Schlieffen Plan

The Schlieffen Plan, the German General Staff's overall strategic blueprint for victory on the Western Front against France in the years up to 1914, takes its name from its author, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen. It envisaged a rapid German mobilisation, disregard of Luxembourg,Belgian and Dutch neutrality, and the overwhelming sweep of German armies through Belgium southwards in the back of the French defences pivoting on weakly-held left-wing positions in the province of Alsace-Lorraine.

Additional Facts

• The original version of the Schlieffen Plan called for the violation of Dutch (as well as Belgian) neutrality. Subsequent revisions by Helmuth von Moltke eliminated any violation of Dutch territory. Moltke reasoned that Germany would suffer if Dutch ports (e.g., Amsterdam, Rotterdam, et al.) refused to import materials destined for Germany. As a result, more than one million German troops were forced through Belgium, creating a logistical bottleneck that stifled the German advance severely.

General Moltke's absence from the Western Front was a crucial (though not decisive) factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. Communication was especially poor and, in addition, German forces sent wireless messages uncoded, allowing French forces under the command of General Joseph Joffre to pinpoint the location of the German advance.

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The rigidity of the Schlieffen Plan has also been a source of much criticism. The plan called for the defeat of France in precisely 42 days. Armed with an inflexible timetable, argue many scholars, the German General Staff was unable to improvise as the "fog" of war became more apparent. Thus, many scholars believe that the Schlieffen Plan was anti-Clausewitzian in concept.

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