Schlieffen-Plan article by Terence Holmes

[woneil]

It is ahistorical to suppose that the British leadership was largely Francophile and Germanophobe in 1914. Some were and others were quite the opposite. Many of the leaders of Britain in 1914 had grandfathers or great grandfathers who had played their part in the wars against Napoleon, when Prussia and various others of the Germanies had been staunch British allies. There had been periodic alarms regarding French threats right through to the early years of the 1900s, and scarcely any regarding threats from Germany. The whole naval threat issue had cooled after 1909 and the coming of war put paid to it entirely, since it was self-evident that Germany could not simultaneously prosecute a major Continental war and build up her navy as well. And more immediately, Germany was widely seen as less of an imperial threat and at the same time a more important trading partner than France. After the war, as is well known to all serious students of the period, Lloyd George for those very reasons spat in the eye of the French and quite nakedly favored Germany, and he was certainly no warmer toward the French in 1914. For the men who made the decision, raisons d'État would have greatly outweighed inclinations.

No authoritative minutes were kept of Cabinet meetings in 1914, or for a good many years thereafter. (That was one of Hankey's innovations.) But from the various accounts of the participants it seems that balance-of-power arguments ultimately tipped the scales in favor of intervention. This was of course utterly and completely traditional for Britain. It was unthinkable in those days that Britain could stand by and watch anyone become a hegemon on the Continent. (The best account of the deliberations of the Cabinet over war is Harris, J. Paul, “Great Britain,” in The Origins of World War I, ed by Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), although Clark's Sleepwalkers also is good.)

I disagree with most of what has been said heretofore in this discussion regarding the "Schlieffen Plan" and its relationship to Germany actions in Jul-Sep 1914, for reasons that are very clearly laid out in my book, and which I have no interest in rehashing here.

[pablo287]

Good Morning,

In many ways I think the debate on the Schlieffen "Plan," reflects as much a misunderstanding of German military thought of the time as anything. The idea that a campaign would be fought by an elaborate and detailed plan runs counter to much of what Moltke (the Elder) and Schlieffen tried to teach generations of German officers.

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

[Attrition]

The Germans wrote off British neutrality long before the war and the example of the Iraq crime suggests that an equally undemocratic British state would have had little difficulty with "public opinion". Belgian neutrality was a casus belli not an end in itself; the British and American states were motivated by realpolitik, same as the continentals, for the same reasons.

The comparison with Iraq is interesting, but doesn't really support your point. Both events had an Irish dimension...

In 1914 the Asquith Government found itself going to war despite the pressing need to solve the Irish question with some form of devolved government and the threats of an Ulster revolt. The 1921 interview with Margot Asquith makes it clear that Asquith was a reluctant combatant in the face of public opinion pressing for action to save brave little Belgium. The decision to go to war postponed the Irish debate - until the extremists rose in 1916.

In 2002 the Blair government wanted to go to war regardless of public opinion. By going to war as one of those with rather than against Bush's USA Blair outflanked any residual American support for Irish republicanism, cementing the peace process.

Public opinion does matter in a democracy and realpolitik may be about accommodating politicians who need to satisfy particular electorates.

The threat to Belgium was asymmetric. Belgium has more value to Germany in an invasion of France than vice versa. Belgium is at the Northern end of the "Fatal Avenue" that leads to Paris. The Belgian German border is not an easy route, and leads to a Rhineland campaign as the allies found in 1944. The French have usually invaded Germany from the Palatinate and the Upper Rhine.

Liberals always behave like enlightenment philosophes and reluctant warmongers, yet manage to arrive at the same authoritarian conclusions and policies that they disown, accidentally or reluctantly and because someone else made them do it. Britain wasn't democratic in 1914 and isn't now, which is why the example of the state getting its way in 2003 is apposite. If there was a public opinion in 1914 (or 2003) it wasn't the same thing as popular opinion. War with Germany was a somewhat bigger event than a scuffle in Dublin; Irish aspirations have always been an embarrassment to the British state and the July-August crisis allowed it to be shelved, as the capitulation to the Boer in 1910 shelved awkward questions about the aspirations of Africans also to stop being third-class citizens.

The practicable routes between Germany and France had changed by 1914, because of post-Franco-Prussian War fortress building.

[Sheldrake]

Here is the link to the interview with Margot Asquith as she remembers the events of the eve of war. An authentic Liberal and eye witness to the events. http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/margotasquith.htm

[Attrition]

Yes and thus an anecdote.

[AJFFM]

I believe it was Nial Ferguson who pointed out that every sinlge aim in the September Program had been discussed in the period 1900-1914 as a German objective if a war did start, in that sense they are no different from the French aim to retrieve Alsace-Lorraine, they were not the reasons the nations went to war in the first place, but became something they would demand if the respective power won. You seem to be confusing the short term policy that led to war - the localised war with Serbia and destruction of Russian influence in the Balkans - with what was deemed necessary for Germany to achieve in a war in order to break the unsatisfactory position she was in (end of encirclement, end of French power, destruction of Russian influence in eastern Europe).

But was it formulated in state policy manner or was it just beer hall talk? Remember that different chancellors took charge in that period and the civil servant who wrote it was a mere child in 1900.

As for the French aims, does these include the Russian and British ones because they were after all official and semi-official allies. Would we expect a peace that while giving back Alsace-Lorraine won't touch upon East Prussia, the German navy, Turkey's future and Germany's colonies all of which have nothing to do with a supposed Franco-German war or Belgian neutrality breach.

It was very common in Europe that countries that were not party to a war to benefit from post war settlements if they were powerful enough (case in point Cyprus) or had the right allies (Greece in 1878).

It was written by the people who would have been responsible for accepting offers of peace, therefore it is fair to say that if France had surrendered after the Marne battles, this is pretty close to what the peace terms would have looked like. We can also look at the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Treaty of Bucharest to see how Germany was prepared to act when making peace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of ... %281918%29

Brest-Litovsk especially has been used by the "Germany Bad" historians to legitimise either Versailles (which by the way I do not think it was particularly vindictive except for the shaving of historical German territory in Poland), the War Guilt issue, both or even the rise of Nazism.

Brest-Litovsk was not an innovation in peace treaties nor was it as vindictive as many would think. Furthermore after so much bloodshed and with a communist revolution it was really naive to think that the Status Quo Anti Bellum would return.

I my opinion the so called "September Program" was a bargaining chip forced by the fact that in one month Germany lost more men than all the 19th century wars it fought bar the Napoleonic ones and a return to peace without consequences was not on the table. I could be wrong since my interest is limited to the military sphere and if I am not mistaken the Germans were still content with a much more limited peace later in the war.

Have you heard of Namur? It was a fortress aimed at a French invasion, and was attacked by the Germans in 1914. It played little role in 1918 because the Germans had demolished it in 1914 and did not rebuild it.

Well then my bad !

Well Germany certainly did in 1914, and had to fight the Belgians as well as the other powers. Government overthrows are always possible, but there is no suggestion anyone was about to do this in 1914, so it is very much a 'what if' rather than consideration based on historical information. Belgium was just as likely to have joined the Germans as the British and French, the chances being a pretty similar 0 on all counts at the time the war started. Belgium genuinely wanted to remain neutral. As for the influence of large navies on Belgian decisions, the large German armies also had an input too. I certainly do not see anything likely to change in the immediate future if Belgium was not invaded. Months or years of pressure might have changed this, but that is hard to predict, look at Greece for example.

My argument is that a Franco-British threat to Belgium had more resonance than a German one and with Germany isolated and facing three enemies the choice for the Belgians, had the Germans truly respected their neutrality and the war became a mincemeat factory in the small front in front of the forts, was crystal clear. When the Franco-British forces invite themselves over your only hope is to say yes.

[Terry Duncan]

But was it formulated in state policy manner or was it just beer hall talk? Remember that different chancellors took charge in that period and the civil servant who wrote it was a mere child in 1900.

It depends on the points themselves, talks at universities, the military, the Foreign Office, all had some form of say, not to forget the Pan-German press and Navy League. It less where they were discussed as how quickly they found themselves in an officials list of demands, which indicates that they had probably been considered previously.

As for the French aims, does these include the Russian and British ones because they were after all official and semi-official allies. Would we expect a peace that while giving back Alsace-Lorraine won't touch upon East Prussia, the German navy, Turkey's future and Germany's colonies all of which have nothing to do with a supposed Franco-German war or Belgian neutrality breach.

Other than maintaining the status quo, Britain had very few war aims, though the Dominions clearly had designs on some colonies. I listed the French aims as they are probably the best known and most often cited, but basically none of these things were why Europe came to be at war, but were demands that would be made when the war ended or be the price to end the war.

It was very common in Europe that countries that were not party to a war to benefit from post war settlements if they were powerful enough (case in point Cyprus) or had the right allies (Greece in 1878).

That is almsot impossible to tell, even the 'compensation' officially owed to Italy after Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina was never made good, and in 1914 Austria was determined to offer even her ally Italy nothing at all, even when pressed by Germany in the hope of getting Italy to join them. A lot here would probably depend on how long the war lasted and how far it spread.

Brest-Litovsk especially has been used by the "Germany Bad" historians to legitimise either Versailles (which by the way I do not think it was particularly vindictive except for the shaving of historical German territory in Poland), the War Guilt issue, both or even the rise of Nazism.

Brest-Litovsk is often quoted, which is why I also pointed out that the Treaty of Bucharest was equally harsh, neither were treaties where the Germans were happy to just see the respective nation out of the war and impose a minimum settlement, they went for the maximum sort of penalties that had been imposed previously. They are mostly useful to illustrate the sort of demands likely to have been imposed elsewhere if Germany had won.

Brest-Litovsk was not an innovation in peace treaties nor was it as vindictive as many would think. Furthermore after so much bloodshed and with a communist revolution it was really naive to think that the Status Quo Anti Bellum would return.

I agree to an extent. The problem with the 1871 settlement was its harsh nature, it caused exactly the resentment Bismarck had wished to avoid, but Moltke won out and didnt particularly care about how France would react. These were not treaties likely to see both sides settle down and be friends, they were likley to cause resentment and further wars. A peace both sides accepted was probably impossible, but the gaps were huge in the actual treaties. Versailles gets a bad press mostly because the Germans complained so much and were misled by their own leaders deliberately.

I my opinion the so called "September Program" was a bargaining chip forced by the fact that in one month Germany lost more men than all the 19th century wars it fought bar the Napoleonic ones and a return to peace without consequences was not on the table. I could be wrong since my interest is limited to the military sphere and if I am not mistaken the Germans were still content with a much more limited peace later in the war.

A lot of the later German peace offers were based around keeping the land they sat on, obviously not acceptable to anyone else, and varied a lot depending on how well the war was going for them at the time. A peace fair to all and that all would agree to was probably not possible within the first month of the war, as you say, the cost was already too high.

My argument is that a Franco-British threat to Belgium had more resonance than a German one and with Germany isolated and facing three enemies the choice for the Belgians, had the Germans truly respected their neutrality and the war became a mincemeat factory in the small front in front of the forts, was crystal clear. When the Franco-British forces invite themselves over your only hope is to say yes.

Its all hypothetical though, there seem to have been no discussion about acting in such a way, the closest being Joffre telling his government it would be nice to be able to do so and being told that it was totally out of the question in the pre-war years. The British and French didnt really act as you suggest in Greece, they took ages to get what they wanted, even if they were bullying Greece into it.

[glenn239]

How exactly? The September Program was well, the September Program not the July Program.

I believe it was Nial Ferguson who pointed out that every sinlge aim in the September Program had been discussed in the period 1900-1914 as a German objective if a war did start, in that sense they are no different from the French aim to retrieve Alsace-Lorraine, they were not the reasons the nations went to war in the first place, but became something they would demand if the respective power won.

The two cases were not analogous, though the comparison is admittingly clever.

It was written by the people who would have been responsible for accepting offers of peace, therefore it is fair to say that if France had surrendered after the Marne battles, this is pretty close to what the peace terms would have looked like.

Assuming Moltke had been completely victorious in 1914, the Germans were seeking peace with both France and Great Britain. As the latter could not be forced to make peace, the only leverage Germany had to get a treaty was the degree of leniency displayed towards the former.

We can also look at the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Treaty of Bucharest to see how Germany was prepared to act when making peace.

Russia's criminal incompetence towards its own peoples made the breakup of that Empire inevitable, (Germany would have had to garrison the Russian Empire just to keep it together). Given Rumania's treachery against its allies in 1916, it got off rather lightly.

Have you heard of Namur? It was a fortress aimed at a French invasion, and was attacked by the Germans in 1914. It played little role in 1918 because the Germans had demolished it in 1914 and did not rebuild it.

Namur was aimed at France, so you are correct.

This does not alter the fact that the Belgian government had been better disposed towards the Germans than the British or French in 1914.

Was it? The Belgian military dispositions looked tailor made to allow Joffre to execute his 'Belgian' variant without a single Belgian soldier being in the way of his march through the Ardennes.

Belgium genuinely wanted to remain neutral.

But if that were not possible, Belgium would pick whatever side the British were on.

I certainly do not see anything likely to change in the immediate future if Belgium was not invaded

Common sense suggests that after the Russians were devastated at Tannenburg and the French heavily repulsed along the common border, the clamour from St. Petersburg for the French to extend the front into the Ardennes as a means to relieve the pressure on the Russian army would become overwhelming.

[glenn239]

It is ahistorical to suppose that the British leadership was largely Francophile and Germanophobe in 1914.

It is a historical fact that significant slice of the British government was for intervention on the side of France, or they would resign. The symmetry of policy you're implying would mean that certain British ministers, kings, etc., insisted upon intervention on the side of Germany, or else they would resign. As this is not the case, there was no such faction, the conclusion follows Britain was pro-French, because some much of its key membership insisted on intervention on the side of France.

After the war, as is well known to all serious students of the period, Lloyd George for those very reasons spat in the eye of the French and quite nakedly favored Germany...

See Kissinger's Diplomacy, which covers this in detail. The problem appears to have been the depth to which Britain's Foreign office adhered to the dogma of balance of power. As Germany was weak after 1918, as incredible as it sounds, the British acted as if France was the threat to continental hegemony. This, to be clear, is not proof that the British were pro-German. Rather, it is evidence that London was still operating in the 1920's as if it were the 1820's and their policy was an anachronism that took no account that Europe of the 1920's was not Europe of the 1820's.

...it seems that balance-of-power arguments ultimately tipped the scales in favor of intervention. This was of course utterly and completely traditional for Britain. It was unthinkable in those days that Britain could stand by and watch anyone become a hegemon on the Continent....

You're arguing, therefore, that British war against Germany was inevitable the moment that Germany was at war with France, and this would be true regardless of who started the war or why. Or, you are arguing that the British WOULD sit back and allow someone to become the hegemon on the continent, if the prospective hegemon were sufficiently clever to make the original cause of the war one in which the British could hang their hats on the coat rack and then walk themselves into the history book.

Which is it?

[Appleknocker27]

Good Morning,

In many ways I think the debate on the Schlieffen "Plan," reflects as much a misunderstanding of German military thought of the time as anything. The idea that a campaign would be fought by an elaborate and detailed plan runs counter to much of what Moltke (the Elder) and Schlieffen tried to teach generations of German officers.

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

Agreed, the hunt for the 'Schlieffen Plan' to me is rather comical in the sense that those searching for it have a notion as to what it must be or look like, when in reality it exists right under their noses (Zuber included). The elephant in the room is that Schlieffen's paper is a denkschrift and not an operationsentwurf (ala the Marcks plan for Barbarossa). A denkschrift serves a higher purpose and is in no way to be taken literally as so many have in regard to Schlieffen's paper as if it were an operationsentwurf.
Excellent and helpful information here:
https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/e81 ... eader.aspx

[michael mills]

Brest-Litovsk especially has been used by the "Germany Bad" historians to legitimise either Versailles (which by the way I do not think it was particularly vindictive except for the shaving of historical German territory in Poland), the War Guilt issue, both or even the rise of Nazism.

Brest-Litovsk was not an innovation in peace treaties nor was it as vindictive as many would think. Furthermore after so much bloodshed and with a communist revolution it was really naive to think that the Status Quo Anti Bellum would return.

That is a correct interpretation.

The terms of the Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, imposed by the Central Powers on the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic in March 1918, were not a result of German vindictiveness as is often claimed, but rather of the objective situation existing at the time.

Note that I have written "Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk". That is because there was a first one, signed in February between the Central Powers and the Ukrainian National Republic, which had proclaimed its independence of the Russian Republic immediately after the Bolshevik takeover in November 1917, but had been overrun by Bolshevik troops since January 1918.

Representatives of the Ukrainian National Republic had come to Brest-Litovsk quite unexpectedly, and had asked the delegation of the Central Powers to recognise Ukrainian independence, which the Central Powers were only too happy to do.

In addition, at that time other parts of the former Russian Empire, such as Finland and Georgia, were also breaking away, and the Bolshevik regime had in fact recognised their right to do so, subject only to the proviso that the new independent states had proletarian governments, not "bourgeois" ones. That is the reason why Bolshevik forces had invaded Ukraine, even though the Bolshevik regime had recognised Ukraine's right to independence; they claimed to be supporting Ukrainian proletarians against the "bourgeois" government of the Ukrainian National Republic.

Thus, the terms imposed by the Central Powers on the RSFSR did not "rip away" large parts of Russia, as is so often claimed. The territories lost to Russia were already in the process of breaking away; all that the Central Powers did in the Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was to recognise the independence of those territories.

The occupation of Ukraine by German and Austro-Hungarian forces was invited by the Government of the Ukrainian National Republic, for the purpose of protecting it against any return of the Bolsheviks, something that the occupiers did until they evacuated the country in November 1918, after the armistices with the Allied Powers.

Thus, the Second Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was in no way a model for the sort of peace that Germany would have sought in the event of its having defeated France and Britain, as claimed by some posters to this thread. Before the collapse of the Russian Imperial Government in March 1917, and the Bolshevik seizure of power November, Germany was consistently seeking to negotiate a separate with peace with Russia on the basis of the status quo of 1914. For example, after Germany conquered Russian Poland in 1915, it offered to give it back in return for a separate peace.

[michael mills]

Other than maintaining the status quo, Britain had very few war aims, though the Dominions clearly had designs on some colonies

It did have major war aims.

1. Destroy German military power, in particular its navy.

2. Cripple German industry, so that it could no longer challenge British global economic hegemony.

Both those aims were achieved. After the First World War, Germany was an economic basket case, with no financial reserves and ravaged by inflation. Its economy was kept afloat solely by loans from the United States, and when those loans were withdrawn in the wake of the Wall Street Crash, it collapsed completely.

Before the First World War, Germany dominated Central and Eastern Europe outside the Russian Empire economically. After the war it totally lost its economic position in that region, which came under the economic domination of Britain and France; Germany was only able to regain its former position in the late 1930s, just a few months before the outbreak of war.

By 1912 at the very latest, the British military, in particular the Royal Navy, had concluded that war with Germany was inevitable and were making extensive preparations for it. The Committee of Imperial Defence even revealed more of its thinking about the coming war to the visiting Dominion leaders than it did to the British Cabinet. An interesting book to read on that subject is Avner Offer's "The First World War: An agrarian Interpretation", which has a whole section on the planning for war by the Committee of Imperial Defence .

[JAG13]

AJFFM What I found lacking in this piece is the fact that the French did fall into the Lorraine trap and sent the 1st and 2nd armies into the gauntlet and it was the mismanagement of the counterattack by the Germans that saved the French from total annihilation after the initial victory.

That’s surely an exaggeration – it was the proximity of the French fortified zone right behind 1st and 2nd armies that prevented any German counterattack on this front from holding out hope to any strategic result. At best they could make the French fall back.

As Zuber points out the counterattack was premature, the French were advancing happily and the Germans (or Bavarians) could have fallen further back thus handing the French enough rope to hang themselves... THEN counterattack from Metz in order to separate them from their frontier forts in order to bag the two armies and the war.

Which touches on the key failure of Moltke’s concept of an advance – despite years of study he still had no clear idea what he was trying to accomplish by advancing into France in the first place. His plan seems to have been push everywhere and see if the French will just surrender en
mass.

Just hope the French stand, fight and lose perhaps? Because the alternative is to play defense and wait for the blockade to strangle Germany.

Schlieffen had already proven in his war games that the French could simply fall back along successive river lines and draw the Germans ever deeper into France while the Russians rolled over Prussia. Germany's only hope was if the French fought aggressively and opted for the obvious counter to a German flanking maneuver through Belgium, an Austerlitz style counterattack on the center (the Ardennes) that could break the Germans in two and end the war right there. This was the scenario usually played by Schlieffen that ended with the German 1st and 2nd armies playing no role in the decision of the campaign, and even in the simulations it was always a close thing that could and did go either way.

But what did Moltke think in the end? God only knows, the French offered themselves in not one but two attacks around Metz and Moltke failed to take advantage of either opportunity as Schlieffen always did when exactly that scenario was gamed. Actually he did order the fifth and fourth armies to redeploy for a counterattack from Metz, but he cancelled that when he was informed that the attack involved just two armies and not the 40 divisions he initially feared. Zuber then claims that Moltke yielded to pressure from the 6th army for an early counterattack instead of allowing the French to advance farther away from the safety of their frontier forts as he had originally intended.

[JAG13]

I believe it was Nial Ferguson who pointed out that every sinlge aim in the September Program had been discussed in the period 1900-1914 as a German objective if a war did start, in that sense they are no different from the French aim to retrieve Alsace-Lorraine, they were not the reasons the nations went to war in the first place, but became something they would demand if the respective power won. You seem to be confusing the short term policy that led to war - the localised war with Serbia and destruction of Russian influence in the Balkans - with what was deemed necessary for Germany to achieve in a war in order to break the unsatisfactory position she was in (end of encirclement, end of French power, destruction of Russian influence in eastern Europe).

But was it formulated in state policy manner or was it just beer hall talk? Remember that different chancellors took charge in that period and the civil servant who wrote it was a mere child in 1900.

Be careful with Terry's affirmations on Ferguson, he made a similar claim in a different conversation and in spite of being corrected he tries to repeat the same thing here. This is what Ferguson says:

Yet there is a fundamental flaw in Fischer's reasoning which too many historians have let pass. It is the assumption that Germany's aims
as stated after the war had begun were the same as German aims beforehand. Thus Bethmann's 'September Programme' - 'provisional
notes for the direction of our policy' for a separate peace with France, drafted on the assumption of a swift German victory in the West - is
sometimes portrayed as if it were the first open statement of aims which had existed before the outbreak of war. If this were true, then the
argument that war was avoidable would collapse; for it is clear that no British government could have accepted the territorial and political
terms which the September Programme proposed for France and Belgium, as these would indeed have realized the 'Napoleonic nightmare'
by giving Germany control of the Belgian coast. But the inescapable fact is that no evidence has ever been found by Fischer and his pupils
that these objectives existed before Britain's entry into the war. It is in theory possible that they were never committed to paper, or that the relevant documents were destroyed or lost, and that those involved subsequently lied rather than concede legitimacy to the 'war guilt' clause of the Versailles treaty. But it seems unlikely. All that Fischer can produce are the pre-war pipedreams of a few Pan-Germans and businessmen, none of which had any official status, as well as the occasional bellicose utterances of the Kaiser, an individual whose influence over policy was neither consistent nor as great as he himself believed.

See how the essence of Ferguson's argument is EXACTLY the opposite of what Terry is trying to imply?

[Attrition]

Imply