When the war began, over a year ago, the one thing Germany absolutely did not want was
what Germany got, a war on two fronts. Indeed, the initial German plan for the war was designed
to specifically avoid that, and it was called The Schlieffen Plan.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about the Schlieffen Plan.
Now, in our regular episodes last summer we saw how the German war plans played out in
real life as they advanced into Belgium and northern France before being stopped at the
Battle of the Marne, but for those of you who have only recently joined us, here’s
a broader overview of what the German plans were before the war.
Okay, the Schlieffen Plan! The brainchild of Alfred von S chlieffen, Chief of Staff
of the German Imperial Army from 1891 to 1906. The plan itself began to take form in 1905,
and the idea was to find a new general war plan that would take into account the many
new factors that had arisen since the Franco-Prussian of 1870 and 1871. Factors such as Germany’s
diplomatic isolation, which basically left only Austria-Hungary as a dependable partner
and created the problem of a two-front war, since Russia and France were staunch allies.
There were also military and technological issues to deal with- you now had machine guns
and modern artillery, new forms of communication like the telephone and the radio, and the
skyrocketing size of national armies. The Schlieffen Plan was designed to compensate
for the belief that German forces would be outnumbered by around 5 to 3, and thus a war
of attrition would not be winnable. It was an offensive plan to avoid that future and
also: against archenemy France, you don’t take a defensive posture.
So... the original plan was that 7/8 of the troops deployed to the west were going to
circumvent the strong French defenses on the Franco-German border by marching through Belgium
and the Netherlands. This was, already in 1905, an acknowledgement that violating Belgian
neutrality might well bring Britain into the war. Anyhow, the remaining troops would be
at the border and would draw the French into battles with them and then would get outflanked
from the north, encircle Paris and drive the remaining French forces to the south. After
this swift success, they could then send most of the troops over to fight against Russia.
There was no plan in place for dealing with Russia, though, just the French part.
Schlieffen was no longer Chief of Staff when the war broke out, he had been succeeded by
Helmut von Moltke- the younger, and Moltke made a few changes to the plan.
For starters, he changed the plan so it only invaded Belgium and not the Netherlands. He
wanted to leave the Netherlands as a supply corridor since Germany itself might be blockaded.
Also, the defense of East Prussia was of greater importance to Moltke than Schlieffen and had
to be provided for. Good thing that he had a lot more men at his disposal than Schlieffen had had.
As we know now, the Schlieffen plan failed and Germany was forced to fight a two-front
war that was often a war of attrition, and there were a number of reasons for this failure.
Indyyy!
Yes?
Indyyy!
Yees?
Indyyy!
Yeees?
*cough*
Sorry, hi Indy, it’s Cody from AlternateHistoryHub.
Oh hey, I watched your video about Britain siding with the Central Powers last year.
Glad you liked it. I watched your show too and because of that wanted to go back to some
World War 1 scenarios. Since you’re talking about the Schlieffen Plan, I wanted to mention
that I just published a video asking the question: What if the Schlieffen plan had actually worked?
That sounds great! Guys, you should check out Cody’s video for sure and see how elemental
the Schlieffenplan was to the outcome of WW1.
Alright! Really like your fire extinguisher with the clock you have there. But I will be on my way then.
Yeah, it’s a real antique. Thanks for stopping by.
Alright, so why did the Schlieffenplan actually fail?
Just looking at the numbers objectively, it seems doubtful that there were ever enough
German troops to achieve the encirclement of Paris and driving the remaining French
troops southward. Not so much that there weren’t enough men initially, but the fact that casualties
couldn’t really be properly replaced. See, the German Army was as well equipped in general
as anyone else, but that was the regular troops. This was not so for the reserve and replacement
troops, who were not even trained with the new equipment, were not as well trained anyhow,
did not have machine gun crews or artillery regiments, and could not really implement the plan.
The plan relied on speed for success, and speed relied on transportation. So how would that work?
At the beginning of the war, Germany had 5,000 cars and 1.4 million horses, but to really
move the troops you’d need trains, right? So you can only go where the tracks go, and
once they invaded Belgium and France, the Belgians and French destroyed the track as
they retreated, so it had to be laid again. One reason Liege was so important to take
was that it was a rail way hub; so you couldn’t go anywhere till you took it, and the railway
issues produced big supply issues too.
See, much as railways are inflexible, the whole Schlieffen Plan was inflexible. Once
it was set in motion, there was no turning back and no alternative plan. Here’s a little
anecdote from the first days of the war: the Kaiser got a misleading telegraph from London
that claimed the French weren’t mobilizing at all, so he ordered Moltke to deploy all
his troops against Russia. Moltke replied, “The deployment of millions of men cannot
be improvised, it is the result of years of planning, once set, it cannot be changed.
If His Majesty insists on sending all available troops to the East, they would not get a battle
ready army but a bunch of armed men without any food.”
And the movement was so tight that any mistakes or delays would cause the plan to crumble.
And the train schedule didn’t even account for delayed trains or broken tracks, and the
siege of Liege took nearly two weeks instead of the two days that the Germans had expected,
which tied up a lot of troops and prevented the Germans from using most of the Belgian
railways until Liege fell, delaying the plan.
Good communication was also important if you want to get things moving quickly.
Germany was on the same technical level as the other nations when it came to communications.
The problem was that telegraphs and radios became scarce the closer you would get to
the front. And right at the front, pigeons and flags were still used. All this meant
that the high command would get an outdated picture of events and was giving orders based on outdated situations.
But one of the biggest mistakes of the whole thing 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 basically
ignored how much Russia had modernized in the past decade. Russia also mobilized before
France, adding additional time pressure on Moltke in the west, and forcing him to send
troops from the western front to the eastern front before he wanted to.
But guess what? Some of them refused to go. The Bavarian forces at the Franco-German border
were the logical choice to send to the east to defend Prussia; they were on or near German
soil and were the easiest to divert, but the Bavarians refused to go and defend Prussia.
Moltke was forced to take troops from Belgium, much more difficult and time consuming.
He had problems with making his generals obey his exact orders in general. Those Bavarian
troops, for example, were under the command of Prince Ru pprecht, the last Bavarian crown
prince, and he had his own interests. See, the German army was organized federally during
peacetime and only during war was it all united under one command.
So Rupprecht refused to take his Bavarian troops to defend Prussia, and even when he
was given the task of just keeping the French troops at the border occupied, he didn’t
like that either, so he went on the offensive, clearly violating the plan.
A German officer was caught by the French and told them details of the plan, and the
French could retreat much more efficiently. Delays, sieges, poor communications, and the
transportation mess that really should have been anticipated, served only to throw the
plan off kilter, even before the Battle of the Marne. But really, the lack of alternatives
and the total inflexibility of the Schlieffen Plan in many ways doomed it from the start
and led to what Germany most wanted to avoid: a two front war and a bloody war of attrition.
They really should have anticipated better if they ever wanted the plan to work and you
are probably wondering what had actually happened if it actually worked. So, click right here
to go over to Cody’s Channel AlternateHistoryHub and find out. And if you came over from Cody