Watch it now, on Wondrium. The Schlieffen Plan disregarded the political implications of what was regarded as essentially a technical solution to a military problem.
It called for the violation of Belgian and Dutch neutrality by invading both those countries to achieve surprise in a vast attack on France. A huge German force would come swinging through northern France after invading Belgium and Holland, arcing around Paris to achieve decisive victory within a timetable of about six weeks.
It was hoped that Paris itself would be surrounded—French armies and French leadership—and that this would represent a military masterpiece, a battle of annihilation. After von Schlieffen died, this plan was further worked on and altered by Helmuth von Moltke, his successor. Von Moltke changed certain aspects of the plan.
He did not solve the political problem of violating neutrality, but he lessened it by declining to invade Holland. He also took troops away from the vast movement that was projected for the invasion of northern France; he instead drew off some of those troops to the Eastern Front and others for the defense of the territory of Lorraine to the south. Learn More: Imperial Rivalry—— The French plan, endorsed by commander Joseph Joffre, called for an all-out attack into Germany to regain the lost territories of Alsace-Lorraine, avenging the humiliating defeat of , and redeeming French honor.
An attack of the south would ensure what the German planners hoped for: that their sweeping movement would capture even more French troops. In practice, however, both plans broke down in disaster. The English army got involved immediately. Russia was quicker to respond than Schlieffen had assumed. Russia also proved to be more adept at mobilizing its army than German military leaders had expected. Russia managed to attack East Prussia within 10 days in August — not six weeks as was earlier assumed.
The French and English armies were a lot tougher than expected. That failure led to sustained trench warfare on the Western Front. Would France have invaded Germany? At the very least, given its preoccupation with the restoration of the "lost provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine, it is likely that France would have seen German preoccupation with a war in Russia as an opportunity to take back its historic territory.
In this case, the "Western Front" might well have been limited to a relatively narrow engagement in the mile Belfort Gap and not the miles of trench warfare that would ultimately result.
In such a narrow theater, the participation of the British army would have been superfluous. Unburdened by its treaty commitment to uphold Belgian neutrality, British involvement might have been limited to bottling up the German High Seas fleet in the Baltic and to defending the French coasts from naval attack by the German fleet. British involvement might have stopped well short of committing ground troops, much less mobilizing the manpower of the Empire.
Schlieffen's plan to quickly knock France out of the war meant that the rapid mobilization of troops was not just an important tactical advantage but a critical element for achieving victory. On August 1, in response to the German declaration of war against Russia, the French government ordered a full mobilization. The Germans followed suit. On August 3, after Paris had refused to answer Berlin's demand to remain neutral, Germany declared war on France. Simultaneously, Germany informed King Albert's neutral Belgian government that, "it would treat it as an enemy" if it did not permit the free transit of German troops across its land.
Belgium immediately ordered a full mobilization. Less than twenty-four hours later, in accordance with the strategy laid out in the latest version of the Schlieffen Plan, Germany invaded Belgium. In London on the stroke of midnight, August 4, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's government, having received no German guarantees to respect Belgium's neutrality, began a full mobilization of the army and fleet, and declared war on Germany.
By the first week of August, even as Europe was still in the midst of an all-out mobilization, hostilities had already commenced. The term mobilization is used freely to describe the process of calling up reservists in each of the belligerent countries. The process, however, was fundamentally different in each country. German military units were geographically based. Their muster stations and arms depots were local.
Once a mobilization order was issued a unit could be assembled, armed and dispatched within 24 hours. Given Germany's extensive and efficient rail network, a military unit could be on the front within 48 hours of being called up. French mobilization was slower because the composition of French military units was geographically diverse. A tactic designed to ensure the loyalty of French troops in the event of a regional disturbance or revolt.
Muster stations for French recruits were typically further away, requiring a train journey to the muster station and then, once assembled and armed, a second journey to their designated deployment.
That difference meant that French mobilization was, at best, two to three days slower than that of Germany. Most of the time France lagged about a week behind Germany in mobilizing and deploying its troops. In both the French and German cases, reservists would have undergone some prior military training. Russian mobilization was an altogether different process.
Russia's western front was organized into six military districts. Each district had multiple muster stations. Typically, these were located well back from the front lines—in some cases, as much as miles back. Three of these military districts fronted on German territory and three fronted on Austrian territory. In August , there were approximately 5, miles of paved roads in Russia, less than one percent of all roads. Russian track mileage was slightly greater than that of Germany, but it had to service an area many times larger.
Reservists had to travel long distances to their muster stations, often by foot. It was only after they had arrived at the military depots that they were assigned to their military units. There were a number of shortcomings associated with the plan.
It imposed severe restrictions on the possibility of finding a diplomatic solution to the July Crisis, because of its narrow time-frame for the initial deployment of troops. It provided the perfect propaganda vehicle for rallying the country behind an unprecedented war effort and sustained the will to fight for four long years of war. And it provided ample proof, if proof were needed, for the victors to allocate responsibility for the outbreak of the war to Germany and its allies.
Next: The August experience allegedly united people behind the war effort. But this shared enthusiasm is a myth. Read more in War enthusiasm. Take an in-depth look at how Europe ended up fighting a four-year war on a global scale with this collection on the First World War. Ian Beckett looks at the wider context of the Battle of the Somme. Michael Portillo asks why we only think of slaughter and loss when we recall the Great War.
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