Editing Schlieffen Plan (section)

==Background==

===''Kabinettskrieg''===
{{see also|Total war}}

[[File:Image from page 389 of "Moltke, a biographical and critical study" (1894) (14578535519).jpg|thumb|{{centre|Map showing areas of France occupied during the Franco-Prussian War}}]]
After the end of the [[French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars]] in 1815, European aggression had turned outwards and the fewer wars fought within the continent had been {{lang|de|Kabinettskriege}}, local conflicts decided by professional armies loyal to dynastic rulers. Military strategists had adapted by creating plans to suit the characteristics of the post-Napoleonic scene. In the late nineteenth century, military thinking remained dominated by the [[Unification of Germany|German Wars of Unification]] (1864–1871), which had been short and decided by great battles of annihilation. In ''[[Vom Kriege]]'' (On War, 1832) [[Carl von Clausewitz]] (1780–1831) had defined decisive battle as a victory which had political results

{{quote|... the object is to overthrow the enemy, to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent, thus forcing him to sign whatever peace we please.|Clausewitz{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=41}}}}

{{lang|de|Niederwerfungsstrategie}}, (''prostration'' strategy, later termed {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}} (destruction strategy) a policy of seeking decisive victory) replaced the slow, cautious approach to war that had been overturned by [[Napoleon]]. German strategists judged the defeat of the Austrians in the [[Austro-Prussian War]] (14 June – 23 August 1866) and the French imperial armies in 1870, as evidence that a strategy of decisive victory could still succeed.{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=41}}

===Franco-Prussian War===
{{main|Franco-Prussian War}}

Field Marshal [[Helmuth von Moltke the Elder]] (1800–1891), led the armies of the [[North German Confederation]] that achieved a speedy and decisive victory against the armies of the [[Second French Empire]] (1852–1870) of [[Napoleon III]] (1808–1873). On 4 September, after the [[Battle of Sedan]] (1 September 1870), there had been a republican [[coup d'état]] and the installation of a [[Government of National Defence]] (4 September 1870 – 13 February 1871), that declared {{lang|fr|guerre à outrance}} (war to the uttermost).{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=14–16}} From {{nowrap|September 1870 – May 1871,}} the [[French Army]] confronted Moltke the Elder with new, improvised armies. The French destroyed bridges, railways, telegraphs and other infrastructure; food, livestock and other material was evacuated to prevent it falling into German hands. A {{lang|fr|[[levée en masse]]}} was promulgated on 2 November and by February 1871, the republican army had increased to {{nowrap|950,200 men.}} Despite inexperience, lack of training and a shortage of officers and artillery, the size of the new armies forced Moltke to divert large forces to confront them, while still [[Siege of Paris (1870–1871)|besieging Paris]], isolating French garrisons in the rear and guarding lines of communication from {{lang|fr|[[francs-tireurs]]}} ([[irregular military]] forces).{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=14–16}}

===={{lang|de|Volkskrieg}}====

[[File:Francs-tireurs.jpg|thumb|{{centre|Francs-tireurs in the [[Vosges]] during the Franco-Prussian War.}}]]
The Germans had defeated the forces of the Second Empire by superior numbers and then found the tables turned; only their superior training and organisation had enabled them to capture Paris and dictate peace terms.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=14–16}} Attacks by {{lang|fr|francs-tireurs}} forced the diversion of {{nowrap|110,000 men}} to guard railways and bridges, which put great strain on Prussian manpower. Moltke wrote later,

{{quote|The days are gone by when, for dynastical ends, small armies of professional soldiers went to war to conquer a city, or a province, and then sought winter quarters or made peace. The wars of the present day call whole nations to arms.... The entire financial resources of the State are appropriated to military purposes....|Moltke the Elder{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=16–18}}}}

He had already written, in 1867, that [[French nationalism|French patriotism]] would lead them to make a supreme effort and use all their national resources. The quick victories of 1870 led Moltke to hope that he had been mistaken but by December, he planned an {{lang|de|Exterminationskrieg}} against the French population by taking the war into the south, once the size of the [[Prussian Army]] had been increased by another {{nowrap|100 battalions}} of reservists. Moltke intended to destroy or capture the remaining resources which the French possessed, against the protests of the German civilian authorities, who after the fall of Paris, negotiated a quick end to the war.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=18–20}}

[[File:Colmar von der Goltz.JPG|thumb|upright|{{centre|Colmar von der Goltz}}]]
[[Colmar von der Goltz]] (1843–1916) and other military thinkers, like Fritz Hoenig in {{lang|de|Der Volkskrieg an der Loire im Herbst 1870}} (The People's War in the Loire Valley in Autumn 1870, 1893–1899) and Georg von Widdern in {{lang|de|Der Kleine Krieg und der Etappendienst}} ([[Petty warfare|Petty Warfare]] and the Supply Service, 1892–1907), called the short-war belief of mainstream writers like [[Friedrich von Bernhardi]] {{nowrap|(1849–1930)}} and [[Hugo von Freytag-Loringhoven]] {{nowrap|(1855–1924)}} an illusion. They saw the longer war against the improvised armies of the French republic, the ''indecisive'' battles of the winter of 1870–1871 and the {{lang|de|Kleinkrieg}} against {{lang|fr|francs-tireurs}} on the lines of communication, as better examples of the nature of modern war. Hoenig and Widdern conflated the old sense of {{lang|de|Volkskrieg}} as a [[Partisan (military)|partisan war]], with a newer sense of ''a war between industrialised states, fought by nations-in-arms'' and tended to explain French success by reference to German failings, implying that fundamental reforms were unnecessary.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=16–18, 30–34}}

In {{lang|de|[[Léon Gambetta]] und die [[Armée de la Loire|Loirearmee]]}} (Leon Gambetta and the Army of the Loire, 1874) and {{lang|de|Leon Gambetta und seine Armeen}} (Leon Gambetta and his Armies, 1877), Goltz wrote that Germany must adopt ideas used by Léon Gambetta, by improving the training of Reserve and {{lang|de|[[Landwehr]]}} officers, to increase the effectiveness of the {{lang|de|Etappendienst}} (supply service troops). Goltz advocated the [[conscription]] of every able-bodied man and a reduction of the period of service to two years (a proposal that got him sacked from the Great General Staff but was then introduced in 1893) in a nation-in-arms. The mass army would be able to compete with armies raised on the model of the improvised French armies and be controlled from above, to avoid the emergence of a radical and democratic people's army. Goltz maintained the theme in other publications up to 1914, notably in {{lang|de|Das Volk in Waffen}} (The People in Arms, 1883) and used his position as a corps commander from 1902 to 1907 to implement his ideas, particularly in improving the training of Reserve officers and creating a unified youth organisation, the {{lang|de|Jungdeutschlandbund}} (Young Germany League) to prepare teenagers for military service.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=25–30}}

===''Ermattungsstrategie''===

[[Image:Hans Delbrueck.jpg|thumb|upright|{{centre|Hans Delbrück}}]]
The {{lang|de|Strategiestreit}} (strategy debate) was a public and sometimes acrimonious argument after [[Hans Delbrück]] (1848–1929), challenged the orthodox army view and its critics. Delbrück was editor of the {{lang|de|Preußische Jahrbücher}} (Prussian Annals), author of {{lang|de|Die Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte}} (The History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History; four volumes 1900–1920) and professor of modern history at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin]] from 1895. General Staff historians and commentators like Friedrich von Bernhardi, Rudolph von Caemmerer, Max Jähns and Reinhold Koser, believed that Delbrück was challenging the strategic wisdom of the army.{{sfn|Zuber|2002|p=9}} Delbrück had introduced {{lang|de|[[Source criticism|Quellenkritik/Sachkritik]]}} (source criticism) developed by [[Leopold von Ranke]], into the study of military history and attempted a reinterpretation of {{lang|de|Vom Kriege}} (On War). Delbrück wrote that Clausewitz had intended to divide strategy into {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}} (strategy of destruction) or {{lang|de|Ermattungsstrategie}} (strategy of exhaustion) but had died in 1830 before he could revise the book.{{sfn|Zuber|2002|p=8}}

Delbrück wrote that [[Frederick the Great]] had used {{lang|de|Ermattungsstrategie}} during the [[Seven Years' War]] {{nowrap|(1754/56–1763)}} because eighteenth century armies were small and made up of professionals and pressed men. The professionals were hard to replace and the conscripts would run away if the army tried to live off the land, operate in close country or pursue a defeated enemy, in the manner of the later armies of the Coalition Wars. Dynastic armies were tied to magazines for supply, which made them incapable of fulfilling a strategy of annihilation.{{sfn|Zuber|2002|p=9}} Delbrück analysed the European alliance system that had developed since the 1890s, the [[Boer War]] {{nowrap|(11 October 1899 – 31 May 1902)}} and the [[Russo-Japanese War]] {{nowrap|(8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905)}} and concluded that the rival forces were too well-balanced for a quick war. The growth in the size of armies made a swift victory unlikely and British intervention would add a [[Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)|naval blockade]] to the rigours of an indecisive land war. Germany would face a [[war of attrition]], similar to the view Delbrück had formed of the Seven Years' War. By the 1890s, the {{lang|de|Strategiestreit}} had entered public discourse, when soldiers like the two Moltkes, also doubted the possibility of a quick victory in a European war. The German army was forced to examine its assumptions about war because of this dissenting view and some writers moved closer to Delbrück's position. The debate provided the [[Imperial German Army]] with a fairly familiar alternative to {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}}, after the opening campaigns of 1914.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=53–55}}

===Moltke the Elder===
====Deployment plans, 1871–1872 to 1890–1891====
[[File:Conrad Freyberg Moltke.jpg|thumb|{{center|Portrait of {{lang|de|Generalfeldmarschall}} Helmuth Graf von Moltke by Conrad Freyberg (1877)}}]]
Assuming French hostility and a desire to recover [[Alsace–Lorraine]], Moltke the Elder drew up a deployment plan for 1871–1872, expecting that another rapid victory could be achieved but the French introduced [[Conscription in France|conscription]] in 1872. By 1873, Moltke thought that the French army was too powerful to be defeated quickly and in 1875, Moltke considered a [[preventive war]] but did not expect an easy victory. The course of the second period of the Franco-Prussian War and the example of the Wars of Unification had prompted [[Austria-Hungary]] to begin conscription in 1868 and [[Russian Empire|Russia]] in 1874. Moltke assumed that in another war, Germany would have to fight a coalition of France and Austria or France and Russia. Even if one opponent was quickly defeated, the victory could not be exploited before the Germans would have to redeploy their armies against the second enemy. By 1877, Moltke was writing war plans with provision for an incomplete victory, in which diplomats negotiated a peace, even if it meant a return to the {{lang|la|[[Status quo ante bellum]]}} and in 1879, the deployment plan reflected pessimism over the possibility of a [[Franco-Russian alliance]] and progress made by the French fortification programme.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=20–22}}

Despite international developments and his doubts about {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}}, Moltke retained the traditional commitment to {{lang|de|Bewegungskrieg}} (war of manoeuvre) and an army trained to fight ever-bigger battles. A decisive victory might no longer be possible but success would make a diplomatic settlement easier. Growth in the size and power of rival European armies increased the pessimism with which Moltke contemplated another war and on 14 May 1890 he gave a speech to the ''[[Reichstag (German Empire)|Reichstag]]'', saying that the age of {{lang|de|Volkskrieg}} had returned. According to Ritter (1969) the contingency plans from 1872 to 1890 were his attempts to resolve the problems caused by international developments, by adopting a strategy of the defensive, after an opening tactical offensive, to weaken the opponent, a change from {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}} to {{lang|de|Ermattungsstrategie}}. Foerster (1987) wrote that Moltke wanted to deter war altogether and that his calls for a preventive war diminished, peace would be preserved by the maintenance of a powerful German army instead. In 2005, Foley wrote that Foerster had exaggerated and that Moltke still believed that success in war was possible, even if incomplete and that it would make peace easier to negotiate. The possibility that a defeated enemy would ''not'' negotiate, was something that Moltke did not address.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=22–24}}

===Schlieffen===
In February 1891, Schlieffen was appointed to the post of Chief of the {{lang|de|[[Großer Generalstab]]}} (Great General Staff), the professional head of the {{lang|de|[[German Army (German Empire)|Kaiserheer]]}} ({{lang|de|Deutsches Heer}} [German Army]). The post had lost influence to rival institutions in the German state because of the machinations of [[Alfred von Waldersee]] (1832–1904), who had held the post from 1888 to 1891 and had tried to use his position as a political stepping stone.{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=63}}{{efn|On taking up the post, Schlieffen had been made to reprimand publicly Waldersee's subordinates.{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=63}}}} Schlieffen was seen as a safe choice, being junior, anonymous outside the General Staff and with few interests outside the army. Other governing institutions gained power at the expense of the General Staff and Schlieffen had no following in the army or state. The fragmented and antagonistic character of German state institutions made the development of a grand strategy most difficult, because no institutional body co-ordinated foreign, domestic and war policies. The General Staff planned in a political vacuum and Schlieffen's weak position was exacerbated by his narrow military view.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=63–64}}

In the army, organisation and theory had no obvious link with war planning and institutional responsibilities overlapped. The General Staff devised deployment plans and its chief became {{lang|la|[[de facto]]}} Commander-in-Chief in war but in peace, command was vested in the commanders of the twenty army corps districts. The corps district commanders were independent of the General Staff Chief and trained soldiers according to their own devices. The federal system of government in the German empire included ministries of war in the constituent states, which controlled the forming and equipping of units, command and promotions. The system was inherently competitive and became more so after the Waldersee period, with the likelihood of another {{lang|de|Volkskrieg}}, a war of the nation in arms, rather than the few European wars fought by small professional armies after 1815.{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=15}} Schlieffen concentrated on matters he could influence and pressed for increases in the size of the army and the adoption of new weapons. A big army would create more choices about how to fight a war and better weapons would make the army more formidable. Mobile heavy artillery could offset numerical inferiority against a Franco–Russian coalition and smash quickly, numerous fortified places. Schlieffen tried to make the army more operationally capable, to be superior to its potential enemies and achieve a decisive victory.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=64–65}}

Schlieffen continued the practice of staff rides ({{lang|de|[[staff ride|Stabs-Reise]]}}) tours of territory where military operations might take place and [[Military simulation|war games]], to teach techniques to command a mass conscript army. The new national armies were so huge that battles would be spread over a much greater space than in the past and Schlieffen expected that army corps would fight {{lang|de|Teilschlachten}} (battle segments) equivalent to the tactical engagements of smaller dynastic armies. {{lang|de|Teilschlachten}} could occur anywhere, as corps and armies closed with the opposing army and became a {{lang|de|Gesamtschlacht}} (complete battle), in which the significance of the battle segments would be determined by the plan of the commander in chief, who would give operational orders to the corps,

{{quote|The success of battle today depends more on conceptual coherence than on territorial proximity. Thus, one battle might be fought in order to secure victory on another battlefield.|Schlieffen, 1909{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=66}}}}

in the former manner to battalions and regiments. ''War against France'' (1905), the memorandum later known as the "Schlieffen Plan", was a strategy for a war of extraordinarily big battles, in which corps commanders would be independent in ''how'' they fought, provided that it was according to the ''intent'' of the commander in chief. The commander led the complete battle, like commanders in the Napoleonic Wars. The war plans of the commander in chief were intended to organise haphazard [[Meeting engagement|encounter battles]] to make "the sum of these battles was more than the sum of the parts".{{sfn|Foley|2007|p=66}}

====Deployment plans, 1892–1893 to 1905–1906====
In his war contingency plans from {{nowrap|1892 to 1906,}} Schlieffen faced the difficulty that the French could not be forced to fight a decisive battle quickly enough for German forces to be transferred to the east against the [[Imperial Russian Army]] to fight a [[Two-front war|war on two fronts]], one-front-at-a-time. Driving out the French from their frontier fortifications would be a slow and costly process that Schlieffen preferred to avoid by a flanking movement through the [[Low Countries]]. In 1893, this was judged impractical because of a lack of manpower and mobile [[heavy artillery]]. In 1899, Schlieffen added the manoeuvre to German war plans, as a possibility, if the French pursued a defensive strategy. The German army was more powerful and by 1905, after the [[Battle of Mukden|Russian defeat in Manchuria]], Schlieffen judged the army to be formidable enough to make the northern flanking manoeuvre the basis of a war plan against France alone.{{sfnm|1a1=Foley|1y=2007|1pp=66–67|2a1=Holmes|2y=2014a|2p=62}}

In 1905, Schlieffen wrote that the Russo-Japanese War {{nowrap|(8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905),}} had shown that the power of Russian army had been overestimated and that it would not recover quickly from the defeat. Schlieffen could contemplate leaving only a small force in the east and in 1905, wrote ''War against France'' which was taken up by his successor, Moltke the Younger and became the concept of the main German war plan from {{nowrap|1906–1914.}} Most of the German army would assemble in the west and the main force would be on the right (northern) wing. An offensive in the north through Belgium and the Netherlands would lead to an invasion of France and a decisive victory. Even with the windfall of the Russian defeat in the [[Far East]] in 1905 and belief in the superiority of German military thinking, Schlieffen had reservations about the strategy. Research published by Gerhard Ritter (1956, English edition in 1958) showed that the memorandum went through six drafts. Schlieffen considered other possibilities in 1905, using war games to model a Russian invasion of eastern Germany against a smaller German army.{{sfnm|1a1=Ritter|1y=1958|1pp=1–194|2a1=Foley|2y=2007|2pp=67–70}}

In a staff ride during the summer, Schlieffen tested a hypothetical invasion of France by most of the German army and three possible French responses; the French were defeated in each but then Schlieffen proposed a French counter-envelopment of the German right wing by a new army. At the end of the year, Schlieffen played a war game of a two-front war, in which the German army was evenly divided and defended against invasions by the French and Russians, where victory first occurred in the east. Schlieffen was open-minded about a defensive strategy and the political advantages of the Entente being the aggressor, not just the "military technician" portrayed by Ritter. The variety of the 1905 war games show that Schlieffen took account of circumstances; if the French attacked [[Metz]] and [[Strasbourg]], the decisive battle would be fought in [[Lorraine]]. Ritter wrote that invasion was a means to an end not an end in itself, as did Terence Zuber in 1999 and the early 2000s. In the strategic circumstances of 1905, with the Russian army and the Tsarist state in turmoil after the defeat in [[Manchuria]], the French would not risk open warfare; the Germans would have to force them out of the border fortress zone. The studies in 1905 demonstrated that this was best achieved by a big flanking manoeuvre through the Netherlands and Belgium.{{sfn|Foley|2007|pp=70–72}}

Schlieffen's thinking was adopted as {{lang|de|Aufmarsch I}} (Deployment [Plan] I) in 1905 (later called {{lang|de|Aufmarsch I West}}) of a Franco-German war, in which Russia was assumed to be neutral and Italy and Austria-Hungary were German allies. "[Schlieffen] did not think that the French would necessarily adopt a defensive strategy" in such a war, even though their troops would be outnumbered but this was their best option and the assumption became the theme of his analysis. In {{lang|de|Aufmarsch I}}, Germany would have to attack to win such a war, which entailed all of the German army being deployed on the German–Belgian border to invade France through the southern [[Netherlands|Dutch]] province of [[Limburg (Netherlands)|Limburg]], [[Belgium]] and [[Luxembourg]]. The deployment plan assumed that [[Royal Italian Army]] and [[Austro-Hungarian Army]] troops would defend [[Alsace-Lorraine]] ({{lang|de|Elsaß-Lothringen}}).{{sfn|Zuber|2011|pp=46–49}}