The importance of the captured French industrial areas appears obvious with the benefit of hindsight, but I have never encountered anything that suggested this was a significant part of German pre-war thinking.
I agree. Economic thinking wasn't the German military's strong point anyways.
The whole subject of German war planning prior to WW1 remains somewhat murky, but it is clear the Schlieffen plan of 1914 had very little to do with von Schlieffen. From what I can gather, the concept put together by von Schlieffen in 1904/05 was one of many. It ignored the Russians, ignored logistics, assumed the French would remain on the defensive, that the Italians would lend a hand and featured German formations not yet in existence. By 1914 it was clear very few of those assumptions remained valid, yet the 1914 version of that plan was the only plan Moltke J kept on the books.
What Schlieffen wrote down before leaving office was not a fully worked out operational plan, but a "
Denkschrift", a
memorandum. Schlieffen repeatedly admitted in the Denkschrift that the army would need massive expansion in order to make the plan feasible and even then it would remain ambitious.
Why did it ignore the Russians? Because they could be ignored in 1904/05 and for a short time afterwards. I am not sure but I wouldn't be surprised if Schlieffen had advocated a preemptive war against France after Russia had been beaten by Japan and weakended further by revolutionary turmoil.
The Denkschrift ignores logistics less than the actual situation in 1914 did as they would have been easier to manage with taking the (Southern part of) the Netherlands. Moltke however found that violating the neutrality of Luxemburg and Belgium was already enough.
Schlieffen didn't assume that the French would remain on the defensive, but luring them onto the Reich's territory, perhaps even across the Rhine, was part of the plan. What counted was that they would be cut off and caught in the end.
Just like the readiness to leave the Eastern border somewhat open to Russian actions, it showed a total blindness towards the economical, humanitarian and political consequences of such an operational risk.
That Italy would lend a hand was actually about as certain as that the British would land an expedition corps to aid France. Joint German-Italian war plans saw the Italians NOT attacking France in the Alps à la Mussolini, but to rail Italian divisions to the Rhine to help the weak German left wing.
And then there is the matter of the non-existing divisions. This is of course political. It was a subtle hint at the reality that Germany couldn't afford to build Europe's 2nd strongest navy AND a victorious army. Germany's army expanded between 1905 and 1914- but not as much as Schlieffen demanded, and likewise did the French build up forces. (Interestingly, there is a similar approach in the novel "The Third World War" written in the late 1970s by British General John Hackett which describes an ultra-optimistic scenario, NATO beating back a conventional Warsaw Pact attack without losing all of the FRG, but the preface explicitly states that Hackett intended the novel to be a call for expanding Western Europe's conventional military power as to making such an outcome realistic.)
The younger Moltke discontinued the Eastern approach in 1913, and that is a nearly treasonous action. Schlieffen always oscilliated between both approaches, depending on the international situation. I am less harsh concerning on the changes Moltke (respectively the General staff) did when turning the Denkschrift into an operational plan. It adapted a fantasy into reality quite well given the outcome. Imagine the verdict of history if Moltke had given additional troops to the right wing (only to get clogged in Belgium for much of the campaign) while the army in Alsace-Lorraine would be unable to hold and the Western Front would have run through Alsace or even through Baden or Palatinate.
Moltke utterly failed in managing the ensuing battle , and also in creating the operational prerequisites needed in order to conduct the battle in a co-ordinated way.
I am
not saying, however, that someone else but Moltke would have brought the Germans into Paris.
I understand before von Schlieffen retired in 1905 he anticipated a future war where Germany would have to defend itself on multiple fronts against more numerous adversaries. Schlieffen's solution was an emphasis on German counter attack doctrine that used superior mobility arising from the German rail network and internal lines to defeat its enemies in detail close to German rail heads. As I mentioned earlier today on another post, the Schlieffen plan of 1914 was the antithesis of this military thinking.
Yes, this is interesting. It appears to me like someone sane having an original and seemingly genius idea which becomes an "idée fixe"...planting itself via groupthink into a whole military elite.
The Schlieffen plan was a stupid gamble. Maybe it'd knock out France, but it certainly helped the British empire entering the war.
In other places on this forum, there is the frequent assumption that British entry on the French side was only a matter of time.
Besides - all 1914 plans were stupid gambles.