The Schlieffen Plan:time for conclusions

Issue status

The confrontation between the German and French armies in the first six weeks of the 1914 war has always had a parallel reading based on the German plan, Schlieffen Plan , and the French, Plan XVII, whose interest and study has exceeded the mere warlike description of the Battle of France. After a classical or orthodox reading of both approaches, it emerged at the end of the s. XX and the beginning of the new a revisionist or heterodox current on the part of Terence Zuber who questioned even the very existence of the German plan as such, and, of course, its adaptation by General Helmuth von Moltke and all its execution. Once the waters return to their normal course, it is appropriate to try to resolve the question that both currents raised about one of the most attractive military events and operational design in military history.

Original historical conception of the Schlieffen Plan

The wisdom received [1] has been guiding us through the genesis and evolution of the German war plan at the beginning of the 20th century. Discarding Marshal Graf von Moltke's initial idea of ​​initially focusing the offensive on the East (after all, he had already reached Paris in 1871), Schlieffen had to resolve, around 1905, the assignment of troops to two more than likely different fronts , under the premise that the attacking force must be superior to the defending one. The plan is itself a reflection, –Denkschrift– fruit of Schlieffen's analysis of the situation in and with Russia and France, especially after the war of the first with Japan in 1904-1905. Focusing on the western front, Schlieffen considered the French border line, the fortifications, the towns or strongholds, and especially the corridors or openings left in the line to enable a French advance across the Verdun-Toul-Epinard and Belford lines. -Switzerland, especially the Toul-Epinard axis. And he came to the conclusion that it was the only possible alternative to successfully crown an offensive in France . We emphasize the terms offensive and in France, because Schlieffen also analyzed the nature and possibilities of the eastern front, with and without Austria-Hungary, as well as a defensive scenario in France, who assumed a basic offensive intention for the recovery of Lorraine and Alsace.

Reflection, not a strategic or war plan, led him to discard these other scenarios where either the German army was outnumbered and outflanked or the front stalled as had been observed in Manchuria. Consequently, and in the first place, Germany had to adopt an offensive and aggressive posture, taking the initiative . Secondly, to access the French line where its units would predictably be deployed, from Verdun to Epinard, the direct approach was not possible, as had happened in 1870. And set to carry out a penetration through the borders with Luxembourg and Belgium, the fate of these units was made clear:they were to pivot around Metz ^[2] heading southwest of Paris, seeking open ground for deployment and maneuver ^[3] , while the French center was fixed and would be attacked from the rear. J.F.C. Fuller calls it "simple envelope" and likens the approach to the great Frederick's Battle of Leuthen in 1757. The basic premise of Schlieffen ^[4] it was, indeed, that of a single wing encirclement, but, above all, it implied, inexcusably required, that the French units not break contact and withdraw. This would have shortened their supply line and lengthened the German one, while bringing them closer to their reserves and forcing the Germans forward. The front line was not only not to be abandoned by the French army, but it was to be fixed and drawn into battle; it was necessary to give way in the line so that the French units would be attracted to penetrate the front and advance. What Schlieffen wanted was a battle of Kesselring, pocket the French troops , not to attack them from the flank, in the purest Prussian tradition. It wasn't Leuthen, but Cannae .

The modification and subsequent execution by General Moltke, as is well known, led to breaking the balance of forces assigned to each wing of the German army, especially reinforcing the V and VI armies , in which the crown princes did not seem to accept a secondary role in the great offensive. This, together with other considerations, such as avoiding the invasion of the homeland, precisely in the area entrusted to the Prince, and extreme anxiety about what could happen in the East, abounded in the reinforcement of the central part of the German line. and in planning an advance along the entire front. Moltke's low leadership capacity and the disagreements between von Kluck and von Bülow led to making the turn towards the southeast instead of the southwest, in return encountering the French troops that instead of being pocketed or pushed towards the East, they did so towards the West, preventing the maneuver of the German right wing. Moltke had turned against himself. Prince Rupert and General Dellmensingen had counterattacked so forcefully that they pushed the French First and Second Armies out of the encirclement trap.

For its part, the Plan XVII It was based on the XVI drawn up by General Bonnal, responsible for plans XV and XVI. Bonnal, faithful follower of the Napoleonic doctrine, did not know how to integrate into the variables of the coming war the new means of transportation and communication, the logistics for the enormous human masses whose mobilization was approaching, nor the new discipline of rapid-fire artillery, among other. He ignored, as did the French General Staff and the Ministry of War, the possibility of Germany mobilizing its reserve from minute one of the conflict, and limited himself to considering a more than probable German attack of ten corps along the Toul line. -Epinal. His proposal, riskily simplistic, was to propose a bataillon carré 800,000 men divided into five armies, one in the first line, three in the second and a fifth in reserve in the rear. Within the war similes, Bonnal proposed a Jena modern. Plan XVII, drawn up at the request of General Joffre, adopted the previous one under two premises:it maintained the refusal to believe in the initial mobilization of the German reserve –and, consequently, they would not have sufficient strength to advance simultaneously to the west and south–, and, secondly, it consecrated at a mystical level the offensive character of the French plan based on the “mass-velocity” principle, concentrating the armies between Mézieres and Epinal and launching them head-on. This concept includes maneuvering towards the enemy during the battle, which would prove fatal to French units under contact with German fire. Joffre stated that he had knowledge of the German mobilization plan of 1913 ^[5] , although the "memories" of the French general from this time are not very reliable ^[6] . But for these purposes, another reflection included in his memoirs is of interest; the plan and maps of two exercises carried out in 1905 and 1906 by the German General Staff that contemplate the movement of the German right wing through Belgium ^[7] . This data is tremendously revealing since it coincides with the succession of events described by Terence Zuber ^[8] .

The Schlieffen Plan and Zuber's revisionism

As a result of the recovery of unpublished documentation in the archives of East Germany, Zuber conducted around 1999 an investigation of these sources and issued a revised interpretation of the Schlieffen plan. According to Zuber, von Schlieffen's goal, throughout his reflections, studies, maneuvers, and General Staff war games, but never as a war plan, was to maintain a defensive war against the two armies that the policy of alliances would lead him to face, given the numerical inferiority against the Entente, transferring units from one front to another through the railway according to need. In no case could Germany assume an offensive approach on two fronts, one of them also being a deep penetration into an enemy country, far from its lines of supply and communication. On the contrary; under the offensive premise of the French army, it would be taken to partial battles near the border where the German military and technical supremacy would overcome it.

However, Zuber's approach, which nevertheless contains numerous successes resulting from the aforementioned first-hand documentary research, is circumstantial. First, he flatly rejects the study by the German historian Gerhard Ritter, published in 1958 under the title The Schlieffen Plan ^[9] , and that it is based on the original documentation found in the US military archives, which is a reflection of the orthodox interpretation of the Schlieffen Plan and its subsequent modification for the worse by Moltke. Zuber concludes that Germany understood that France was interested in starting a new war, due to the Lorraine-Alsace issue , and therefore, and in accordance with the aforementioned offensive mystique, France would attack taking the initiative in that area, with a secondary attack in the Ardennes. The German plans derived from all the studies, maneuvers, etc., of Schlieffen and Moltke from 1905 onwards were based on a German defensive approach, in close battles with a clear superiority supported by rapid mobilization of troops along the entire western front, and between the east and the east. Germany could not undertake, and never conceived, a plan for a great battle of annihilation, (the Cannae of von Schlieffen). Only once the French army was defeated in the Verdun-Epinal fortified line, the German right wing would proceed to penetrate French territory through the Meuse, turning to the left once the line of fortresses had been overcome and attacking the rest of the enemy army on the flank. and rear. The German left wing was never weak, it was never conceived that way by either Schlieffen or Moltke. In the end, a second campaign would follow, already in the interior of France.

Confronted with Zuber's interpretation, other authors, such as Terence M. Holmes, from the University of Wales, initiated a debate based, on the one hand, on the original documentary sources and on the other in the real execution carried out by the German army in 1914, trying to confront positions in favor or against what could have been von Schlieffen's approach and the modification and execution under friction by General Moltke. According to Holmes, the plan –the study or reflection– of Schlieffen did not have the city of Paris as its fixed objective . The plan did not have an unavoidably determined a priori geographical line assigned as a vector of forced advance, but instead obeyed, in its conception with Schlieffen and which Moltke tried to maintain despite the friction, the idea of ​​involvement of enemy troops wherever they were found.

And this is the main idea, the reason for be both of Schlieffen's conception and its adaptation to the situation in 1914 by Moltke and its execution on the ground. It should not be forgotten that von Schlieffen inherited the German military doctrine from Marshal Graf von Moltke, and General Moltke from von Schlieffen. We thus go back to 1870-71 and find the rise of the traditional military doctrine:the Bewegungskrieg [10] , movement warfare at the operational level , with its roots anchored in Frederick William and consolidated by Frederick the Great, cited by Heinz Guderian in 1936 in a first reference to the old winter war of 1678. It is German operational art, not science; the design of flexible and alternative maneuver plans at the operational level, based on a corps of officers with training and decision-making capacity –Auftragstaktik– and in combined arms, opposed to the battle of positions and attrition or Stellungskrieg . Seek to maneuver large units quickly and fearlessly , in depth, passing the enemy or looking for his flank and rear, in brief decisive impact battles. The charge itself maintains the inertia of the attack in a sustained manner and without pause. The Schlieffen Plan of 1906 was not a war plan, that much is clear. It was just one more of the reflections and studies carried out by the Chief of Staff regarding the probabilities, possibilities and impacts of the different scenarios. However, it was this approach that, officially or unofficially ^[11] it received, but did not inherit, General Moltke, who had the task of adapting it – available units, mobilization, goal setting, deployment, etc. – to the 1914 situation. He modified and altered the initial idea, but kept the art operational underlying the original; the maneuverability of the units in search of an encirclement, perhaps simple, perhaps double, of an enemy line fixed in the center.

German operational warfare was hardly compatible with a defensive war; even being attacked or still maintaining a purely defensive position, the German tactic did not go through the resistance attached to the ground (at least not at the beginning of a fight); it means that even for the assumption of a French offensive in pursuit of the recovery of its lost territories in 1871, the German army could not consider a war of positions, further harmed by its numerical inferiority. It was von Schlieffen's analysis of all possible scenarios that led him, and Moltke somewhat maintained, to the conclusion that he had to fix the French centre , but not to maintain it in the long term, but to annihilate it by surprise. If the plans do not survive the friction, they do not survive the bad execution or the disagreements of their commanders, who added errors that ended up distorting the chances of success of the plan and its resolution. The German units would not be able to break the front line of the fortifications, nor was that the approach of 1941 or 1944 (this in another context). It was never contemplated to push south or drive the French back, but to drive him east or pocket him in a huge Kesselring , by maneuvering the right wing of the German army through Belgium and Luxembourg which, if necessary, would encircle Paris from the southwest to attack the front from the rear, bypassing the reserve forces garrisoned in the capital and making use of a clearer terrain than north of Paris (which would precisely become the swampy scene of the war of positions or trenches to come). That the German commanders, once the conflict was over, tried to defend the intrinsic value of the Schlieffen Plan, charging the inks in the little operative and imaginative Moltke, it may be true, as General Joffre tried to whitewash his image despite the difficult decisions in which he was involved, but this does not deny the value and merit of one or the other. The German operational art survived the first war, to fight one more day.

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Notes

[1] Schllieffen’s War; reexamining the war plans of 1914. Ty Bomb. Strategy &Tactics. No.319. Nov-Dec 2019.

[2] We hesitate to call it “…advance in oblique order…” like Fuller. Decisive battles. Vol 3 Page 226

[3] Should they maneuver north of Paris, they risked getting caught between the units deployed on the front line and the Paris reserves.

[4] “Make the right wing as strong as possible ”; The German General Staff Walter Goerlitz. Page 142.

[5] The Memoirs of Marshall Joffre, vol I, pp. 61-64.

[6] “…I don't remember anymore…I get asked a lot of things that I can't answer. I know nothing." Joffre's reply to the 1919 Briey Commission. Quoted by J.F.C. Fuller, Decisive Battles, vol. III, p. 225.

[7] The Memoirs of Marshall Joffre, vol I, pp. 46-63.

[8] The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered. Zuber, T. War in History. July 1999. Vol 6. No. 3, pp 262-305. Sage Publications Ltd.

[9] Curiously prefaced by Liddell Hart.

[10] The term Blitzkrieg It is, as we know, later and with a different meaning.

[11] It seems that there is no record of an original copy received at the General Staff for its archive.

This article is part of the III Desperta Ferro Historical Microessay Contest. The documentation, veracity and originality of the article are the sole responsibility of its author.