Sungrapho
Thema
Military Plans and World War I
Reasons for the stalemate on the Western Front.
Lyn Gorman, Charles Sturt University
© State of New South Wales through the Department of Education and Training and Charles Sturt University. This material appears on the Modern
History section of NSW HSC Online. For the full unit of work and images – as well as many other teaching materials – go to http://hsc.csu.edu.au/modern_
history/. We thank the author and NSW HSC Online for permission to reproduce the material.
Introduction
When war was declared in 1914, the initial military
moves were dictated by military plans which had been
drawn up by the European powers in the years before
the war. Implementation of the plans was to have
enormous consequences for the course of the war.
This tutorial concentrates on the impact of the plans
on the war in Western Europe. It also considers briefly
the military plans of Russia and Austria-Hungary,
particularly during the crisis of July 1914.
War plans and Western Europe
The plan which had most impact on the war as it began
and developed in Western Europe was Germany’s
Schlieffen Plan. France’s Plan XVII was also important
in dictating France’s initial moves in August 1914.
The Schlieffen Plan
Most important of the war plans was Germany’s
Schlieffen Plan. This had been developed by
Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German
General Staff from 1891 to 1905. German military
planning occurred within the context of Germany’s
geographical position and the alliance system in
Europe. Even before Schlieffen, German military
24 Agora
leaders had been faced with the prospect of a twofront war in which Germany faced enemies to east
(Russia) and west (France). Schlieffen decided that, in
the event of a war in Europe, Germany’s first priority
should be to concentrate on a crushing offensive
against France in the west.
In December 1905 Schlieffen set out his plan in a
detailed memorandum. Its key features were:
• a bold and decisive initial move against France in the
west;
• violation of Dutch and Belgian neutrality as the
strong German right wing of thirty-five army corps
swept westwards to enter France from its northern
borders;
• use of German reserve troops along with the regular
army;
• envelopment of the French left flank, pushing the
French forces across France against their own
eastern frontier;
• capture of Paris as the German right flank extended
west and south of the city and enveloped it; and
• a small holding operation with just five army corps
to contain the French on their eastern border in
Lorraine (that is, a weak German left wing).
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Opposite:
German soldiers in a trench.
Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division,
LC-USZ62-136091.
Schlieffen assumed that a rapid victory
– within six weeks – would be achieved
against France; after this Germany
would turn her attention to Russia in the
east. It was expected that Russia would
take six weeks to mobilise fully, so the
French danger would be neutralised
during this time.
Historians have both praised and
criticised Schlieffen’s plan. It has been
called ‘a conception of Napoleonic
boldness’, but criticised for failing
to take account of the development
of railways. Thus, while the German
troops would have ‘to march on their
own feet round the circumference of
the circle, the French would be able to
switch troops by rail across the chord
of the circle’.1 It has been praised from
a military and strategic point of view
as it ‘offered a real prospect of forcing
a decision in the west and avoiding
the agonising trench war deadlock
of 1914-18’ and accurately predicted
French strategy in 1914. However,
from a broader perspective it has been
condemned for its ‘immorality …,
the political folly of violating Belgian
neutrality, and the almost reckless
indifference to British intervention.’2
1 B.H. Liddell Hart,
cited in L.C.F. Turner,
‘The Significance of
the Schlieffen Plan,’
Australian Journal of
Politics and History 13 (1)
(1967): 50.
2 Turner, ‘The Significance
of the Schlieffen Plan’,
52.
3 Cited in Turner, ‘The
Significance of the
Schlieffen Plan’, 60.
4 Gerhard Ritter, cited in
Turner, ‘The Significance
of the Schlieffen Plan’,
65.
In any event, the plan was not put into
operation in exactly the form in which
Schlieffen had prepared it. Schlieffen
retired as Chief of the General Staff on
the last day of 1905 and was succeeded
by General Helmuth von Moltke.
Schlieffen died in 1913. In a final
memorandum in the year before his
death he expressed concern about the
role of the British in a European war,
and he continued to stress the need
for an immensely powerful right wing
to sweep westward. He declared: ‘The
whole of Germany must throw itself
on one enemy – the strongest, most
powerful, most dangerous enemy: and
that can only be the Anglo-French!’3
Schlieffen’s successor, von Moltke, was
a courageous soldier but not a bold
or daring Chief of the General Staff.
He once stated, ‘I lack the capacity
for risking all on a single throw ….’ He
proceeded to modify the Schlieffen
Plan, with disastrous consequences
for Germany in 1914. He abandoned
the planned German advance through
Holland and the violation of Dutch
neutrality; and he changed the relative
weight of the German armies moving
against France, reducing the size of the
right wing and increasing the left wing
on the Franco-German border.
In 1914 these changes had important
implications.
First, because Moltke abandoned
the wide sweep through Holland,
the German advance was through
Belgium alone. Two German armies
had to capture and move through the
Belgian fortified town of Liege within
the first days of the war. This created a
huge bottleneck and a chronic supply
problem. It also had the most serious
political consequences. It meant
that any possibility of negotiation to
prevent war disappeared. At the very
beginning of mobilisation Germany took
an irrevocable step, violating neutral
Belgian territory and virtually ensuring
that Britain would enter the war against
Germany. Thus German mobilisation
in 1914 effectively meant war, with no
‘going back’.
In the diplomatic crisis of July 1914
the need to capture Liege swiftly
at the beginning of war led Moltke
to exert pressure for rapid military
action by Germany’s ally, Austria,
and for early declarations of war by
Germany. The German historian,
Gerhard Ritter, commented in the
1960s that ‘Germany was therefore
obliged by purely technical necessities
to adopt, before the whole world,
the role of a brutal aggressor - an evil
moral burden which ... we have not got
rid of even today.’ Turner concludes
on the role of Germany’s military
plan in the diplomatic crisis of 1914:
‘the Moltke-Schlieffen Plan not only
stampeded Germany into committing
gross political errors in 1914, but it also
accelerated the whole tempo of the
crisis in eastern Europe and went far to
make a peaceful solution impossible.’4
Second, Moltke’s redeployment of
German military strength meant that
he had changed the ratio of right to left
wing from Schlieffen’s approximate
100:15 to 100:42. Schlieffen’s original
plan had anticipated that the weak
German forces on the Franco-German
border would lure the attacking French
toward the Saar and then counter-attack
at an appropriate moment. Moltke, by
placing powerful German armies in
Lorraine, drove the French back on their
own fortress barrier, and effectively
destroyed German chances of victory.
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‘The Schlieffen Plan … made a diplomatic solution of the crisis virtually
impossible.’
In August 1914 the German army
achieved initial victories in the west
against both French and British forces
(the small British Expeditionary Force
was sent to France at the beginning of
the war) at Charleroi and Mons. By the
beginning of September the German
army was only 48 kilometres from Paris.
However, it did not have the strength
that Schlieffen had originally envisaged
to make a sweeping encirclement of the
city. In addition to his pre-war changes
to the Schlieffen Plan, during August
1914 Moltke detached two army corps
from the German right wing and sent
them across Germany to the eastern
front against Russia, further weakening
the army in the west.
The commander of the German First
Army, General von Kluck, decided not
to encircle the French capital. Instead
he chose to go east, moving past Paris
and temporarily halting on the River
Marne. This further modification in
practice of the plan had disastrous
consequences for the German military
effort. It not only meant that Paris
was not captured – very significant for
French national morale – but it also
gave the French a chance to counterattack. The result was the Battle of the
Marne from 6 to 9 September. Here the
apparently invincible German armies
were defeated. Von Moltke ordered a
retreat to the River Aisne, where the
German forces dug a line of defensive
positions which they were to hold for
the remainder of the war. This was the
beginning of the trench warfare which
characterised the Western Front.
Thus the Schlieffen Plan, in the form
in which it was implemented in 1914,
made a diplomatic solution of the crisis
virtually impossible. It did not achieve
the decisive German victory against
France in the west. It did not solve
Germany’s problem of a two-front war.
The Battle of the Marne signalled the
end of the war of manoeuvre; this gave
way to static warfare and the long line of
trenches across France from the Swiss
frontier to the English Channel.
26 Agora
For more information and a map
see ‘Trenches on the Web’ at www.
worldwar1.com/tlwplans.htm.
France’s Plan XVII
One of the ironies of the original
Schlieffen Plan is how accurately it
predicted French strategy in 1914. The
French war plan, known as Plan XVII,
had been presented to the French War
Board in 1913 by General Joffre (who, as
Commander-in-Chief, led the successful
French counter-attack at the Battle of
the Marne in September 1914).
The most important features of Plan
XVII were that:
• it was based on French commitment
to offensive action against Germany
(regardless of the manner in which
war began or where the main German
assault occurred);
• it grossly underestimated the strength
of Germany’s army in the field
because it ignored German use of
reserve troops; and
• it misjudged the direction of
Germany’s initial assault. Joffre
expected the main German attack in
Alsace-Lorraine; he did not foresee
the strong German right-wing strike
through Belgium at the very beginning
of hostilities.5
The French plan provided for all-out
offensive French action in Lorraine, that
is, along the Franco-German border to
France’s north-east. Joffre divided the
French forces into five armies. Three
were to be deployed in this area; only
one (the Fifth Army) was to cover the
Franco-Belgian frontier. A fourth army,
consisting of three infantry corps and
one cavalry division, was to give some
flexibility, as it could be moved either to
join the main bulk of the French forces
in the east or to support the army to
the north. Joffre also hoped that the
British Expeditionary Force would be
sent rapidly to France to support the
Fifth Army. However, Plan XVII was
not specific about military coordination
between the French and British armies.
5 On the French plan
see L. Chaffey, ‘Plan
XVII,’ Army Journal
242 (July 1969): 21;
and S.R. Williamson,
‘Joffre Reshapes French
Strategy, 1911–1913,’
in P.M. Kennedy, ed.,
The War Plans of the
Great Powers, 1880–1914
(George Allen and
Unwin, 1979), 133–50.
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ABOVE LEFT
On ne passe pas. 1914–1918
(They do not pass). Library
of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, LCUSZC2-3936.
ABOVE MIDDLE
German military personnel
in a trench. Library of
Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, LCUSZ62-136101.
ABOVE RIGHT
German ammunition
abandoned at Battle of
the Marne, 1914. Library
of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, LCDIG-ggbain-17676.
6 J. McDermott, ‘The
Revolution in British
Military Thinking from
the Boer War to the
Moroccan Crisis,’ cited
in in Kennedy, The War
Plans of the Great Powers,
108–12.
General Joffre had, from 1911,
considered the possibility of a French
offensive through Belgium. However, he
did not have political support for this.
Successive French prime ministers ruled
out the Belgian option, mainly because
of its likely repercussions on the British.
They did not want to endanger the
Anglo-French alliance by an offensive
French move into Belgium.
The British, for their part, had begun to
consider possible military involvement
in a European war by about 1905. The
General Staff, in a country previously
preoccupied with the problems of
defending Britain’s far-flung empire,
began to plan a European role for the
British army. A strategy for despatching
an expeditionary force to Belgium and
northern France was formulated; a
General Staff study recommended that,
if Germany violated Belgian neutrality,
two British army corps should be
landed at Antwerp within twenty-three
days. From 1906 there were ‘unofficial
communications’ between British
and French military authorities to
plan moves in the case of war against
Germany.6
France’s Plan XVII can be criticised
on several counts. The basic offensive
idea – that French forces would strike
against Germany on the eastern
frontier – was itself open to question.
French manpower resources were
inadequate to provide security as well
as undertaking offensive operations
in 1914. Geographically, and given her
developed frontier fortress system,
there were good reasons for France to
adopt a defensive strategy. The plan
ignored the difficulties of the terrain for
the French soldier – the high wooded
hills of the Ardennes, intersected by
valleys and generally sloping uphill from
the French side. It also ignored the fact
that French artillery was unsuitable for
hilly country.
The French plan had been framed
against the 1911 Franco–Russian military
agreement. This specified that Russia
should mobilise as quickly as possible in
the event of war. The French hoped that
a Russian offensive against Germany in
the east would draw off German forces
attacking their own armies in the west.
Just as in the case of Germany, the
existing military plan helped hasten the
diplomatic crisis of 1914, so in the case of
France the French General Staff brought
strong pressure to bear on Russia in July
1914 to order general mobilisation and
invade East Prussia as soon as possible.
When hostilities began, the French put
Plan XVII into operation, moving the
bulk of their forces eastward; but the
early battles in Lorraine were bitter
disappointments to the French. The
French First and Second Armies did,
however, escape to regroup. Schlieffen
had intended that the German forces
would fall back before the French
offensive into Lorraine, luring the
French further on. Instead, in August
1914 the German commander counterattacked and pushed the French troops
back out of the trap they had almost
walked into, to the safety of their own
frontier.
Joffre failed to anticipate the German
advance through Belgium and the
wide sweep into northern and western
France. On 8 August General Lanrezac,
commander of the French Fifth Army,
the only force in the sector to face the
German onslaught, tried to impress on
French Army Headquarters the threat
of a German right-wing outflanking
movement. He was told that his concern
was premature. Joffre thought that the
Fifth Army, the British Expeditionary
Force and the Belgian army could hold
back any German advance in that area,
while the French offensive proceeded in
Lorraine.
With the French failure in Lorraine, and
the German defeat of French and British
forces at Charleroi and Mons, Plan XVII
was in ruins. The direction of attack had
been completely misguided. The fact
that the French escaped annihilation
was due not at all to Plan XVII, but
rather to German modifications of their
own Schlieffen Plan. Joffre did redeem
Agora 27
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‘Plan XVII was in ruins. The direction of attack had been completely misguided.’
himself in September, regrouping
French forces and taking the initiative
against the Germans at the Battle of the
Marne. However, this was after he had
abandoned Plan XVII.
Conclusion
The military plans which had been
developed by the major European
powers by 1914 help us to understand
both the outbreak and the course of
World War I.
continental allies in the war against
Germany. In the East, early Russian
mobilisation (encouraged by France)
had an effect on the speed with which
diplomacy gave way to mobilisation and
general war.
The war plans explain the initial military
moves made by the European powers.
Nowhere did implementation of the
plans lead to the results hoped for by
their originators. Implementation of the
Schlieffen Plan certainly did not solve
Germany’s problem of a two-front war.
They had an impact on the diplomatic
crisis that arose after the assassination
Finally, the failure of the Schlieffen Plan
in June 1914 of Archduke Franz
helps to explain the nature of the war on
Ferdinand. In the West, Germany’s
the Western Front throughout the next
plan, by including the early violation
four years – a war of trenches, a static
of Belgian neutrality, rendered further
war, a war where efforts to break the
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diplomatic moves impossible
and
stalemate resulted in enormous loss of
ensured that Britain would join her
life.
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