Editing Schlieffen Plan (section)

===Analysis===

In 2001, [[Hew Strachan]] wrote that it is a [[cliché]] that the armies marched in 1914 expecting a short war, because many professional soldiers anticipated a long war. Optimism is a requirement of command and expressing a belief that wars can be quick and lead to a triumphant victory, can be an essential aspect of a career as a peacetime soldier. Moltke the Younger was realistic about the nature of a great European war but this conformed to professional wisdom. Moltke the Elder was proved right in his 1890 prognostication to the {{lang|de|Reichstag}}, that European alliances made a repeat of the successes of 1866 and 1871 impossible and anticipated a war of seven or thirty years' duration. Universal military service enabled a state to exploit its human and productive resources to the full but also limited the causes for which a war could be fought; [[Social Darwinist]] rhetoric made the likelihood of surrender remote. Having mobilised and motivated the nation, states would fight until they had exhausted their means to continue.{{sfn|Strachan|2003|p=1,007}}

There had been a revolution in firepower since 1871, with the introduction of [[breech-loading weapon]]s, [[Quick-firing gun|quick-firing]] artillery and the evasion of the effects of increased firepower, by the use of [[barbed wire]] and [[field fortifications]]. The prospect of a swift advance by frontal assault was remote; battles would be indecisive and decisive victory unlikely. Major-General [[Ernst Köpke]], the {{lang|de|[[Quartermaster general|Generalquartiermeister]]}} (Quartermaster General) of the German army in 1895, wrote that an invasion of France past [[Nancy, France|Nancy]] would turn into siege warfare with no quick and decisive victory. Emphasis on operational envelopment came from the knowledge of a likely tactical stalemate. The problem for the German army was that a long war implied defeat, because France, Russia and Britain, the probable coalition of enemies, were far more powerful. The role claimed by the German army, as the anti-socialist foundation on which the social order was based, also made the army apprehensive about the internal strains that would be generated by a long war.{{sfn|Strachan|2003|p=1,008}}

Schlieffen was faced by a contradiction between strategy and national policy and advocated a short war based on {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}}, because of the probability of a long one. Given the recent experience of military operations in the Russo-Japanese War, Schlieffen resorted to an assumption that international trade and domestic credit could not bear a long war and this [[Tautology (rhetoric)|tautology]] justified {{lang|de|Vernichtungsstrategie}}. [[Grand strategy]], a comprehensive approach to warfare that took in economics and politics as well as military considerations, was beyond the capacity of the Great General Staff (as it was among the general staffs of rival powers). Moltke the Younger found that he could not dispense with Schlieffen's offensive concept, because of the objective constraints that had led to it. Moltke was less certain and continued to plan for a short war, while urging the civilian administration to prepare for a long one, which only managed to convince people that he was indecisive.{{sfn|Strachan|2003|pp=1,008–1,009}}

By 1913, Moltke had a staff of {{nowrap|650 men,}} to command an army five times greater than that of 1870, which would move on double the railway mileage [{{cvt|90000|km|order=flip}}], relying on delegation of command, to cope with the increase in numbers and space and the decrease in the time available to get results. {{lang|de|Auftragstaktik}} led to the stereotyping of decisions at the expense of flexibility to respond to the unexpected, something increasingly likely after first contact with the opponent. Moltke doubted that the French would conform to Schlieffen's more optimistic assumptions. In May 1914 he said, "I will do what I can. We are not superior to the French." and on the night of {{nowrap|30/31 July}} 1914, remarked that if Britain joined the anti-German coalition, no-one could foresee the duration or result of the war.{{sfn|Strachan|2003|pp=173, 1,008–1,009}}

In 2006 the [[Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr]] published a collection of essays derived from a conference in 2004 held at Potsdam to discuss Terence Zuber's conclusion that there was no Schlieffen Plan. Had Zuber accurately interpreted his sources and were they adequate for his conclusions? The participants produced a comparative analysis of the war plans of the 1914 belligerents and Switzerland. In the Introduction to the volume, Hans Ehlert, Michael Epkenhans and Gerhard Gross wrote that Zuber's conclusion that the plan was a myth was a surprise, because many German generals had recorded at the time that the campaign in August and September had been based on Schlieffen. Falkenhayn had made a diary note on 10 September 1914 that,

{{quote|One is left speechless hearing those instructions. They only prove one thing with certainty, that our General Staff has completely lost its head. Schlieffen's notes have come to an end and so have the wits of Moltke.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|p=8}}}}

The Bavarian representative at the Great General Staff, General [[Karl von Wenninger]] wrote to Munich, that

{{quote|Schlieffen's operational plan of 1909 has been implemented, as I heard, without significant changes and even after the initial confrontation with the enemy.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|p=8}}}}

Wenninger went on to write that only the final encirclement by the northern and southern wings of the German force had not been achieved. After the Battle of the Marne, Wenninger wrote on 16 February, that

{{quote|Falkenhayn without doubt has his own thoughts, while Moltke and his subordinates were completely sterile. They could only turn the handle and run Schlieffen's film and were clueless and beside themselves when the roll got stuck.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|p=9}}}}

Zuber maintained his thesis that the plan was a post-war fabrication, by former General Staff officers, to shift the blame for a lost war. Annika Mombauer wrote that Zuber had overlooked the intimate connexion between the military and political worlds and that trying to explain the war as the result of Schlieffen and Moltke's desire for war risked falling for the post-war apologetics of the General Staff, that Schlieffen had created a plan that would inevitably bring victory. Robert Foley described the substantial changes in Germany's strategic circumstances between 1905 and 1914 which compelled German planners to prepare for a quick one-front war which could only be fought against France, the evidence for which lay in Schlieffen's staff rides, of which Zuber had taken too little account.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|pp=9–11}}

Gerhard Gross wrote that the sources used by Zuber were inadequate for his conclusions. Zuber had not looked at published excerpts from the pre-war {{lang|de|Aufmarschanweisungen}} (deployment commands) and the papers of General of Artillery {{ill|Friedrich von Boetticher|de}}, which included copies of Schlieffen papers and correspondence with Schlieffen's friends and colleagues. The documents showed that Zuber had misunderstood Schlieffen's operational thinking, which was based on obtaining a decisive victory against the French through envelopment on French territory but in a much less dogmatic way than had been thought. Gross agreed with Zuber that the {{lang|de|Denkschrift}} of 1905 was not an operational plan for a war against France or a detailed plan for a two-front war.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|pp=9–11}} Dieter Storz wrote that plans and reality rarely match and that the extant Bavarian records bear out the basis of Schlieffen's thinking, that the French armies were to be outflanked by the right wing. Günter Kronenbitter analysed the deployment plans of Austria-Hungary and concluded that, despite the alliance and relationship between the German and Austrian general staffs, there was no unified operational plan.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|pp=11–12}}

The Zuber thesis was the catalyst for a debate that suggested new questions and answers and turned up new sources. Zuber may not have convinced scholars but had been a considerable incentive for research. Zuber withheld permission for his chapter to be included in the English translation. The book includes the German deployment plans, long thought lost, which show Schlieffen's operational assumptions and that the emphasis on envelopment was continued by Moltke, despite his changes of other aspects of the deployment plans.{{sfn|Ehlert|Epkenhans|Gross|2014|pp=13–14}}

In 2009, [[David Stahel]] wrote that the Clausewitzian ''culminating point'' (a theoretical watershed at which the strength of a defender surpasses that of an attacker) of the German offensive occurred ''before'' the Battle of the Marne, because the German right (western) flank armies east of Paris, were operating {{cvt|100|km|order=flip}} from the nearest rail-head, requiring week-long round-trips by underfed and exhausted wagon horses, which led to the right wing armies becoming disastrously short of ammunition. Stahel wrote that contemporary and subsequent German assessments of Moltke's implementation of {{lang|de|Aufmarsch II West}} in 1914, did not criticise the planning and supply of the campaign, even though these were instrumental to its failure and that this failure of analysis had a disastrous sequel, when the German armies were pushed well beyond their limits in [[Operation Barbarossa]], during 1941.{{sfn|Stahel|2010|pp=445–446}} In 2015, Holger Herwig wrote that Army deployment plans were not shared with the [[Imperial German Navy]], Foreign Office, the Chancellor, the Austro-Hungarians or the Army commands in Prussia, Bavaria and the other German states. No one outside the Great General Staff could point out problems with the deployment plan or make arrangements. "The generals who did know about it counted on it giving a quick victory within weeks—if that did not happen there was no 'Plan B'".{{sfn|Herwig|2015|pp=290–314}}