Currently reading through Annika Mombauer's
Moltke and the Origins of the First World War. Mombauer makes the argument that the German General Staff's focus on only the Schlieffen Plan in 1913/1914 and discarding of any Eastern Deployment Plan fixed Germany's course in late-July early August 1914, when German mobilization began. She says,
In April 1913, it was decided to discontinue the annual updating of the Eastern Deployment Plan. At the end of the July Crisis (she's referring to August 1st here) such a plan might have provided Germany with a feasible alternative when, for a short while, it looked as if French neutrality, contrary to all expectations, was a possibility. In the event, this turned out to be merely wishful thinking, but the fact remains that no alternative plan existed: if France had decided to remain neutral, Germany would still have had to attack her... No matter what the political situation, military planning dictated the events.
This seems to be a somewhat common argument - that the rigidity of the Schlieffen Plan precluded other strategic options. But then later, Mombauer recounts the night of August 1st, 1914, when the Kaiser directed Moltke to reorganize the troops East in response to a British proposal of French neutrality. Moltke famously refused to change the plan. But then she says,
Eventually, Moltke was able to achieve a compromise: deployment was allowed to continue as planned, but had to stop just before the border. Depending on French assurances, an orderly move to the East could then be undertaken, rather than halting the deployment immediately and causing chaos.
If an "orderly move to the East" was possible without attacking the French, surely the Germans weren't so strategically bound by the Schlieffen Plan? Curious what other people here think about it.
