WI- No Schlieffen Plan?

OK, I can see that Germany beat France to the punch. My recollection there is obviously faulty.

And certainly I can see that Germany, if it wished to attack France needs to go through Belgium.

But your first quote still makes no sense to me. It wasn't because of Belgium that Germany went to war with France, which is what that line states, no?

I was stating indirectly that without being willing to violate Belgian neutrality, it is pointless for Germany to fight a World War which it has been planning to win in the first few weeks solely by landing a knockout blow to France.
 
Somewhere I read that Schlieffen in his last years shown some doubts about his "great solution" to catch the entire french army AND Paris in one movement. He thought about a much smaller flank movement with Schwerpunkt Sedan:eek:, ignoring Belgium west of the Meuse. I think such a "smaller solution" would give Germany a very good chance to destroy the greater part of the french army in Lorraine, (better chances at least then OTL Schlieffenplan). There would no need for early Declarations of war against France and Russia, because it would be no need to capture Liege so fast as possible. The germans would start their invasion mid-august, when their mobilisation were completed. At this time Russia already would have declared to Austria and France would propably have declared war at Germany. Germany still would violate Belgiums neutrality but would only march through a small and less important. This would propably prevent a british Intervention.
 
. This would propably prevent a british Intervention.

It's already been mentioned that many British politicians were willing to fight Germany whether Belgium's neutrality was violated or not. It doesn't matter if the Germans are in Belgium or not: neutrality has been violated, and the "scrap of paper" has been torn up.
 
Somewhere I read that Schlieffen in his last years shown some doubts about his "great solution" to catch the entire french army AND Paris in one movement. He thought about a much smaller flank movement with Schwerpunkt Sedan:eek:, ignoring Belgium west of the Meuse. I think such a "smaller solution" would give Germany a very good chance to destroy the greater part of the french army in Lorraine, (better chances at least then OTL Schlieffenplan). There would no need for early Declarations of war against France and Russia, because it would be no need to capture Liege so fast as possible. The germans would start their invasion mid-august, when their mobilisation were completed. At this time Russia already would have declared to Austria and France would propably have declared war at Germany. Germany still would violate Belgiums neutrality but would only march through a small and less important. This would propably prevent a british Intervention.

Moltke (the younger) was of the opinion that Schleiffen was a complete idiot hence his changing of the plan... (Schleiffen had 4 divisions covering the entire freaking vosages sector with two of them being reserves) and he also radically left the eastern front to underequipped and trained landwher and ersatz landwher

his plan was never tried because it was insane in its original form
 
Moltke (the younger) was of the opinion that Schleiffen was a complete idiot hence his changing of the plan... (Schleiffen had 4 divisions covering the entire freaking vosages sector with two of them being reserves) and he also radically left the eastern front to underequipped and trained landwher and ersatz landwher

his plan was never tried because it was insane in its original form

While having only a few divisions covering the Vosges is arguable, Schlieffen's ideas regarding the Landwehr in East Prussia were rather certifiable, as it would in reality have meant a complete withdrawal from any position east of the Oder.
 
Not necessarily. You just need an incident that changes German thinking in their strategic priorities... maybe they see the massive expansion of the Russian railroads or a more progressive cheif of staff comes in with an eastern focus. Or perhaps the Germans could interpret the Russians getting destroyed by the Japanese as a sign of weakness and change their strategy to slaughter them first. France was not going to violate belgium's neutrality strait up and an attack across the frontier was proven to be an extremely bad idea without them even getting near the metz fortresses which would have served just as well if not better than verdun. The Germans could have employed an economy of force mission in the west and sent the mass and striking power of their armies east

It better be a pretty big freaking "incident" that tosses out 95% of German wartime planning for the last quarter century.
 
It better be a pretty big freaking "incident" that tosses out 95% of German wartime planning for the last quarter century.

Well one small potential POD would be to insert Max Hoffman instead of Ludendorrf as cheif of planning section in the OHL (they where about the same rank at the time)

Hoffman was the OHL observer during the Russo-Japanese War and saw first hand how bad things went for the Russians. Being a decently clever staff officer he might be able to influence Moltke the younger that the Russians are weak and vulnerable and that Germany would be better served to do an economy of force and take maximum advantage of their strong frontier defenses and use the main striking power of their army to smash the russians

note that the germans beat the russians in otl without ever employing more than 55ish of their divisions against them
 
BW: Not quite the same rank. Hoffmann was a major in August 1914, Ludendorff a major general.

The German concept was a disarming strike against France, basically designed to cripple the French field army. After this, major forces would be redeployed to the east in order to deal with Russia.

The 'disarming strike' possibly would not remove France from the equation, but was hoped to paralyse her long enough to deal some decisive blows to Russia.

It was then hoped that the weakened Entente would agree to peace talks. The German army was well aware that it neither had the capacity to occupy all of France and at the same time wage war in Central Russia, nor could it occupy major parts of Russia and wage war in France.

That IOTL they managed just that (what their peace time planning had tried to avoid) was a kind of miracle, but the final failure was well in accordance with pre-war deliberations.
 
BW: Not quite the same rank. Hoffmann was a major in August 1914, Ludendorff a major general.

The German concept was a disarming strike against France, basically designed to cripple the French field army. After this, major forces would be redeployed to the east in order to deal with Russia.

The 'disarming strike' possibly would not remove France from the equation, but was hoped to paralyse her long enough to deal some decisive blows to Russia.

It was then hoped that the weakened Entente would agree to peace talks. The German army was well aware that it neither had the capacity to occupy all of France and at the same time wage war in Central Russia, nor could it occupy major parts of Russia and wage war in France.

That IOTL they managed just that (what their peace time planning had tried to avoid) was a kind of miracle, but the final failure was well in accordance with pre-war deliberations.

Rast,

I was pointing towards interchanging them earlier than 1914.. making the pod to have hoffmann made chief of section II (planning) instead of Ludendorff (which would be around 1905 when he was a major)

Hoffman in the same period held a similar important OHL post as chief of the russian section tasked with gameplanning war against Russia

I know Ludendorff was appointed general major in april 1914... I thought Hoffman was Oberst when he was sent to the 8th army as chief of staff?
 
The German concept was a disarming strike against France, basically designed to cripple the French field army. After this, major forces would be redeployed to the east in order to deal with Russia.

The 'disarming strike' possibly would not remove France from the equation, but was hoped to paralyse her long enough to deal some decisive blows to Russia.

Again with the ATL. To say that the Schlieffen Plan aimed for anything less than the complete defeat of France is ridiculous. You don't envelop the entire French Army and have Paris as your goal in order to get "breathing room". :rolleyes:
 
I think the idea was that once the main French armies were defeated and Paris under siege or occupied it would be merely a case of mopping up, enabling whole armies to be sent east to fight Russia. This is why the sweep went deep into Belgium, so the fighting would occur deep in France, behind the main armies and at the gates of Paris. It's a good plan, more or less, but fell short in execution both by command decisions and structural problems such as the inability to get men to march that far and to supply them.
 
BW: Hoffmann wasn't COS 8th Army, that was von Waldersee, he was the first operations officer (Ia).

Regarding the 'Schlieffen Plan': It is a thing difficult to describe, because most people think it was more than it actually was.

It certainly wasn't Count Schlieffens memorandum of late 1905/early 1906 (which has the German armies march around Paris). Schlieffen's memorandum was military fiction and had little to do with actual German deployment planning (and little connection to the actual strength of the German army). - The 'Aufmarsch 1905/06' simply would not have allowed the execution of Schlieffen's grandiose scheme. Nor any other deployment plan until 1914.

The general concept of a 'Schlieffen Operation', however, was what the Germans tried to achieve: Get around the French left flank and operate into their back, cutting their supply lines - and if possible encircle them (or at least part of them). - This of course depended heavily on the action of the enemy - if he, as IOTL, slipped away to the south, there was little prospect of catching the whole lot in one bag.
That is why Moltke in the final phase of the German advance tried to 'pince off' Verdun and the 2nd French Army. - When the German advance was finally halted in September, von Mudra's XVI Corps east of the Argonne was only 15 km away from Von Strantz' V Corps at the Meuse.
 
The memorandum that came to be known as the "Plan" was drafted as Schlieffen was on his way to retirement . I did fail to take into consideration some important factors, namely the restructuring of the french military which greatly boosted potential army mobilisation at wartime . Faced with a prospect of a two front war, and the general reluctance of the Reichstag to approve further increases of the military budget , von Schlieffen came up with a plan that was a bad compromise . As was made evident in numerous wargame scenarios , the germans simply lacked the numbers to quickly knock out the french , and in some cases the defenders even smashed the germans outright . The neutrality of Belgium was a mere technicality as far as the german high command was concerned .
 
A major limit on the size of the army was the reluctance to dilute the Junker nobility's hold on the officer corps. If the Germans had decided to conscript 75% of the annual class instead of 55% they would have to drastically increase the size of the officer corps, and the social group that these extra officers would come from would be the middle class. Within a generation this would remove the Junkers hold on the Army and give it's leadership middle class values and attitudes. So the army remained much smaller that it could have been.
 
It was not so much the 'grip of the Junker class'; by 1910, this had already been very much diluted, the vast majority of officers - and general staff officers - being 'middle class', although the generality - by nature: old men and very old men - still was filled with scions of the nobility, or by 'middle class' soldiers nobilised for their meritous service.

The issue was one of educating the 'middle class' to the values of the Prussian (err... German) Army, this could only happen in a slow, very slow way in order to make sure they were not diluted by a mass surge of materialistic bourgeois. (The technical branches - artillery, engineers and their offsprings - were already dominated by materialistic bourgeois, nevertheless.)

This was also the case for the NCOs. Even more than with officers, NCOs were recruited from one single stratum of the German society only.

The struggle was fought inside the German Army between the 'modernisers' (e.g.: Ludendorff, von der Goltz, von Bernhardi) who wanted a mass army, coûte que coûte, and the 'traditionalists' (e.g.: von Einem, von Heeringen, von Falkenhayn - the Ministers of War) who preferred quality and a slow expansion over quantity.
It was no social struggle affecting German society. Followers of the SPD would qualify as NCOs at best.
 
If the Germans had decided to conscript 75% of the annual class instead of 55% they would have to drastically increase the size of the officer corps

...also, the taxpayer would have to finance this!

BTW, another branch of the German armed forces which was very bourgeoise (and which was regarded as such at the time) was the Navy.
 
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