World War I what if Motlke didn't screw up?

When the great war broke out Germany was supposed to follow a pattern of attack for the offecsive against France -The Schileffen plan.
Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke was supposeed to modernize the turn-of-the-century tactic while northeastern France was vulnerable through Belguim but decided to split the offensive 2 ways against both France and Russia, resulting in a defeat and a slow, long war of attrition. If he haden't changed to plan France may have fallen quickly and Britian would not have had the chance to establish a strong presence on mainland europe.

What if Moltke didn't mess up?
Mabye the U.S. would not have joined the war, or the U.S. would possibly formed an alliance with Germany and nativist President Wilson wouldn't have ran for third term/would have been defeated.

--Monsignor

I don't think it would have ever worked. When Schlieffen first proposed it was only as a theoretical exercise. It was more as a justification why the Army should be allowed to expand its ranks (ie. increase the size of the standing army) when it went before the Reichstag for funds. There was no "Schlieffen Plan" - as in an actual set of plans and timetables - since there appears to have been no mention of such a plan, within the German General Staff or the Imperial Army, until after the Great War.

I agree with David that the Schlieffen Plan was innately infeasiblel. At the time of the Marne there was the tactical crisis and the logistical. If the immediate tactical crisis was avoided/corrected the logistical one would still cause the Plan to fail

I have a detailed AH (mostly on another forum though there is a bit of it on the Writer's Board) called Operation Unicorn and part of the POD is Moltke realizes earlier that the Schieffen Plan ain't going to work and improvises a better withdrawal

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind22.html

This link has some info on this very topic. Is it accurate?

Surely the plan fits into the whole pre-war planning for war that every General Staff did - the French had a whole load of successive plans, and I know that the Russians developed theirs from an initially slow and defensive one to one that involved an early attack, mainly due to French pressure. Thus, though there is no 'Schlieffen Plan' per se, there is presumably a plan number x or whatever which is the current war plan of the German General Staff at any given moment, constantly worked upon and being developed

Grey Wolf

The Battle of the Marne would have been less decisive, but Von Kluck's men were still sleepwalking. The Western Front would form deeper in France.

More interesting is if he followed the Moltke (senior) plan: avoid Belgium, have Schlieffen's left wing sit there and massacre attacking Frenchmen while Schlieffen's right wing destroys Russia before it can mobilize. Hope England stays neutral, then destroy France with overwhelming force after 2 months or so.

Belac,

I think the Moltke-senior plan is what was being discussed in the Lew Rockwell article.

Matt Quinn said:

Belac,

I think the Moltke-senior plan is what was being discussed in the Lew Rockwell article.

Click to expand...

No its not. There is a relatively well known scene when the Kaiser is talking with Moltke that he says something like "Great now all we have to do is march the army eastward" (paraphrasing greatly) to which Moltke replies "No we don't have the time to change direction" to which the Kaiser says "Your uncle would have given me another answer". Needless to say Moltke went to pieces not long after that. After the war, when this story was circulating about, the German Head of Railways (or something) - the guy in charge of railways during mobilization did the computations and said that the German Army could have easily be routed to the east. This very much plays up into idea of the 'war by timetable' arguement.

What is interesting is that some of the last few exercises that von Schlieffen oversaw before retiring were oriented to being on the defensive against France while defeating Russia. The Schlieffen Plan is a myth created by the Germans themselves as to why they didn't win the opening months of the war. It was used in attacks against Moltke which started not long after he resigned. What the Germans executed through Belgium could probably more truthfully be called 'the Moltke Plan'.

Ostmarch Strategy

What was most appealing about the so called Schlieffen Plan is that it promised a quick victory. A realistic Ostmarch strategy is at best a Six Months War strategy.

What is not a realistic Ostmarch strategy is to assume that the Russians will behave just like they did in August 1914 with 4 or 5 German armies deployed them and not just one. So knocking Russia out of the war before they can mobilize ain't going to happen. The Russians would go on the defensive with their forward line based on the Vistula and the San and if things got too rough there would fall back to a line running through Brest-Litovsk. TRading space for time is a well known Russian strategy.

People sometimes think the Eastern Front was all Tanenberg and Gorlice-Tarnow and that the Russians were completely incompetent. This is a gross oversimplification.

The assumption that Britain would remain on the sidelines absent the violation of Belgium is not 100% certain either.

The Russian plan for if the Germans had their main focus on them was to send 2 of the armies they OTL sent against Austria against Germany. This would have been a disaster--4 armies instead of 2 getting stuck in the sands and swamps of Masuria and annihilated by German mobility while the remaining forces didn't have enough strength to pull off a Lemberg. With a German offensive dominating all of Poland by the end of 1914, Austria not weakened by a tremendous rout, and no help coming from France, Russia would be in serious trouble.

Russian rope-a-dope

Bear in mind that the forward Russian deployment was predicated upon Germany making her first strike westward. Russia's original plan was her time-honored trade space-for-time while the reserves mobilzed strategy. As it became apparent that Germany was planning a west-first strike, Russia came under pressure to go on the offensive with forces at hand.

If Russia anticipated a German emphasis on the east, her northern forces would've been deployed further back.

They're still beaten easily. The space they don't get back, and as soon as the Germans set down railroads they're more or less immune to serious logistical issues. OTL they conquered a rather large swath, up to something like the current Russian frontier (except for the Ukraine) by 1916. They'd get that by early 1915 what with victory and Russian trading space for time (plus, Austrian forces would be coming up in strength). 1915 would see the Russian defensive line measured and found wanting, and continued German reinforcements would keep the advance going. With England neutral, the High Seas Fleet could batter the Aland Islands and Kronstadt into pieces, and shell St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, France is losing hundreds of thousands of men attacking German trenches in Alsace-Lorraine, and furiously lobbying Belgium to let its troops pass (Belgium is maintaining OTL's dogged neutrality). When the Russian lines are breached by a massive German/Austrian offensive in summer 1915, and France shows no sign of progress, the Allies give up. Austria annexes Serbia (may it have joy of it), Germany gets the Baltic states, Russia is forced to demilitarize the Aland Islands and cede sections of Poland to Germany.