Johannes Ludwig Von Moltke's Failure Of The Schlieffen Plan

The German Command, in planning for a short and swift war, found themselves in a bind when the war started to prolong itself. From the very beginning, their plan started to fall apart, as Belgium, who they assumed would just let them march through to France, took up arms in resisting their approaches (Hull, 2005). The war would get longer and longer and seemed farther away from its conclusion as the months grew colder. As a result of this as well as their Prussian roots, they resorted to dangerously risky and destructive tactics, trying to bring the war to a quicker end while putting more of their resources in jeopardy, a move that eventually did not pay off and ended up leading to the German Empire’s demise (Hull, 2005).

The Schlieffen Plan was a German battle plan to fight a two front war devised in 1905 by Alfred von Schlieffen as the Chief of the General Staff for Germany. The plan called for the German army to apply overwhelming force in France to capture the capital of Paris within six weeks before changing focus to Russia. The plan intended to achieve a quick and decisive victory by sweeping a line of armies through neutral Belgium and into France. In actuality, Helmuth von Moltke made significant changes to Schlieffen’s original plan before and during World War I. Ultimately, the plan ended in failure when the German advance halted at the First Battle of the Marne (Limbach, 2014).

In February 1891 Count Alfred von Schlieffen was appointed Chief of the Prussian General Staff, a post which he held until the end of 1905. The most important responsibility of the General Staff was to produce the annual deployment plans, which stipulated how the German army was to be drawn up ready for battle in case of war. The initial pattern of deployment was the basis of the operational plan for the conduct of the war itself. The General Staff routinely tested these war plans in studies and exercises. During most of Schlieffen’s time as Chief of Staff, the essential strategic problem for Germany was indeed the likelihood that the next war would have to be fought against two enemies on widely separated fronts, the French in the west and the Russians in the east. Schlieffen never found a convincing solution to this problem. His suggestion was to deploy much greater forces on one of the fronts in order to defeat that enemy quickly and decisively, and then to use rail mobility to reinforce the other front and win a decisive victory there too. That sounded fine in theory, but when it was tested in exercises it proved hard to achieve. An initial victory on one front could not be fully exploited because of the need to switch forces promptly to the other front. Once that happened, the first enemy

The Battle of the Marne, Plan 17 and the Race to the Sea and the defensiveness of

This mission had to be carried out as quickly as possible. Schlieffen thought it would be much easier to conquer France by attacking it from the back rather than push their way through the heavily secured Franco-German border. Schlieffen took into account Britain’s position of protecting Belgium but ignored it. He was sure that the Belgian troops would be well defeated before British troops could cross the English Channel. Therefore the Schlieffen Plan was set. The German army would quickly move through Belgium, defeat France and turn it’s attention to

The Battle of the Bulge is remembered as Adolf Hitler’s final effort to escape total defeat during World War II (WWII). His initial efforts were successful, however the Allied force commanders proved superior through there demonstrated adaptive and decisive decision making. These actions helped to overcome the military force and military intelligence failures during the battle. If these failures had been avoided, the Germans would have been defeated much quicker, effectively preventing the casualty numbers and damage inflicted on the Allied forces during the Western Front of WWII.

The Schlieffen Plan was a plan for an attack on France. This was created by General Count Alfred von Schlieffen in 1905. He was chief of the German General Staff, and believed that the best area for any war in Europe would be

The German officers driving their troops into and crosswise over France, turned too soon, due to the Schlieffen Plan, and did not encompass and cut off Paris. They were spotted by a non military personnel flying a 1909 Bleriot XI, who reported the attack yet was overlooked by the military on the grounds that all things considered, it was by somebody in one of those novel planes. When the French rang their troops, the Germans were inside of miles of Paris. The Germans were compelled to either delve in or retreat. They dove in. Starting there on, the war turned into a stagnant mess. The Germans suspected that they could find the French resting at the switch and make a short war of it. The French had not won a war in over a century, it ought to have been a simple

The Germans, wasting valuable time and causing large numbers of troops to be left behind to counter continuing Belgian resistance, could not quickly seize strong Belgian forts or crush the Belgian army. As half the German army was caught up in Belgium, France put its plan into action. French attacks got nowhere, however, and French were in fact pushed back across their own border and deep into France very quickly. By pushing the French attackers back into France the Germans were, in fact, forcing the French army out of the trap into which Schlieffen had intended them to fall. The German troops who had fought through Belgium were exhausted and short of supplies. Their numbers had been reduced by Belgian resistance, a battle with the BEF and part of their force being diverted to the fast developing Eastern front. When this was combined with the French troops who were being rushed to defend Paris, the German army no longer possessed the resources to successfully capture Paris. General Moltke, therefore, ordered the German first and second armies to swing East of Paris in an attempt to catch the retreating French army between the Germans swing back from the West and those who had repelled the French invaders in the East. General Joffre had, however, prepared the French for this kind of move and thanks to aerial reconnaissance he knew exactly where the German armies were. The culmination of this huge change of events

In 1914, General Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s key commander in World War I, along with General Paul von Hindenburg, strategically placed the German Army in a series of three 25-mile trenches in central France. This new position gave the German’s a false sense of security, which led them to believe that they would win World War I. At first, the onslaught and brute force of the offensive proved itself well. The Kaiserschlacht, or Emperor’s Battle, quickly turned around due to lack of supplies and heavy casualties. Since the Central Powers were becoming more confident, they made more mistakes and thus began losing battles and eventually the war. Greater numbers and strength of the Allied Powers ultimately led to the slaughter and defeat of the Germans under Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg.

In 1914, the war to end all wars began; it would later become known as World War 1. Every major power in Europe became involved in it at some point. What all these powers had were individual war plans which stated how they would rise above their enemies and claim victory. Unfortunately for some, not all of these plans were created equally. Unlike the other powers of Europe, Germany had created only one plan known as the Schlieffen Plan. The Schlieffen Plan had been created to be used as the perfect tool to winning a war, unfortunately the plan had been born from the arrogance of Alfred von Schlieffen and later altered by Helmuth von Moltke. Due to how the Schlieffen Plan was both created and altered, both von Schlieffen and von Moltke were

German military strategist were ready when the declarations of war began flying all over Europe. They intended to lock off the Russians in the east, smoothly kick France out of the war through a plan known as the Schliefffen Plan, then throw their full force, collaborating with Austria-Hungary, against the Russians. The Schliefffen Plan, named after General Alfred von Schlieffen who created it during 1905, called for invading the small countries like Luxembourg and Belgium in order to bypass to the north the strong fortifications along the French border. After a rapid conquest of the small countries, the German advance would continue into northern France, spin around Paris to the west and take the French capital. It almost worked, but German commander in chief General Helmuth von Moltke decided to send his troops east of Paris to engage and defeat the weakened French army straightly. In doing so he displayed his rightwing to counterattack by the French and a British Expeditionary Force, resulting in the First Battle of the Marne, September 6–10, 1914. Despite casualties in the hundreds of thousands, the battle was a stalemate, but it stopped the German drive on Paris. Both sides began digging a network of trenches.

German Chief of General staff was the master plan to the attack. The Germans army

Alfred von Schlieffen was a history buff, and his plan was heavily inspired by the Battle of Cannae. Schlieffen believed that, like the general of Carthaginian in the Battle of Cannae, he too could defeat a larger army with what’s called a double envelopment. He planned on the execution of a massive flank, and it was the main focus of his plan. He also planned out that Germany’s advantage over France and Russia, their most likely opponents, was that they were separated. He wanted to defeat one first while keeping the other in check so that he could come back with his full army to defeat the other with a massive army.

Schlieffen Plan was the German armed force's arrangement for war against France and Russia. The Schlieffen Plan was made by Alfred Von Schlieffen, German Head of Staff in 1904. The Arrangement was changed in 1905 to answer to the two dangers of France and Russia. The Schlieffen Plan was the operational arrangement for an assigned assault on France once Russia, because of universal strain, had begun to assemble her powers close to the German outskirt. This prompted to England announcing war on Germany in 1914.