T. A. Gardner wrote: ↑23 Jun 2020, 02:34
The Germans knowing the various treaty arrangements in Europe in 1912 devise alternates to the Schlieffen plan in the event of a general war in Europe.
In 1914 war breaks out in the historical manner. Austria declares on Serbia, Russia declares on Austria, the Germans declare on Russia, and the French declare on Germany and Austria.
The sides are set for war to their historical levels of mobilization.
But, Germany doesn't invade Belgium. Instead, they mass troops facing France assuming the French will honor Belgian neutrality, which France does. The German defenses dig deep and in depth. The French immolate themselves trying to break the German lines.
Meanwhile, the Germans have put their best units and generals in the East and demolish the Russians. By late 1915, Russia is on the ropes and in imminence of calling for terms. The British are not in the war and selling materials to both France and Russia. The US is selling far more to Germany as they had prewar. There is no blockade of Germany. The Royal Navy refuses to do so least Britain is drug into the war. The French can't match the High Seas Fleet. The British tell both the Germans and French to keep their fleets out of the Channel.
With Russia about to collapse, and casualties mounting to close to a million, the French are now in a dilemma. They are pretty clearly not going to win against Germany. Germany has defeated their one ally. The British and Italians have tacitly told them where to take the idea of joining the war.
What does France do?
The French would be in worse situation than the Russians, actually. I've posted it in another thread already but Terrence M. Holmes, writing in
"Not the Schlieffen Plan 1914", explains the situation thusly:
If Moltke had followed Schlieffen’s real intentions for the counter-offensive conduct of a two-front war, the first great battle of 1914 would have been fought in Lorraine in the third week of hostilities, on terms much more favourable to Germany than they were at the battle of the Marne. We can reconstruct this alternative scenario because we know exactly what the French chief of staff Joseph Joffre intended to do if the Germans did not invade Belgium.
French war planning was constrained by two political imperatives. In the first place, France was committed by agreement with her Russian ally to launch an ‘all-out and immediate’ attack against Germany as soon as possible after the outbreak of war. Moreover, the French government had resolved not to encroach on Belgian territory unless the Germans did so first. Joffre was therefore obliged to incorporate in his war plans a variant which allowed for a full-scale offensive avoiding Belgian territory altogether, and that would have come into effect in 1914 if the Germans had stayed on the defensive and not entered Belgium. For this eventuality Joffre decided that three of his five armies, comprising some 60 percent of his first-line troops, should invade Lorraine on 14 August, aiming initially to reach the line of the river Saar between Sarrebourg and Saarbrücken (Doughty 2010, 146-8, 155-8, 168). Ominously, that position was flanked at both ends by the German fortresses of Metz and Strasbourg.
Schlieffen had long before outlined how the Germans should exploit a massive French incursion through ‘the relatively narrow space between Metz and Strasbourg’. The aim must not be to push the enemy back to his fortified border. Rather, he had to be engaged on three sides, ‘from Metz, from the Saar and from Strasbourg’, and brought to a standstill there, which would give the Germans an excellent chance of decisive victory by means of envelopment attacks out of Metz and Strasbourg. The ultimate aim of this ‘attack on the enemy’s flank and rear’ would be to surround the French invasion forces and ‘not just defeat them, but lay them low and as far as possible annihilate them’ (Boetticher 1933, 260).
Joffre himself was acutely aware of the perils attending a French offensive in Lorraine. He said that the object would be to rupture the German front, but he conceded
that:
"In the course of this operation our forces would be liable to be taken in flank by attacks coming in all probability from both Metz and the region of Molsheim-Strasbourg. By penetrating like a wedge into the midst of the enemy’s lines we would be more or less inviting envelopment (Joffre 1932, 74-5)."
But a German defensive posture in 1914 would have compelled Joffre to embark on that hazardous course of action — that was precisely what he was committed to if the Germans refrained from attacking through Belgium and waited instead for the opportunity to counter-attack. In that event, the war would have started with a great battle of encirclement as soon as the French First, Second and Fourth Armies had completed their short advance into the danger zone between Metz and Strasbourg. Speaking in 1904 of the strategic importance of these fortresses, Schlieffen once again emphasized their role in counter-offensive operations: ‘I do not mean a Metz and Strasbourg that are to be besieged and defended, but rather a Metz and Strasbourg in which armies are assembled and through which they march in order to attack the enemy by surprise’ (Zuber 2004, 160).
