Editing Schlieffen Plan (section)

====German reunification====
In the 1990s, after the dissolution of the [[German Democratic Republic]], it was discovered that some Great General Staff records had survived the [[Bombing of Berlin in World War II|Potsdam bombing]] in 1945 and been confiscated by [[Soviet Military Administration in Germany]] authorities. About {{nowrap|3,000 files}} and {{nowrap|50 boxes}} of documents were handed over to the {{lang|de|Bundesarchiv}} ([[German Federal Archives]]) containing the working notes of {{lang|de|Reichsarchiv}} historians, business documents, research notes, studies, field reports, draft manuscripts, galley proofs, copies of documents, newspaper clippings and other papers. The trove shows that {{lang|de|Der Weltkrieg}} is a "generally accurate, academically rigorous and straightforward account of military operations", when compared to other contemporary official accounts.{{sfn|Humphries|Maker|2013|pp=2–3}} Six volumes cover the first {{nowrap|151 days}} of the war in {{nowrap|3,255 pages}} {{nowrap|(40 per cent}} of the series). The first volumes attempted to explain why the German war plans failed and who was to blame.{{sfn|Humphries|Maker|2013|pp=7–8}}

In 2002, ''RH 61/v.96'', a summary of German war planning from 1893 to 1914 was discovered in records written from the late 1930s to the early 1940s. The summary was for a revised edition of the volumes of {{lang|de|Der Weltkrieg}} on the Marne campaign and was made available to the public.{{sfn|Zuber|2011|p=17}} Study of pre-war German General Staff war planning and the other records, made an outline of German war-planning possible for the first time, proving many guesses wrong.{{sfnm|1a1=Zuber|1y=2002|1pp=7–9|2a1=Zuber|2y=2011|2p=174}} An inference that ''all'' of Schlieffen's war-planning was offensive, came from the extrapolation of his writings and speeches on ''tactical'' matters to the realm of ''strategy''.{{sfnm|1a1=Zuber|1y=2002|1pp=291, 303–304|2a1=Zuber|2y=2011|2pp=8–9}} In 2014, Terence Holmes wrote

{{quote|There is no evidence here [in Schlieffen's thoughts on the 1901 {{lang|de|Generalstabsreise Ost}} (eastern war game)]—or anywhere else, come to that—of a Schlieffen ''[[credo]]'' dictating a strategic attack through Belgium in the case of a two-front war. That may seem a rather bold statement, as Schlieffen is positively renowned for his will to take the offensive. The idea of attacking the enemy's flank and rear is a constant refrain in his military writings. But we should be aware that he very often speaks of an attack when he means ''counter-attack''. Discussing the proper German response to a French offensive between Metz and Strasbourg [as in the later 1913 French deployment-scheme Plan XVII and actual Battle of the Frontiers in 1914], he insists that the invading army must not be driven back to its border position, but annihilated on German territory, and "that is possible only by means of an attack on the enemy's flank and rear". Whenever we come across that formula we have to take note of the context, which frequently reveals that Schlieffen is talking about a counter-attack in the framework of a defensive strategy.{{sfn|Holmes|2014|p=206}}}}

and the most significant of these errors was an assumption that a model of a two-front war against France and Russia, was the ''only'' German deployment plan. The thought-experiment and the later deployment plan modelled an isolated Franco-German war (albeit with aid from German allies), the 1905 plan was one of three and then four plans available to the Great General Staff. A lesser error was that the plan modelled the decisive defeat of France in one campaign of fewer than forty days and that Moltke the Younger foolishly weakened the attack, by being over-cautious and strengthening the defensive forces in Alsace-Lorraine. {{lang|de|Aufmarsch I West}} had the more modest aim of forcing the French to choose between losing territory or committing the French army to a [[decisive battle]], in which it could be terminally weakened and then finished off later

{{quote|The plan was predicated on a situation when there would be no enemy in the east [...] there was no six-week deadline for completing the western offensive: the speed of the Russian advance was irrelevant to a plan devised for a war scenario excluding Russia.|Holmes{{sfn|Holmes|2003|pp=513–516}}}}

and Moltke made no more alterations to {{lang|de|Aufmarsch I West}} but came to prefer {{lang|de|Aufmarsch II West}} and tried to apply the offensive strategy of the former to the latter.{{sfn|Zuber|2010|p=133}}