The Schlieffen plan is a meticulous organization for the German armed forces successively put into practice during the First and Second World Wars.
It owes its name to Marshal-Count Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913) who was military attaché in Paris from 1867 to 1869 and commander of the German army until 1906.
He recommends an overflow, playing on the speed of execution of the plan, through the left flank of the French army by Luxembourg and Belgium in the Ardennes with pivoting east of Paris and pushing back the troops on the Jura and Switzerland. This plan involves obtaining a right of passage through Belgium or, failing that, forced passage with violation of Belgian neutrality.
Assumptions on which the Schlieffen plan is based
* Impossibility of winning a quick victory over the Russian Empire:
o Lack of vital objectives on the border, which forces you to sink into Russia to achieve important objectives
o Territory gives defenders unlimited distance for retreat
o Russia cannot mobilize its army in less than six weeks
* Impossibility of attacking France directly:
o An advance on the Franco-German border would be too slow due to French fortifications
Strategy
The final plan is to have a defensive front in East Prussia against the Russians with 10% manpower and an attack with 90% manpower on France violating Belgian neutrality. The rapid victory over France in six weeks is essential in order to be able, after this delay, to concentrate the war effort on Russia.
Count von Schlieffen summarizes in his memoirs:“It is through the Mézières-Dunkirk sector that we must enter Fortress France. We must constantly attack the French in their left flank and seek relentlessly to push them back towards the Jura and Switzerland. »
Logistics
Logistically, this plan notes the great geographical proximity between the major vital centers of Germany (lower Rhine valley) and the major industrial centers of northern France. This makes these centers unbearably vulnerable and excessively tempting. This also makes it possible to make the best use of them during an action via Belgium, while conversely, the logistics of military supplies from Germany to France (or vice versa) via Alsace and Lorraine, via the Ardennes , the Vosges and the Jura, is not favorable to a rapid offensive.
On the other hand, as much as it is difficult to continue the offensive (towards Paris) starting from Lorraine, on the contrary it is easy to invest the French capital by the plains of Picardy:in the first case, the German army must advance with multiple flanking threats and facing the enemy, in the second on the contrary it attacks from the flank.
Finally, experience proves that the strongholds of the Franco-German border are solid:the attacker has major logistical problems, the defender is on the contrary helped by multiple natural obstacles (geographical or climatic).
Changes to the plan in 1911
After Schlieffen's retirement in 1906, Helmuth von Moltke became General-in-Chief of the German Army. He hardly approved of Schlieffen's Plan, which he considered too risky. But since it had been adopted in 1905, it was too much a part of German military thought to be abandoned altogether. All he could do was modify it.
In truth, this plan was not one. Schlieffen's initial thinking was more of a vision; he proposed an operational turn, and issued perspectives based on a specific objective:to defeat France before returning all his forces to Russia. His way of thinking revolved around the famous battle of Canae, in 216 BC. It was on this occasion that Hannibal had invented the perfect encirclement maneuver, resulting in the almost total destruction of the legions of Tarentius Varro. German military thought was impregnated with this Carthaginian culture thanks to the magnificent operation of encirclement of the French forces at Sedan by Molkte le Vieux, during the war of 1870. Schlieffen proposed, quite logically, to apply this maneuver in much higher proportions, and incredibly daring for the time. This operation encompassed the entire North-East of France. Schlieffen produced on this occasion a memorandum, not a plan, which established an ideal ratio of 7 to 1 between the troops marching from the north, and the troops stationed in the east. This proportion appeared to Moltke impractical, for reasons of space and logistics. Also, he decided to significantly reduce the number of troops intended to enter France from the North, to strengthen the coverage on Alsace-Lorraine and the Russian border. It should be noted, in this case, that the spirit of the Shlieffen concept was not burdened for all that. Admittedly, the marching wing coming from the North is considerably reduced, whereas it must display maximum power; the static troops in the East are reinforced while their role is to attract and retreat. But this attribution of the forces of each of these two groups still allows a successful application of the maneuver of encirclement, provided that one sticks to the basic principles of the plan.
The other important change was that we would not enter the Netherlands and that we would be limited to Belgium. These changes have been the subject of much debate. In 1970 L.C.F Turner saw in the changes made by Moltke “a substantial modification of the von Schlieffen plan so that the German campaign in the West was doomed before it even began. Turner argues that by weakening the German main offensive, you lost any real chance of crushing the French army quickly enough, and that's how you ended up with "the war on two fronts". He adds that the fact of not passing through the Netherlands not only created a bottleneck at the German-Belgian border, but also that not having the Dutch railways created a serious supply problem. , a problem that erased the benefits obtained by the fact that we still had access to Dutch ports. A. Palmer, on the other hand, does not share this point of view. According to him, careful study of the documents relating to the German war plan reveals that the changes made by Moltke were not so great and that the plan was flawed from the start. According to him, the reputation of this plan is overrated in that it underestimated each of the adversaries:Russians, French, British and Belgians.
In fact, each of these two authors opts for a radical judgment. A plan may look flawed from the start, but turn out to be excellent in operation; conversely, a good plan can be irreparably ruined by a misuse of its basic principles in the field. It is in this last hypothesis that we must see the failure of the German maneuver in August and September 14, apart from the enemy forces present. What was Schlieffen saying, over and over and over again? Let the French sink into Alsace-Moselle and fully regain their feet in their former provinces; let them cross the Rhine; let them sink into Mirkwood, if necessary. The more they will sink towards the East, the more their annihilation will be guaranteed. That's not at all what happened. Instead of acting as a buffer by attracting the French towards the East and waiting for the arrival of the marching wing to strike them from the rear, the Bavarian troops who were guarding the borders of Alsace-Moselle took advantage of their power to not only energetically stop their enemies as soon as they cross the border, but counter-attack even more furiously to drive them back to their starting point. The maneuver Schlieffen envisioned was dead, not because of a flaw in design or initial planning, but because of the misuse of its principles.
Location
Conceptually, and in both cases (1914 and 1940), Germany and France found themselves in situations that created asymmetry:
* Politically, France was on good terms with Belgium, but not enough for this to materialize into an alliance. On the other hand, supported by a large external empire providing it with everything it needed, France could "play for time", while the United Kingdom, the impossible enemy, forbade any expansion activity (and in particular no too great rapprochement between France and Belgium, a fortiori by an invasion). Consequently, the invasion of Belgium by France was a political impossibility, even if the military may have toyed with the idea.
* Conversely, Germany, surrounded and unable to endure too long a war, could not have had the same scruples.
* In 1914 and 1940, France and Belgium counted on the resistance of the Belgian army, in particular from four strongholds:Antwerp, Brussels, Namur and Charleroi. And, in both cases, Germany believed it had the means to reduce them in no time, thanks to heavy artillery during the First World War, thanks to aviation and airborne troops during the Second World War. worldwide; experience proved him partially right. Indeed, during the first assault on the fortified belt of Liège, the six German brigades (i.e. 39,000 men), engaged encountered fierce resistance and were sometimes pushed back beyond their starting positions (while one of the fundamental elements success of the plan was speed), from August 4 to 6. The supreme command of the German army then sent to the rescue of the six brigades (which lost 3,458 infantrymen killed, wounded or missing), a siege army of 60,000 men. It will only succeed in destroying the last fort on August 16, when the crossing of the Walloon provinces of Belgium was to take only a few days and on this date only Liège was crossed.
Where Schlieffen had planned a division, the Germans had to field eight and lose precious time.
Evolution
Consequently, the military behavior of France was predictable, and moreover was twice correctly anticipated by Germany. Germany's military behavior, no less predictable, was constantly ignored by France.
In 1914 the offensive was stopped by the flank attack on the Marne. In 1940, the envelopment will take place towards the north.