What if Molte had not altered the Schlieffen plan.

Honestly, the Germans forgot the first rules of Clausewitz and von Moltke the Elder (whom they all worshiped so thoroughly). First, war is an extension of politics. That is to say, politics is not an extension of war. Declaring war on Belgium and the Netherlands for military expediency runs contrary to Clausewitz in this regard, and moreover a lack of political oversight over a highly militaristic state and institutions was similarly a poor idea. Politicians are suppose to rein military excess, and scale back on their objectives from total to limited war (were this not the case, we would've used nuclear weapons in the Korean War). Also, that no plan survives contact with the enemy.


Absolutely agree, i dont think the Schlieffen plan was a great plan i also think the Prussian General staff were over rated, however the General staff system was itself a good idea. The invasion of Belgium was a ruthless violation of a sovereign nation, i wish German liberalism had been more powerful in 1848 and later on.

Actually my original thread was a bit unclear, the Schliefflen plan was never tried, and people are mixing what should be called The Moltke plan with the Schlieffen plan.

But - adding back the army Moltke withdrew, to advance North of Brussels

A)The delay at Liege doesn't occur, as liege is outflanked. The Belgians are over run, and cant withdraw to Antwerp, the delay caused by having to deal with Antwerp doesn't occur, the whole German advance is quicker, and the Belgians dont have time to destroy there rail network.
 
exasperation

The forces Moltke sent East arrived 2 days after Tannenberg.

You acknowledge this earlier, and then forget it again, saying how would the Germans have won at Tannenberg, without them.

The forces Moltke sent East arrived 2 days after Tannenberg.

The problem here is that this was the result of OTL, when the Germans *did* alter their plans to reflect that 1914 Russia was not 1905 Russia. Here the execution of the plan will leave in actual execution at most an understrength corps consisting of the dregs of the German army and one explicitly forbidden to bring on engagements that would derail a plan held to myopically for almost a decade at this point. So when Sasonov and Rennenkampf are moving the results will be much less dramatic than IOTL and one to a degree even their incompetence will be incapable of producing Russian defeat.

The Russian offensive into East Prussia was hardly a great example of the military art. It might have been quicker than expected and larger than expected but this come a great cost in effectiveness, so the German incorrect assumptions were a matter of degree rather than totally wrong. Whats more, once the war started the pre-war plans to deal with a greater than expected Russian threat were compromised by politics. So I wonder if a misjudgment occured at all, rather that events and politics compomised good plans and preparations in the east.

Eh, mind that I'm saying more that there'd be too few Germans to inflict any major defeat, not that Sasonov and Rennenkampf were all that good. Even adhering to the Schlieffen Plan the actual forces involved will be fewer than allotted to the original plan, so an overwhelming majority of actual forces will be in the West. The actual force there would in all probability be a Landsturm force that'd be an understrength Corps and existing primarily to ward off what would be expected (delusionally) to be a few Russian cavalry probes and instead faces two armies totalling 360,000.

No amount of superior German generalship will lead to the original forces overwhelming that many Russians, you'd see for the best case for the Germans something like the Battle of Lodz, for the worst case Russia gets an easy victory tactically but a massive one psychologically. It's less that the Russian generals are good and more an actual instance of the Steamroller affect caused by local circumstances as opposed to anything the Russians do.
 
Absolutely agree, i dont think the Schlieffen plan was a great plan i also think the Prussian General staff were over rated, however the General staff system was itself a good idea. The invasion of Belgium was a ruthless violation of a sovereign nation, i wish German liberalism had been more powerful in 1848 and later on.

Actually my original thread was a bit unclear, the Schliefflen plan was never tried, and people are mixing what should be called The Moltke plan with the Schlieffen plan.

But - adding back the army Moltke withdrew, to advance North of Brussels

A)The delay at Liege doesn't occur, as liege is outflanked. The Belgians are over run, and cant withdraw to Antwerp, the delay caused by having to deal with Antwerp doesn't occur, the whole German advance is quicker, and the Belgians dont have time to destroy there rail network.

The actual plan does nothing in the East for six weeks and would be leaving peanuts to hold back a herd of elephants storming into East Prussia. That six weeks thing was based on Russia not mobilizing for six weeks and this emphatically will not be the case. 360,000 Russians v. whatever few divisions the Kaiser has in East Prussia *will* be a triumph for the Russians because the Germans will be impossibly outnumbered and sensibly refusing a Tannenberg Gambit when they'd have at most 40,000 troops to handle 360,000. Fighting against those odds and hoping for Russia to screw up is John Bell Hood war and in this case one doesn't have to be George Thomas to win an epic victory.

It's not Russian skill, it's the problem of stripping East Prussia bare of troops in the expectation that Russia can't have many troops anywhere very fast. Then it turns out instead Russia can have troops and quite a lot of them and extremely fast......
 
The Spanish and whoever never tried to move a million men through Belgium from railheads in Germany in 6 weeks. There just werent enough roads from them to march and be supplied on.

The Germans had already decided to defend against Russia in the east rather than try to inflict a defeat against them. This was good strategy because as it turned out they only faced 2 Russian armies whereas the faced and drove back 8 allied armies in the west in the same timeframe. That these 2 Russian armies were a bit bigger and faster than expected is one of the reasons they failed to finish the germans off, they weren`t well prepared to invade Germany in such a fast and half-arsed manner. Bad Russian generalship was matched to an extent by Prittwitz the pannicker, which evens things out a bit.
 

I never could understand how the German army seemed to be a tad on the small size at the start of world war 1. I found this. So backward convservative ideas robbed the Germans of victory.

http://www.suu.edu/faculty/ping/pdf/THESCHLIEFFENPLAN_000.pdf


"In terms of population, Germany should have been able to raise a trained army capable of overwhelming France. On paper, seventy million Germans had the advantage of fifty million French. But neither Schlieffen nor the German government attempted to expand the German army to anywhere near its potential size. Here again, political considerations provide a clue to strategy. The German ruling elite did not wish to expand the army if it meant corrupting the apolitical country men who made up the rank and file with large infusions of urban workers with socialist loyalties. The same sort of thinking led the German army to bar educated and patriotic Jewish citizens from the officer corps."
 
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