alsace-Lorraine and suffered heavy casualties.
 The delays achieved by the Belgians and British (mention this! Linking!) Gave the French time to move their troops towards
Paris and make a stand at the Marne River on 6th-12thth September 1914.
 Taxis and buses transported every available soldier from Paris to the front line.
 British reconnaissance balloons spotted a gap between two German armies, and the BEF and French armies counter-attacked
into this gap.
 The Battle of Marne lasted for 8 days and forced the German armies to fall back to a safe position 60km north of the River
Aisne.