The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (57 page)

CHAPTER 12
Making the Plans

Germany’s war plan, the most controversial to this day, was locked in an iron safe to which the chief of staff held the key, and only a small circle knew its strategic goals. After the Great War, as its contents gradually became known, the plan was the subject of much debate and has remained so ever since. Does it show that Germany wanted the Great War? That Germany’s leaders were determined to dominate Europe? Is it the evidence needed to support the infamous clause in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 which made Germany take responsibility for the war? Or does the Schlieffen Plan merely demonstrate that Germany, like all the other powers, was making military plans for eventualities that might never arise? That it was a plan made out of weakness and not strength, defensive in its intent against the aggressive encirclement of the Triple Entente? Such questions cannot be fully answered without knowing what the German general staff were thinking before 1914 but that will remain forever a matter of debate and speculation since the military archive in Potsdam was first partially looted by the Russians (some of those records have been returned since the end of the Cold War) and then destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945.

The answer to the questions about the Schlieffen Plan probably lies somewhere in between the different poles. Germany did feel itself to be outnumbered by its potential enemies, with the odds getting worse as time went by, yet its leaders too often thought in terms of a military
solution instead of exploring the alternatives to war. By 1912 the British had effectively won the naval race and there was an opportunity, indeed one which would be explored by both sides, to re-establish relations between Britain and Germany on a more friendly footing. Russia did not want a war if it could avoid one and was taking steps to lower tensions with Austria-Hungary. Hugo Stinnes was right when he said before the Great War that in a few years Germany would be the economic master of Europe. And with that economic dominance would come German cultural and political power. That has happened in the twenty-first century but only after the terrible detours of two world wars.

12. Fears of each other played a big part in the calculations of the European powers before 1914. Germany, despite its economic success, its strong army and its commanding position in the centre of Europe, felt itself to be surrounded by enemies which were waiting to tear it apart, along with its ally Austria-Hungary. Here the Russian bear advances from the east, while France strikes through Alsace and Lorraine while Britain – Perfidious Albion – steps across the Channel.

The German war plan was the work of many hands over many years and laid out in detail the mobilisation and movements of German
forces in the event of war, and it was updated and revised yearly. To this day, however, it bears the name of General Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff between 1891 and 1905, even though it was much modified by his successor the younger Moltke. The Schlieffen Plan, as we will call it for convenience, has produced polemical arguments worthy of the forum in Rome and hair splitting of an order to delight mediaeval scholars, which continue to engage academics today. Between the two world wars, Schlieffen’s defenders argued that his plan was a work of genius finely tuned like a Swiss clock, which would have worked if Moltke, an inferior version of his famous uncle, had not meddled with the works. Had it been allowed to run as it had been designed in the first instance, it would have brought Germany victory in the first months of the war and so averted both the long-drawn-out agony of the Great War and Germany’s humiliating defeat at its end. Yet, as others have rightly pointed out, the plan was a gamble based on unrealistic assumptions, among them that German forces were sufficient to the tasks it imposed and that the command structure and logistics for huge armies on the move were adequate. And perhaps its greatest flaw was that it did not allow for what the great German theorist of war, Clausewitz, called friction and the Americans call Murphy’s Law; no plans on paper ever work as they are meant to once they encounter real conditions, and what can go wrong, will go wrong.

The man who tried to take such uncertainty out of war and who left his mark on both Germany’s war plan and its general staff, was, like so many of the country’s senior officers, from the Prussian Junker class. Schlieffen’s parents came from two of its very grandest families, with huge estates and a web of family connections which gave them access to the highest political and military circles in Germany. For all their wealth and power, families such as those of Schlieffen lived surprisingly simple lives on clear, straightforward principles. They believed in hierarchy, hard work, frugality and a firm purpose in life, whether as the mother of children or an army officer. His parents and Schlieffen himself were also part of an early nineteenth-century reawakening of Lutheran Protestantism which wedded deep religious faith to a belief that Christ would save human beings if only they would open themselves to his message. Pietists such as the Schlieffens valued duty, comradeship, and a life of faith and good works. They were also deeply
conservative, rejecting the scepticism of the Enlightenment and what they saw as the levelling ideas of the French Revolution.
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Shy and reserved, Schlieffen was an indifferent student and his early military career was undistinguished, although he gained a reputation for being conscientious and hard-working. Although he was in both the 1866 war between Prussia and Austria and the war with France in 1870–71 he saw little active service. One of his younger brothers died in action in 1870 and in 1872 he suffered a further loss when his wife, a first cousin, died shortly after giving birth to their second daughter. In 1875 his professional fortunes improved significantly when he was put in command of his own regiment. He also caught the attention of the elder Moltke who thought him a promising officer who might one day be his successor at the general staff. Since all appointments at the upper levels of the military were made by the Kaiser, it helped that Schlieffen managed to make a favourable impression on the future Wilhelm II and the members of his entourage.
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In 1884 Schlieffen moved to the general staff and in 1891 Wilhelm, who was now Kaiser, appointed him as its head. Schlieffen was always careful to manage that relationship, ensuring, for example, that Wilhelm’s side always won the annual autumn army manoeuvres and that his sudden interventions did not reduce them to a complete shambles.

When he received news of his appointment, Schlieffen wrote to his sister: ‘A difficult task has been given to me, yet I am imbued with the firm conviction that the Lord … will not forsake me in a situation into which he has placed me without my effort or desire.’
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Like his close friend Holstein in the Foreign Office, he drove himself and his subordinates hard. An aide once received a military problem to work out on Christmas Eve which had to be returned the next day.
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Schlieffen was often at his desk by six in the morning and, after a ride in the great Berlin park, the Tiergarten, worked through the day until his dinner at seven. He would then continue work until ten or eleven in the evening and round out his day at home with an hour of reading military history to his daughters.
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His staff and colleagues found him unfathomable and difficult. He would sit through presentations and discussions in silence but suddenly lob in a question from an unexpected angle. He gave out little praise but was frequently cutting and critical. He would have slept better, he told a young major who had nervously inquired
after his well-being, if he had not read the major’s report just before going to bed.
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Unlike the two Moltkes who preceded and succeeded him, Schlieffen had few interests outside his work. During a staff ride when one of his aides called his attention to the beautiful sight of a river in the distance, Schlieffen merely said ‘an insignificant obstacle’.
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His reading was largely focussed on military history, which he used as a means of discovering the formulas for victory and the ways to minimise, as much as possible, uncertainty in war. His favourite battle was Cannae, when Hannibal defeated the Romans, and a close second, Sedan, where the German confederation encircled the French and forced their surrender in 1870. From his study of history, he drew the conclusion that smaller forces can defeat larger ones if they outmanoeuvre them. ‘Flank attacks are the essence of military history,’ he laid down as infallible dogma.
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He also concluded that only offensive plans could bring victory. ‘The armament of the army has changed’, he wrote in 1893, ‘but the fundamental laws of combat remain the same, and one of those laws is that one cannot defeat the enemy without attacking.’
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What haunted him was the possibility of Germany finding itself in a war of attrition which left both sides exhausted and neither the victor. In an article he wrote after his retirement, he painted a grim picture of the country’s economy collapsing, its industries unable to carry on and its banks failing, and its population reeling under privations. Then, he warned, ‘the red ghost that lurks in the background’ would destroy Germany’s existing order. Although, as the years went by, Schlieffen grew increasingly pessimistic about Germany’s chances in the next war, he set himself doggedly to working out a plan that could bring a quick and decisive victory. From his perspective there was no alternative. To rule out war was not only cowardly; the Germany he knew and wanted to protect was already under threat and a prolonged period of peace where its enemies, socialists and liberals, grew in power would destroy it as much as a war of attrition. Schlieffen went forward towards war because he could see no alternative.
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The problem confronting him was that the alliance between France and Russia which was developing throughout the 1890s presented Germany with the nightmare possibility of a war on two fronts. Germany could not afford to divide its forces to fight all-out wars on
both of those fronts so it would have to engage in a holding action on one side while it struck hard on the other to gain a quick victory. ‘Germany must strive, therefore’, he wrote, ‘first, to strike down one of these allies while the other is kept occupied; but then when the one antagonist is conquered, it must, by exploiting its railroads, bring a superiority of numbers to the other theatre of war, which will also destroy the other enemy.’
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While he initially thought of striking first at Russia, Schlieffen had changed his mind by the turn of the century: Russia was strengthening its forts to give it a strong defensive line running north to south through its Polish territories and building railways which would make it easier to bring up reinforcements. Any German attack ran the risk of getting bogged down in sieges and then a long-drawn-out campaign as the Russians retreated into their vast interior. It made sense, therefore, for Germany to stay on the defensive in the east and deal with Russia’s ally France first.

Schlieffen’s plan was complicated in its details, involving as it did millions of men, but simple and bold in its concept. He would pour armies into France and defeat the French in under two months. The traditional invasion route into France (or route out, in the case of French troops) was in that part of France between the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg in the north and Switzerland in the south. The French loss of its two eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine had not changed that; indeed, it had given France a slightly shorter and straighter border to defend. Schlieffen ruled out that route. The disposition of the French armies and their war games showed that they would be expecting an attack in that direction. France, which had a long tradition of fortress building, had also reinforced its new border with two lines of 166 forts and put another ring of forts around Paris as well.
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In 1905 the French parliament voted a further large sum to strengthen its frontier forts. That left Germany, if it chose to fight an offensive war, the option of coming at France on its flanks, either in the south through Switzerland – which had the disadvantage of being mountainous and prepared to defend its passes – or the Low Countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg with their flat terrain, good roads and excellent railway networks. The choice of the northern route was easy. Schlieffen determined on a giant flanking movement down into France to catch the French armies in a trap, just like Sedan.

In the event of war, some four-fifths of Germany’s army would move west while the remaining fifth fought a defensive action against Russia in the east. In the west the attacking German armies on the great right wing, facing westwards out from Germany, would sweep through the Low Countries, with, as the saying had it, the sleeve of the German soldier furthest on the right brushing the Channel, and down into France towards Paris. The much smaller German left wing to the south of the great fortress at Metz below Luxembourg would confront the French armies in their expected attack. As the plan developed it became more elaborate and more rigid; by 1914 the German armies were expected to be in Paris forty days after the start of hostilities. If the French did as expected and attacked across their shared border into Germany, they would be moving further away from the main battlefields. When they realised that the main German attack was approaching in the west behind their forces, the French, it was hoped, would be demoralised and caught in confusion as they tried to switch troops from their thrust into Germany to meet the challenge in the west (itself a dangerous move because they would still have the German left wing to their east). If all unfolded as it should in the Schlieffen Plan, the main French armies would be caught between the two wings of the German forces and surrender. In the meantime, the much smaller German force in the east would stand on the defensive waiting for the slow Russian mobilisation and expected attack westwards. By the time the Russians could approach the Germans in any numbers, the war would be over in the west and German troops could be sent eastwards to deal with them.