The Schlieffen Plan was the German General Staff's early 20th century overall strategic plan for victory in a possible future war where it might find itself fighting on two fronts: France France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, to the west and Russia Russia (pronounced /ˈrʌʃə/ ; Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈraʦəjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal to the east. The First World War World War I was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were later became such a war with both a Western Front Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne. Both sides then dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, and an Eastern Front The Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other. In Russian sources, the war was sometimes called the Second Fatherland War. The plan took advantage of expected differences in the three countries' speed in preparing for war. In short, it was the German plan to avoid a two-front war by concentrating their troops in the west, quickly defeating the French and then, if necessary, rushing those troops by rail to the east to face the Russians before they had time to mobilize fully. The Schlieffen Plan was created by Count Alfred von Schlieffen Alfred Graf von Schlieffen mostly called Count Schlieffen was a German field marshal and strategist who served as Chief of the Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906. His name lived on in the 1905 Schlieffen Plan for the defeat of the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire and modified by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after Schlieffen's retirement. It was Moltke who actually put the plan into action, despite initial reservations about it.[citation needed] In modified form, it was executed to near victory in the first month of World War I World War I was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were; however, the modifications to the original plan, a French counterattack on the outskirts of Paris Paris ([paʁi] in French, pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ in English) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated (the Battle of the Marne The Battle of the Marne was a First World War battle fought between the 5th and 12th of September 1914. It resulted in a Franco-British victory against the German Army under Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. The battle effectively ended the month-long German offensive that opened the war and reached the outskirts of Paris. The counter-), and surprisingly speedy Russian offensives, ended the German offensive and resulted in years of trench warfare Trench warfare is a form of warfare in which both combatants occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops were largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and were substantially sheltered from artillery. It has become a byword for stalemate in conflict, with a slow wearing down of opposing forces. Trench warfare. The plan has been the subject of intense debate among historians and military scholars ever since. Schlieffen's last words were "remember to keep the right flank strong", a request which was watered down by Moltke.

Contents

The Plan

After the Franco-Prussian War The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory of 1870, the French province of Alsace-Lorraine Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after the annexation of most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east of the Vosges Mountains. The Lorraine section was in the upper Moselle valley to the north, with a mixed population of both French and Germans, had been made part of the German Empire The German Empire refers to Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II (28 November 1918). Deutsches Reich remained the official name of Germany throughout the Weimar period and. The revanchist French Third Republic The French Third Republic was the republican government of France between the end of the Second French Empire (following the defeat of Louis-Napoléon in the Franco-Prussian War) in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion of France by the German Third Reich in 1940 vowed to regain the territories France had possessed for nearly 200 years. Due to Bismarck Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a Prussian/German statesman of the late 19th century, and a dominant figure in world affairs. As Ministerpräsident, or Prime Minister, of Prussia from 1862–1890, he oversaw the unification of Germany. In 1867 he became Chancellor of the North German Confederation. He designed the German Empire in 1871,'s alliances, France was initially isolated, but after Kaiser Wilhelm II Wilhelm II (27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, ruling both the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was known either as The Kaiser or Kaiser Bill during World War I took the throne in 1888 and gradually estranged Germany from Russia The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was the second largest contiguous empire in world history, surpassed only by the Mongol Empire, and the third largest empire behind the British Empire and the Mongol and Britain The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, fears about having to fight a future war on two fronts simultaneously grew among German leaders.

France, having been beaten in a few weeks in 1870, was not considered as dangerous in the long run as the Russian Empire, which was expected to be hard to defeat if the Czar was allowed the necessary time to mobilize his huge country to the fullest extent. After the Entente Cordiale The Entente-cordiale is a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente cordiale marked the end of almost a millennium of intermittent conflict between the two nations and their predecessor of 1904 was signed between Britain and France, Kaiser Wilhelm asked Count Schlieffen to devise a plan which would allow Germany to fight a war on two fronts, and in December 1905 von Schlieffen began circulating it.

The idea of the plan was to win the two-front war by first quickly beating France again in the west – the plan scheduled 39 days for the fall of Paris Paris ([paʁi] in French, pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ in English) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated and 42 for the capitulation of France – before the "Russian Steamroller" would be able to mobilize and descend upon East Prussia East Prussia (German: Ostpreußen, pronounced [ˈɔstˌpʁɔʏsən] ; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Lithuanian: Rytų Prūsija or Rytprūsiai; Russian: Восточная Пруссия or Vostochnaya Prussiya) is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945.[1] The plan depended on Germany's ability to quickly mobilize troops and invade France before France could fully mobilize its troops to defend itself, and then to turn on Russia, seen as the slowest of the three to mobilize, before the Russians were ready.

It envisaged a rapid German mobilization Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed since then. Notably, before World War I and World, disregard of the neutrality A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907. A permanently neutral power is a sovereign state which is bound by of Luxembourg Luxembourg (pronounced /ˈlʌksəmbɜrɡ/ LUKS-əm-berg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish: Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg, French: Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, German: Großherzogtum Luxemburg), is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of over half a, Belgium Belgium (pronounced /ˈbɛldʒəm/ , BEL-jəm), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi), and it has a and the Netherlands The Netherlands (pronounced /ˈnɛðɚləndz/ ; Dutch: Nederland, pronounced [ˈneːdərlɑnt] ( listen)) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in North-West Europe. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany, and an overwhelming sweep of the powerful German right wing southwest through Belgium and Northern France, "letting the last man on the right, brush the Channel with his sleeve,"[2] in the words of Schlieffen, while maintaining only a defensive posture on the central and left wings, in Lorraine, the Vosges The Vosges are a range of low mountains in eastern France, near its border with Germany. They extend along the west side of the Rhine valley in a north-north-east direction, mainly from Belfort to Saverne, and the Moselle The Moselle is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg and Germany. It is a left tributary of the Rhine, joining it at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is also drained by the Mosel through the Our.

Paris was not to be taken (in 1870, the Siege of Paris As early as August 1870 the Prussian 3rd Army led by the Crown Prince Frederick III had been marching towards Paris, but was recalled to deal with French forces accompanied by Napoleon III himself. These forces were crushed at the Battle of Sedan and the road to Paris was left open. Personally leading the Prussian forces Wilhelm I of Prussia along had lasted for months) but was to be passed by the right wing to the west of the city. The intent of the plan was not to conquer cities or industry in order to weaken the French war efforts, but to capture most of the French Army The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based component of the French Armed Forces and its largest. As of 2008, the army employs 133,947 regular soldiers . All soldiers are now considered professionals, following the suspension of conscription voted in parliament in 1997 and effective as of 2001. Just like the Armée de l'Air, and to force France to surrender, in essence a repeat of the strategy used to defeat France during the Franco-Prussian War The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory. The plan was that the French Army would be hemmed in around Paris and forced to fight a decisive envelopment battle.

A seed of disaster lurked in the conception of the plan: both Schlieffen and the man who would eventually implement his plan, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, were seduced by the possibility of the double envelopment of the entire French Army by the right wing coming from the north and west of France and the left wing coming from the east. The inspiration was the destruction of the Roman Army Rome's military was always tightly keyed to its political system. In the Roman kingdom the social standing of a person impacted both his political and military roles. The political system was from an early date based upon competition within the ruling elite. Senators in the Republic competed fiercely for public office, the most coveted of which by Hannibal Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca[n 1] ,[n 2] commonly known as Hannibal (in Punic: ḤNBʻL Ḥannibaʻal or Ḥannibaʻl, meaning "Ba'al is/has been gracious" or "Grace of Baal" or perhaps Ḥannobaʻal, with the former meaning, or, finally, ʼDNBʻL ʼAdnibaʻal, meaning "Ba'al is my lord"; in Greek: Ἁννίβας,'s forces at the Battle of Cannae The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, taking place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic under command of the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. It is in 216 BC, which was the object of meticulous study by Schlieffen. In essence, his plan was a very large scale strategic readdressing of Hannibal Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca[n 1] ,[n 2] commonly known as Hannibal (in Punic: ḤNBʻL Ḥannibaʻal or Ḥannibaʻl, meaning "Ba'al is/has been gracious" or "Grace of Baal" or perhaps Ḥannobaʻal, with the former meaning, or, finally, ʼDNBʻL ʼAdnibaʻal, meaning "Ba'al is my lord"; in Greek: Ἁννίβας,'s tactics, capitalizing on the recent breakthroughs in communications and transport.

Politically, one of the major drawbacks of the Schlieffen Plan was that it called for the invasion of neutral states in order to pass through German troops to France. As it turned out, at least formally, it was the decision to invade Belgium which led to war with Great Britain.

As noted previously, Russian mobilization would supposedly be extremely slow, due to its poor railway system. Following the speedy defeat of France, the German General Staff would switch German concentrations to the Eastern Front The Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other. In Russian sources, the war was sometimes called the Second Fatherland War. The plan called for sending 91% of the German troops to France and 9% to Russia. His goal was to defeat France in six weeks, the time it took for Russia to mobilize its army, and turn back to the Eastern Front before Russia could react. Kaiser Wilhelm II is quoted as having said "Paris for lunch, dinner at St. Petersburg."

Modifications to the Plan, 1906

Map of the Schlieffen Plan and planned French counter-offensives

Following the retirement of Schlieffen in 1906, Helmuth von Moltke became the German chief of staff. He disagreed with at least some of the Schlieffen Plan, thinking it to be too risky. The Plan, however, having been devised in 1905, was now too much a part of German military thinking to be abandoned completely, so all Moltke could do was modify it.

These changes have been the subject of much debate. L.C.F Turner in 1970 described von Moltke's changes as "a substantial modification in the Schlieffen Plan and one which probably doomed the German campaign in the west before it was ever launched." Turner claims that by weakening the main German offensive, they did not have a real chance of defeating the French army quickly enough; hence they became stranded in a two-front-war. He also says that not going through the Netherlands not only created a bottleneck at the German-Belgian border, but also that not having the Dutch railways at their disposal created a huge supply problem, a problem which outweighed the benefits they gained by still having access to the Dutch ports. However, in 1977 Martin van Creveld Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, but has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in, analyzing the role of logistics in the plan, felt that the effects of Moltke's alteration to avoid invading Dutch neutrality were more apparent than real, since two corps of troops which had been allocated to contain the 90,000-strong Dutch Army could instead be used for the invasion of France. Further, van Creveld points out that while Schlieffen had assigned five corps for the investment of Antwerp Antwerp (English: /ˈæntwɜrp/ ; Dutch: Antwerpen, [ˈɑntˌʋɛrpə(n)] ( listen); French: Anvers, [ɑ̃vɛʁ, ɑ̃vɛʁs]) is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 (as of 1 January 2008) and its total area is 204.51 km2 (78.96, Moltke made do with only two. "Though it is therefore quite true that Moltke's right wing was not as strong as Schlieffen had planned to make it, this loss was more than compensated for by the economies effected in [Moltke's] version of the plan."[3] Early in the war, according to the directives of Plan XVII, the French mobilized and hurled their forces towards the German border in an ill-fated attempt to recapture Alsace-Lorraine Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after the annexation of most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east of the Vosges Mountains. The Lorraine section was in the upper Moselle valley to the north. This played exactly into Schlieffen's conception of a trap through double envelopment, which called for a loose defense of the border, and actually for retreats by which the French forces would have been lured further away from the main thrust of the German advance. However, Moltke's weakening of the German right, the defense of Alsace-Lorraine, and the transfer of three army corps and one cavalry division from the western front to help contain the Russian advance into East Prussia, all contributed to the failure of the German army to break through the Allied In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them. When the term is used in the context of war or armed struggle, such associations may also be called Allied Powers, forces at the Marne. Without that breakthrough, the plan was destroyed.

Activation, and subsequent failure

Though debate continues about the merits of the Schlieffen Plan and even on whether the Schlieffen Plan was ever truly executed, ultimately the German invasion failed for seven major reasons:

A British postcard reflecting Belgium's determination to retain sovereignty

The failures in the West resulted in defeat at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, a stalemate, trench warfare, and a two-front war for Germany.

What eventually occurred was a "reverse Schlieffen", in that Russia was defeated prior to the Western Allies. The Russian army, aided by the Romanian and Serbian armies and considered by the German command as more dangerous than the Western Allies, was defeated with relative ease. Meanwhile the Western Allies had a larger manpower base from which to feed the war of attrition taking place. Even though Germany sent many divisions to fight in Italy and the Franco-Benelux theater following the collapse of Russia and the Eastern Front in 1917/18, the Western Allies still defeated the Central Powers' forces. In the 1918 summer campaign Italy obtained a long sought decisive victory over Austria-Hungary, and Austria withdrew from the war exposing Germany's southern flank. The defeat of Bulgaria also exposed Germany (and Austria) to an Allied advance up the Danube. Finally the entrance of the United States on the side of the Allies in 1917, and the arrival of substantial US troops, coupled with the failure of the final German offensives in the West in early 1918, allowed the Allies to push the Germans out of France and into Belgium, towards the German border. Once the long-held static positions were lost, Germany accepted the Allies' armistice terms.

Criticism

Several historians argue that the plan was unfeasible for its time, due to the recent advances in weaponry and the improved transportation of industrial warfare. Some would say the plan was "too good". B.H. Liddell Hart, for instance, praised the Schlieffen Plan as a conception of Napoleonic boldness, but concluded that:

The plan would again become possible in the next generation—when air power could paralyze the defending side’s attempt to switch its forces, while the development of mechanized forces greatly accelerated the speed of encircling moves, and extended their range. But Schlieffen’s plan had a very poor chance of success at the time it was conceived.

In addition, some historians, including David Fromkin, author of Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?, and David Stevenson, author of Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, have recently made arguments that what is known as the Schlieffen Plan may not have been an actual plan as such, but instead was laid down in one 1905 hypothetical memorandum and a brief 1906 addition.[5]

Schlieffen may not have intended his concept to be carried out in the form he laid down, instead, seeing it as perhaps an intellectual exercise. Fromkin has argued that, given what historians have recently seen in Schlieffen's papers, captured by the US Army along with other German war documents, that the memorandum had never been refined into an operational program. No orders or operational details (such as specific units for each area of the offensive) were appended. Furthermore, Fromkin says that the memorandum acknowledges the fact that for the plan to work the Germany Army needs more divisions, and there needs to be more parallel roads through Belgium. Fromkin continues by putting much of the genesis of the plan, as finally enacted, on Moltke, who had seen the memorandum and believed it to be a fully-operational plan which he then proceeded to expand upon. Fromkin, in fact, has advocated referring to the "Moltke Plan" as opposed to the "Schlieffen Plan", as it may have been more a product of Moltke's misreading of the Schlieffen Memorandum of 1905 and its 1906 codicil.

According to the historian A. Palmer, however, closer inspection of documents regarding the German war plan reveal that Moltke's changes were not that great, and that the plan was basically flawed from the start. He claims that the Schlieffen plan does not deserve its high reputation, because it underestimated pretty much everyone—the Russians, French, British, and Belgians. However, this would tend to support the view of Professor Fromkin, in that a poor plan would indicate its origin as one not fully vetted.

The British military historian John Keegan in summarizing the debate over the plan, criticizes it for its lack of realism about the speed with which the right wing of the German army would be able to wheel through Belgium and the Netherlands in order to arrive outside of Paris on schedule. He observes that, regardless of the path taken, there were simply not enough roads for the masses of troops planned to reach Paris in the time required. In other words, the Plan required German forces to arrive on schedule and in sufficient force, but in reality only one or the other could be achieved, not both.

Keegan also points to the Schlieffen Plan as a leading example of the separation between military war planning and political/diplomatic considerations which was one of the original causes of the war. Schlieffen conceived his Plan as the best possible solution to a strategic problem, while ignoring the political reality that violating Belgian neutrality was the thing most likely to invite British intervention and expand the conflict.

A factor in evaluating the significance of the Schlieffen plan is the misinformation that was widely disseminated during and after the war. Records were lost and material made up to paint the events in a light more acceptable to those making the decisions at the time.[6]

Another view is that both Palmer and Fromkin are correct. The Schlieffen plan could have been simply a document that spurred operational thinking and planning, and became the working name for a strategy of bypassing the bulk of the French forces through a flanking maneuver.

Additional facts

The lists in this article may contain items that are not notable, encyclopedic, or helpful. Please help out by removing such elements and incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article. (April 2010)

Observation

Robert Leckie observed that justice was finally done in the Dreyfus affair in 1906 "as the defenders of Dreyfus had intended. What was not intended was that the French Army Intelligence should have been so discredited that it was placed in civilian hands, with the result that when Germany attacked in August, 1914, the French Army not only 'knew not the day and nor the hour' but actually reacted exactly as the Schlieffen Plan envisioned."[7]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Grenville, J.A.S., A History of the World in the 20th Century, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 21
  2. ^ Rosinski, Herbert, The German Army, London, Hogarth, 1939
  3. ^ a b c d van Creveld, Martin, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. pages 121, 138-140. ISBN 0-521-29793-1
  4. ^ http://www.mindef.gov.sg/safti/pointer/back/journals/1999/Vol25_1/8.htm
  5. ^ Fromkin, David (2004). "Chapter 4: Countries Arm". Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 34–35. ISBN 0-375-72575-X. Stevenson, David (2004). "Chapter 2: The Failure of the War of Movement, Summer-Winter 1914". Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy. New York: Basic Books. pp. 38–39. ISBN 0-465-08184-3.
  6. ^ Fromkin, David (2004). "Chapter 43: Shredding the Evidence". Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 251–253. ISBN 0-375-72575-X.
  7. ^ Leckie, Robert (1968). The Wars of America. Castle Books.

Bibliography

Categories: Conflicts in 1914 | Military operations involving Germany | Military strategy | Military theory

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Mon Jul 19 23:21:44 2010. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼
'Schlieffen Plan' Answers
What was the role of the BEF in the Schlieffen plan?
Q. hey i desperately need help !!! please i need help trying to answer this question i need to do it in an essay way so any help website links Information ... anything will be greatly appreciated thank you x
Asked by wooooo - Tue Oct 21 14:07:58 2008 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments

A. The adoption of the Schlieffen plan by Germany at the outbreak of the Great War ensured Britain's entry because of the guarantee given to Belgium to protect its neutrality. The plan directed the invasion of France using the neutral country of Belgium as a stepping stone and thereby avoiding the strong defencive string of forts creating a defence in depth all along the eastern boundary between France and Germany. The invasion through Belgium triggered mobilisation in Britain and the deployment of the BEF to France and Belgium and thus Britain's entry into WW1
Answered by Steve D - Tue Oct 21 14:35:45 2008

Yahoo Answers Search: Schlieffen Plan,
Sun Feb 14 15:53:22 2010
[Hide]▲