Schlieffen's Perfect Plan
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Schlieffen’s Perfect Plan he heavily analyzed Schlieffen Plan was the perfect bad hand. The General Staff in Berlin faced known ene - invasion strategy, and the hardworking officers of mies on two fronts. To the west, the vengeful French mar - the German General Staff knew it. The basic idea shaled their regiments, waiting for a chance to redress the T traced all the way back to Hannibal. That’s not the humiliating failures of 1870–71 and retake their lost Hannibal known to Americans today as the vicious yet ur - provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. To the east, the di - bane criminal mastermind of book and movie fame, but the sheveled but energetic millions of the Russian Empire original: Hannibal Barca of Carthage, one of the greatest bat - threatened to roll across the frontier. So the top graduates tlefield commanders in history. If you needed a good way to of the Berlin War Academy, the famous experts of the Ger - win—and win big—it only made sense to look to Hannibal. man General Staff, wrestled with the same dilemma that In his most decisive victory, Hannibal cornered a Roman plagued their country again and again: How do you win a army sent to stop him. The two forces met on August 2, two-front war? 216 B.C., facing off across a hot, flat Before Schlieffen’s time, Chancellor plain called Cannae, south of Rome. Otto von Bismarck and his General Tempting the overly aggressive Ro - Staff chief, the elder Field Marshal man commander to attack, Hannibal Helmuth von Moltke, didn’t resort to pulled back his center troops. Sensing Hannibal or hope. To deal with the Carthaginian weakness, exultant Ro - two-front problem, they just said man foot soldiers surged forward. As “no.” Both men accepted French en - they did, Hannibal swiftly swung in mity, but the war of 1870–71 indicated both of his flanking contingents, bag - that France alone could not beat Ger - ging the stunned Roman legionaries many. The key was to keep France iso - in a double envelopment. More than lated, so Bismarck wove elaborate 60,000 trapped Romans died in the re - diplomatic schemes to ensure good re - sultant slaughter. Historians rightly lations with Russia. For his part, von acclaimed Cannae as a brilliant battle Moltke drew up defensive plans to of encirclement and annihilation, with The Outpost avoid provoking Germany’s powerful due credit to the vision and leader - eastern neighbor. It made all the sense ship of the intrepid Hannibal. in the world. After 1888, however, the Of course, one win does not a final By Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger new German Kaiser, the headstrong victory make. People still know about U.S. Army retired Wilhelm II, did not agree. He dumped Hannibal, but as for Carthage, not so Bismarck, retired von Moltke and much. The Romans learned from the Cannae debacle. watched calmly as Russia and France entered into formal Chastened, the legions reorganized, retrained, reequipped alliance. Wilhelm II didn’t fear a two-front war. Confident and struck back, grinding toward Carthage in campaign in Germany’s burgeoning strength, he intended to win it. after campaign. Eventually, after killing thousands of their Thus, Schlieffen and his General Staff mavens were told opponent’s best troops, Rome’s hard-bitten legionaries to design a perfect plan to win a two-front war. They took the fortified city of Carthage itself. They smashed the started with a big assumption on timing. In the west, the stout walls to dust, pulverized the neighborhoods block by French would mobilize in two weeks and attack into Al - block, put most of the men to the sword and sold the sur - sace-Lorraine. To the east, the Russians would take six viving population into slavery. weeks to gather their forces before attacking. German in - More than 2,000 years later, at the dawn of the 20th cen - telligence was reliable, and both adversaries were not all tury, the German General Staff—especially its dour chief, that careful about concealing their plans. General Staff offi - Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen—saw only the glitter - cers in Berlin crunched through population demographics, ing promise of a smashing, Hannibal-caliber envelopment. industrial production figures, map measurements and rail - Schlieffen venerated Cannae. His staff diagrammed it, dis - road statistics, but the numbers consistently told the tale. sected it and sought to replicate it. Having smashed the Beat the French in six weeks, and then race the German di - Danes in 1864, the Austrians in 1866 and the French in visions across the country by rail to deal with the slower- 1870–71, Schlieffen’s officers figured that if anyone could arriving Russians. The trick was ensuring an early knock - pull off a modern Cannae, it must be the guys in gray with out punch in France. As was their wont, the General Staff the spiked helmets. looked for relevant historical examples. Schlieffen and his The Germans needed a Cannae. Geography dealt them a men came upon Hannibal at Cannae. That would do. 74 ARMY I August 2014 e c n a r F e d e l a n o i t a N e u q e h t o i l b i B French infantrymen take aim from behind protective earthworks during World War I. y 1905, the perfect plan came together. To ensure corps would hold the line as the Russians built up, but the rapid, decisive victory in the west, Schlieffen de - Germans thought little of the Russians. Tsar Nicholas II ap - vised a modern Cannae on a continental scale. The peared weak and easily confused, his armies humbled by BGeneral Staff amassed a crushing superiority the Japanese in a brutal 1904 –05 war, his restive populace against France, outnumbering the French almost two to shot through with revolutionary sentiment and hobbled by one. Two of the German corps defended Alsace-Lorraine, widespread illiteracy. The supposed “Russian steamroller” beckoning the French to plunge forward to reclaim their leaked steam at every joint, and the roller looked pretty lost provinces, as Schlieffen well knew they wanted to do. cracked and rusted. The tsar’s hapless hordes would be While the French attacked, the bulk of Schlieffen’s forces easy prey once France had fallen. would sweep out in a great arc, marching through neutral The Germans rehearsed their perfect plan over and over. Belgium, “letting the last man on the right brush the [Eng - Mobilization drills linked up 2 million men, weapons, uni - lish] Channel with his sleeve,” in the field marshal’s de - forms, supplies and horses at key German railway stations. scriptive phrasing. This vast German array would descend Then, in an intricate, well-oiled ballet, more than 200,000 on their foe’s rear echelon, cutting off French forces in Al - rail cars practiced forming into trains and heading west. sace-Lorraine, outflanking the panicked citizenry of Paris, When German mobilization ran flat out, one troop train and ending the war in the west in 42 days. The French crossed the Rhine River at Cologne every six minutes, mon - were assessed as squabbling, excitable amateurs certain to itored by General Staff men with perfectly synchronized advance merrily into the fatal trap. The few British divi - stopwatches. Schlieffen’s successor, the younger Helmuth sions amounted to what the Kaiser dismissed as a “con - von Moltke, tinkered with the details. He moved two more temptible little army.” The Belgians were discounted alto - corps to the east—you never knew with the Russians, since gether. The morality of bludgeoning through a neutral they might be early—and shifted six more corps into Al - country did not figure in Schlieffen’s calculations. sace-Lorraine, just in case the French got lucky. But that still Clearly, Schlieffen took a lot of risk in the east. Only two left 27 German corps to make the big envelopment. The ba - sics remained intact: blow away France with a massive Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger , USA Ret., was the commander of Com - right wheel through neutral Belgium, then use the wonder - bined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan and NATO ful German railway network to speed the victorious veter - Training Mission-Afghanistan. Previously, he served as the ans to the east to clobber the slow-assembling Russians. It deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7, and as the commanding general, was massive. It was beautifully crafted. It was perfect. 1st Cavalry Division/commanding general, Multinational Divi - On August 1, 1914, von Moltke got his chance. A fracas sion-Baghdad, Operation Iraqi Freedom. He holds a doctorate in in the Balkans pitted Austria-Hungary against Russia. Ever Russian history from the University of Chicago and has pub - excitable—and a bit fuzzy on the current war plan—Wil - lished a number of books on military subjects. He recently was helm wanted to support his Austrian ally without tangling named a senior fellow of the AUSA Institute of Land Warfare. with France or bringing in Britain by violating neutral Bel - August 2014 I ARMY 75 gium. Hearing the Kaiser’s intent, von Moltke nearly tle of France occurred on the Marne River, but the wrong passed out. With all the tables of figures, all the battle side won. Exhausted German troops faltered and fell back. drills, all the practice maneuvers, the millions moving, the The perfect plan didn’t allow for that. There was no Plan B. hundreds of trains clicking west, von Moltke gasped, Four horrific years of trench warfare ensued. “Your Majesty, it cannot be done.” The great German Gen - A century later, what can we learn from Schlieffen’s per - eral Staff, the finest military minds in Europe, the scions of fect plan? Rather than trying to conjure the ghost of Hanni - the great Hannibal, had only one plan.