What Was The Schlieffen Plan

In 1905 the German Chief of General Staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, laid out his plan to deal with a two front war between Germany’s two greatest threats, France and Russia. This plan became known as the Schlieffen Plan. The main point laid out in his plan was that of a decisive victory over France by having 3/4 of his forces move through Belgium, creating a strong right wing that would follow the English Channel down to Paris, thus enveloping the French army who would be concentrated along the Franco-German border. Once France had been defeated the German army would march east to deal with the Russians, who Schlieffen assumed would take at least six weeks to mobilize. According to Schlieffen, France posed a much greater threat than Russia, but

Schlieffen knew that the amount of time and manpower required to break through these line would be too great, and that an alternate route into France would be required to achieve his idea of “decisive victory” over France (Tuchman 28). This alternate route was to be through neutral Belgium. Belgium, had been declared a neutral state in 1838 by every major power in Europe, and had since been guaranteed protection by the English in the event of any violation of their neutrality (Tuchman 22). Schlieffen viewed this as an “unimportant obstacle, and had based the entire maneuvering of his plan around the invasion of France through Belgium in order to bypass the French line. This would become a vital error on Germany’s part, for it guaranteed that the English would intervene as an ally of the French against the German aggressors. The inability to keep England out of the war gave France a powerful ally, for England had the strongest Navy in the world during this period, as well as having troops with more experience and training than that of the Germans (Tuchman 59). The Germans would win the initial battles over the combined Anglo-French forces but would end up losing 600,000 men compared to British losses of only 29,000 (Churchill 1423-1425). This greatly impacted the German war

The commander of the army, von Kluck, was to manoeuvre around the western edge of Paris, fully encircling the French capital. Once Paris had fallen, von Kluck, with the rest of the right wing, was to move east to complete the full envelopment of the French army (Gorman 25). The deviation from the plan came when Moltke ordered von Kluck to instead move east of Paris towards the Marne river in pursuit of the French Sixth Army. This exposed the left flank of the army and allowed the Allies to launch a counter attack which later became known as the Battle of the Marne. The Battle of the Marne resulted in the defeat of the Germans who were forced to retreat back to the Aisne River. The failure of von Kluck and Moltke to stick to Schlieffen’s plan led to the turning point of the war and would eventually lead to an Allied victory. If von Kluck were to have kept west of Paris, the army’s flank would not have been exposed and the Schlieffen Plan may have been successful, but in the end the German offensive strategy fell apart and resulted in a four year stalemate along Aisne River which led to the infamous trench warfare that the western front is known