Editing Schlieffen Plan (section)

===''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}}