Schlieffen Plan

Schlieffen Plan, battle plan first proposed in 1905 by Alfred, Graf (count) von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff, that was designed to allow Germany to wage a successful two-front war. The plan was heavily modified by Schlieffen’s successor, Helmuth von Moltke, prior to and during its implementation in World War I. Moltke’s changes, which included a reduction in the size of the attacking army, were blamed for Germany’s failure to win a quick victory.

Schlieffen was an ardent student of military history, and his strategic plan was inspired by the Battle of Cannae (216 bce), a pivotal engagement during the Second Punic War. At Cannae the Carthaginian general Hannibal defeated a much larger Roman force with a successful double envelopment, turning the Roman army’s flanks and destroying it. Schlieffen was convinced that a modern enemy force could be defeated in the same way, and the execution of a massive flank attack became the main focus of his plan. He proposed in 1905 that Germany’s advantage over France and Russia—its likely opponents in a continental war—was that the two were separated. Germany, therefore, could eliminate one while the other was kept in check. Once one ally was defeated, Germany would be able to combine its forces to defeat the other through massive troop concentration and rapid deployment.

Schlieffen wished to emulate Hannibal by provoking an Entscheidungsschlacht (“decisive battle”), using a massive force, in a single act, to bring a swift and conclusive victory. He decided that France was the enemy to be defeated first, with Russia held off until the French were annihilated. His plan called for four army groups, called the Bataillon Carré, to mass on the extreme German right. That northernmost force would consist of 5 cavalry divisions, 17 infantry corps, 6 Ersatzkorps (replacement corps), and a number of Landwehr (reserve) and Landsturm (men over the age of 45) brigades. Those forces were to wheel south and east after passing through neutral Belgium, turning into the flanks and rear of the hardened French defenses along the German border. After crossing the Somme west of Paris at Abbeville and Chaulnes, the main body of the Bataillon Carré would turn to engage the defenders of the French capital, with the Ersatzkorps lending support. The central group—consisting of six infantry corps, Landwehr brigades, and a cavalry division—was to attack the French at La Feré and Paris, eventually encircling the capital on the north and east. The third group would concentrate on the most-southern right wing, with eight corps, five reserve corps, and Landwehr brigades, with the help of two mobile cavalry divisions. The last group consisted of three cavalry divisions, three infantry corps, two Ersatzkorps, and a reserve corps on the left wing. That last group was to block any French attempt to counterattack, and it could be detached and transported to the extreme right if necessary. The Upper Rhine to the Swiss border and the Lower Alsace were to be defended by Landwehr brigades.

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World War I: The Schlieffen Plan

The manpower ratio was 7:1 from right wing to left.That massive force was to break through at the Metz-Diedenhofen area and sweep all French forces before it, swinging like a door that had its hinge in the Alsace region. Schlieffen worked out a detailed timetable that took into account possible French responses to German actions, with particular attention paid to the lightly defended Franco-German border. With that plan, Schlieffen believed, Gemany could defeat France within six weeks, the campaign concluding with a decisive “super Cannae” in the south.

The uniqueness of the Schlieffen Plan was that it ran counter to prevailing German military wisdom, which was principally derived from Carl von Clausewitz’s seminal work On War (1832) and the strategic thought of the elder Helmuth von Moltke. Schlieffen replaced the Clausewitzian concept of Schwerpunkt (“centre of gravity”) in operational command with the idea of continuous forward movement designed to annihilate the enemy. In pursuing that goal of total annihilation, Schlieffen also broke with Moltke, whose strategy sought to neutralize one’s opponent. Schlieffen thus turned a doctrinal debate (as chronicled by military historian Hans Delbruck) toward the strategies of annihilation (Vernichtungsstrategie) and attrition (Ermattungsstrategie).

Strategist and German corps commander Gen. Friedrich Adolf von Bernhardi was strongly critical of Schlieffen, arguing that the need for manpower and the creation of new units would weaken the regular army. He opposed the concept of Volk in Waffen (“a nation in arms”) but was overruled by Prussian Minister of War Julius Verdy du Vernois, who increased the size of the army with universal conscription. That began a political firestorm within the German Confederation, causing later ministers of war to be more cautious about manpower proposals. For its part, the German navy was against the Schlieffen Plan because the bulk of military resources would be directed toward massive land engagements and not the development of more powerful battleships.

Schlieffen insisted on an immediate attack on France in 1905 as a “preventive war,” arguing that Russia had just been defeated by the Japanese and France was involved in a crisis in Morocco. German Emperor William II and his chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow, believed that Great Britain’s alliance with Japan would lead to an encirclement of Germany and were cautious of such an attack. Rebuffed, Schlieffen responded with belligerence, and he was dismissed. Schlieffen later rewrote his plan, including an offensive against the neutral Dutch and restructuring the ratio of artillery and infantry. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Schlieffen’s plan would be altered by Moltke, but it would never be fully implemented as he envisioned.

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With Germany’s defeat in 1918, the German military blamed the Schlieffen Plan as flawed and the cause of their defeat. The victorious Allies looked upon the Schlieffen Plan as the source of German aggression against neutral countries, and it became the basis of war guilt and reparations. Both the original Schlieffen Plan and Moltke’s rewrite were locked at the Reichsarchiv at Potsdam, and access to the documents was strictly limited. They were destroyed on April 14, 1945, during a British bomber attack, and only studies of the two plans survived. Gerhard Ritter, a prominent German historian, published those studies in 1956 and concluded that the Schlieffen Plan was German doctrine prior to World War I. Further summaries have been discovered over subsequent decades, opening new debates about Schlieffen’s true intentions and the implementation of his plan.