The Real Thing: A Reply to Terence Zuber’s ‘Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan’

Abstract

This article continues the debate over Terence Zuber’s thesis that ‘there never was a “Schlieffen plan” ’, with particular emphasis on showing that the manpower requirements of the Schlieffen plan were consistent with the resources of the German army. It also provides further evidence for the conditional status of the march around Paris, and for Schlieffen’s view of Russia’s military incapacity in 1905. The Generalstabsreisen of 1904 are revisited in order to explain the reasons why Schlieffen was inclining towards the concept of a strong right-wing offensive, as opposed to a counter-offensive strategy. The new documentation that Zuber has adduced for the Kriegsspiel of late 1905 is analysed to demonstrate that this two-front counter-offensive exercise was not relevant to Schlieffen’s real concern at the time, which was to plan for a west-front offensive by the whole of the German army.