speed and efficient tactical victories. 3 Von Kluck’s redirection of the First Army away from
Paris began the chain of denial to t he Schlieffen Plan’s final stroke. 4 Moltke had decided
against sending 16 fresh divisions to Bülow’s Second and Kluck’s First, who were the
lynchpins of the Plan. This, along with depriving them of two army Korps, meant the Plan
was scuppered. 5
The abando nment of Schlieffen’s original strategy (the plan was not in the exact
same form as Schlieffen’s original, but Moltke’s adjustments did not change its name to the
‘Moltke Plan’) did not necessarily come because of its failure, rather caused it. Crown Princ e
Wilhelm observed that von Moltke planned ‘simply to overrun the enemy’s country on a
broad a front as possible’, rather than envelop Paris, as had been the pre -war strategy. 6 This
strategy, if Moltke conceived it as such, likely developed from the Schli effen Plan’s failure;
Browning makes the point it failed because it relied on the invasion of neutral Belgium. 7 It is
likely however Britain would have joined the War against Germany regardless of this, as
German continental supremacy threatened the Europe an status quo. Moltke’s replacement,
Falkenhayn, believed, despite the Schlieffen Plan’s failure, that decisive victory, were it to be
found, was on the Western Front. In 1916, Lloyd notes, Falkenhayn’s grand strategy was that
of crushing the French (decis ively) to disarm the British of their ‘greatest sword’. 8
3 Annika Mombauer, What was the Schlieffen Plan (2019), <https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the- arts/history/what-was-the-schlieffen-plan>, [Accessed 27 Dec 2022] 4 Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes, & Michael Hickey, The First World War: The War to End all Wars (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003), p. 41 5 Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 99 6 Hew Strachan, The First World War: A New Illustrated History (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 56 7 Peter Browning, The Changing Nature of Warfare: The Development of Land Warfare from 1792-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 111 8 Lloyd, p.167-170
35
Made with FlippingBook HTML5