Back to the sources: An attempt to resolve the Schlieffen Plan controversy

Abstract

The widely held belief that the Schlieffen Plan was the basis of German strategy in 1914 stems from the historical misrepresentation of that plan as a design for the conduct of a two-front war. Schlieffen’s famous memorandum of December 1905, generally known as the Schlieffen Plan, proposed a massive right-wing attack on France but only in the case of a one-front war. His basic principle for the conduct of a two-front war, spelled out in another document of December 1905, was to counter-attack on both fronts in quick succession. The younger Moltke’s decision for a massive right-wing attack on France in 1914 signified a rupture with Schlieffen’s strategic thinking, not a continuation of it. The First World War would have started very differently – with a great battle in Lorraine, not on the Marne – if the Germans had acted in accordance with Schlieffen’s real intentions for a war on two fronts.