E-Book
7 Tage kostenlos im Abo
E-Book
13,99 €

The Real German War Plan, 1904-14 E-Book

Terence Zuber

0,0

Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.

Herausgeber: The History Press
Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

The Real German War Plan, 1904–14 fundamentally changes our understanding of German military planning before the First World War. On the basis of newly discovered or long-neglected documents in German military archives, this book gives the first description of Schlieffen's war plans in 1904 and 1905 and Moltke's plans from 1906 to 1914. It explodes unfounded myths concerning German war planning, gives the first appraisal of the actual military and political factors that influenced it, shows that there never was a 'Schlieffen Plan' and reveals Moltke's strategy for a war against Russia from 1909 to 1912. Tracing the decline in the German military position and the recognition by 1913 that Germany would be forced to fight outnumbered on both the eastern and western fronts, it is an essential read for anyone with an interest in the First World War.

Details

Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:

Android

iOS

von Legimi
zertifizierten E-Readern

Kindle™-E-Readern
(für ausgewählte Pakete)

Seitenzahl: 323

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:

Android

iOS

Bewertungen

0,0

Rezensionen(0 Rezensionen)

Leseprobe

For LTC Eldon K. SchroederCommander 2nd Battalion 2nd Infantry

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

The Real German War Plan, 1904–14

Schlieffen’s Last War Plans, 1891–1904

1904/05

1905/06

1906/07

The War Planning of the Younger Moltke, 1906–14

1907/08

1908/09

1909/10

1910/11

1911/12

1912/13

1913/14

1914/15

The Marne Campaign

Conclusions

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply indebted to the History Department of the University of Würzburg, and especially my Doktorvater, Professor Wolfgang Altgeld, and Professor Rainer Schmidt for their insistence on the central importance of primary sources in the study of history. I conducted research for this book at the Kriegsarchiv in Munich, the Militärarchiv in Freiburg, the Hauptsstaatsarchiv in Stuttgart and in Dresden and the Generallandesarchiv in Karlsruhe, of which I have nothing but the fondest memories.

Publishing with The History Press is a pleasure. I want in particular to thank my editors, Simon Hamlet and Abbie Wood. Heather Wetzel and Herr Klaus Schinagl prepared the maps. West Virginia Northern Community College has given me invaluable administrative support, and the Dean, Larry Tackett, has assisted with his computer expertise.

THE REAL GERMAN WAR PLAN, 1904–14

The Schlieffen Plan

From 1920 until 1999 very little was known concerning German war planning prior to the Great War. It was, however, ‘common knowledge’ that in 1914 the Germans had been following the ‘Schlieffen plan’, which was presented in a Denkschrift (study) written by the German chief of the general staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, and dated December 1905. Beginning in 1920, semi-official histories, written by retired First World War German army officers such as Lieutenant-Colonel Wolfgang Foerster, General Hermann von Kuhl and General Wilhelm Groener, as well as the first volume of the official history of the war produced by the Reichsarchiv in 1925,1 first revealed the Schlieffen plan, not as the complete document but as a very general paraphrase. The intent of the Schlieffen plan was to annihilate the French army in one quick enormous battle (Vernichtungsschlacht). The concept was to deploy seven-eighths of the German army between Metz and Aachen, on the right wing of the German front, leaving one-eighth of the army to guard the left flank in Lorraine against a French attack. No forces would be sent to protect East Prussia against the Russians. The right wing would sweep through Belgium and northern France, if necessary swinging to the west of Paris, continually turning the French left flank, and eventually pushing the French army into Switzerland.

If the French attacked the German left, in Lorraine, they would be doing the Germans a favour, for the attack would accomplish nothing and the French forces in the north would be that much weaker. Groener et al. (the ‘Schlieffen School’) maintained that this Denkschrift represented the culmination of Schlieffen’s military thought and provided Germany with a nearly infallible war plan; all that Schlieffen’s successor, Helmuth von Moltke, needed to do was to execute the Schlieffen plan, and Germany would have been practically assured of victory in August 1914. They contended that Moltke did not understand the concept of the Schlieffen plan and modified it – ‘watered it down’ – by strengthening the forces on the left wing at the expense of the main attack on the right. For this reason, the German army failed to destroy the French army in the initial campaign in the west in 1914.

The original war plans of both Schlieffen and Moltke were kept under tight control in the Reichsarchiv on the Brauhausberg in Potsdam and treated as secret documents, made available only to reliable officer-historians and then strictly on a ‘need to know’ basis. The details of Schlieffen’s planning were never revealed. Moreover, nothing was known of the war planning from 1906 to 1914 of Schlieffen’s successor, the younger Moltke, aside from the fact that he had ‘watered down’ the Schlieffen plan. The German army archive was then destroyed by British bombers on the night of 14 April 1945.

It seemed that only the original text of the famous Schlieffen plan Denkschrift had survived the bombing, because it had been transferred out of Potsdam. It had been seized by the American army and in the early 1950s was stored in the American National Archives, where Gerhard Ritter found it. He published the text in German in 1956 (in English in 1958).2 In preparing the plan for publication, Ritter learned from Foerster that the Denkschrift had actually been written in January and February 1906, after Schlieffen had retired (and no longer had any authority to write war plans), and backdated to make it appear that it was written while he was still chief of the general staff.

Ritter did not submit the Denkschrift to a thorough analysis, nor did he explain the many inconsistencies it contained. Instead, he concluded that the Denkschrift confirmed that the Schlieffen plan was the template for the German war plan in 1914. Ritter further deduced that the Germans had an aggressive war plan, which was the proximate cause of the Great War. Ritter’s opinions became ‘common knowledge’, so much so that the Schlieffen plan is a question in British A-level school-leaving examinations and the topic of commercially available term papers.

The Schlieffen Plan’s Ghost Divisions

During the tenure of both Schlieffen and Moltke, the German army conscripted only 55 per cent of each year group. Both Schlieffen and Moltke argued that this was insufficient and that Germany needed to implement genuine universal conscription. This was never accomplished in peacetime for two reasons: the expense of the High Seas Fleet and the fundamental opposition of the German Socialist Party (SPD) to the German army. The SPD was doctrinaire Marxist, opposed to ‘militarism’ and convinced that the European proletariat would make war impossible by paralysing mobilisation with a general strike. The SPD’s motto was ‘not one man, not one penny’ for the army, and any attempt by the German government to increase the size of the army would bring on a domestic political crisis that was best avoided.

The Reichsarchiv history freely acknowledged that Schlieffen did not have enough divisions to execute the plan outlined in the Denkschrift: ‘a number of the reserve corps which were employed [in the Schlieffen plan] as complete [two-division] corps, did not have the second division. The mobilization plan [also] did not provide for the immediate creation of the [eight] ersatz corps.’3 The Schlieffen plan also included the 43rd Infantry Division, which never existed. It employed ninety-six divisions, including twenty-four imaginary divisions. Ludendorff said outright that even in a one-front war against France alone, Schlieffen was twenty-four divisions short of the total force required. The Denkschrift also expressly said that in a one-front war even ninety-six divisions were not adequate and more – non-existent – manoeuvre units needed to be raised.4 The Reichsarchiv said that the need to raise these units was an integral part of the plan and Schlieffen’s legacy to Moltke. Most of these divisions were never established.

Inventing the Schlieffen Plan

Unknown to all but a few East German and Soviet archivists, several documents had survived the Potsdam bombing because they were in a nearby undamaged office building. They had been seized by the Red Army and returned to the East German military archive, but not made available to historians. With the fall of the Wall these documents came into the possession of the unified German military archives at Freiburg, and therefore were accessible for historical research. Foremost among these documents were two Reichsarchiv studies: Wilhelm Dieckmann’s Der Schlieffenplan, a summary of Schlieffen’s planning until 1904, and Hellmuth Greiner’s analysis of the German west front intelligence estimate from 1885 to 1914.

I utilised these documents, along with several of Schlieffen’s war games in the Bavarian army archive in Munich, to produce a fundamental reappraisal of Schlieffen’s planning in ‘The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered’ in War in History,5 and in Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning 1871–1914 in 2002.6I pointed out that the Schlieffen plan was for a one-front war against France only, which was unlikely in 1906 and impossible in 1914. Even in this one-front war, the plan required twenty-four divisions that existed neither in 1906 nor in 1914. Schlieffen’s purpose was not to write a war plan using ‘ghost divisions’ but as one more proposal to realise full conscription. He wanted to show that even a one-front war against France, and even with twenty-four non-existent ‘ghost divisions’, the German army was going to have its hands full.

Incongruously, in August 1914 the original text of the great plan was the property of Schlieffen’s daughters and was being stored with the family photos. None of Schlieffen’s surviving war games tested the Schlieffen plan. In fact, Schlieffen’s actual war plans and war games were based on using Germany’s interior position and rail mobility to counter-attack against the expected French and Russian offensives, and was not a desperate attempt to invade France.

My conclusion, that there never was a Schlieffen plan, met with considerable hostility. The existence of a Schlieffen plan had become dogma. An enormous body of historical explanation, including German war guilt, was based on the Schlieffen plan. Many in the historical establishment were on the record confirming the importance of the Schlieffen plan and were outraged that their sacred cow had been slaughtered.

SCHLIEFFEN’S LAST WAR PLANS, 1891–1904

French Plan XIV (1898–1903)

The French field army included thirty-eight active and twelve divisions – fifty infantry divisions in total. Plan XIV concentrated the French army on its border with Germany in a tight diamond formation from St Dizier to Nancy to Epinal.1 It pushed forward an advance guard 1st Army (three corps) in front of Nancy. There were three armies grouped behind it: the 4th (four corps) on the left, east of St Dizier; the 3rd (four corps) in the centre, south of Neufchâteau; and the 2nd (five corps) on the right, at Epinal. Behind the 3rd and 4th was the 5th, reserve army (three corps). There were three groups of four reserve divisions, one each behind the French left, centre and right. The French operational concept was based on the theories of Bonnal, who called this formation a bataillon carrée, which he said was the same one used by Napoleon. The strategy was defensive-offensive: advanced guard army would engage the enemy, forming a base of manoeuvre for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Armies. The 5th Army would deliver the decisive attack.

German Intelligence Estimate in West 1885–1903

From 1885 to 1894 the Germans had an agent in place in the French eastern railway system who provided them with abstracts of the French rail-march tables, and even the actual march tables. After 1894 the agent material dried up and German intelligence was limited to evaluating ‘open source’ material, such as improvements to the French rail net or changes in French peacetime force structure. The Germans were reduced to guesses concerning the French deployment, and were painfully aware of this fact.

French Plan XIV (1898–1903)

The Germans were always completely in the dark concerning French operational intentions, that is, the course of action the French intended to adopt when deployment was completed. In general, the French could conduct an immediate attack into German Lorraine between Metz and Strasbourg or, based on their border fortifications, they could conduct a defensive-offensive operation.

Another major problem for German intelligence was determining how many reserve divisions the French would raise, how they would deploy, and how far the French would trust them in combat. From 1899/1900 to 1903 the Germans believed that the French would deploy with four armies on line:

1st Army (four corps) Epinal – Belfort on the right

2nd Army (five corps) east of Neufchâteau

3rd Army (three corps) Toul

4th Army (four corps) St Dizier – Ste Ménehould on the left

and four groups of three reserve divisions, one for each army.2

The German estimate to 1903 spread out the French on too broad a front, extending it too far to the north and south. The Germans would have been surprised to find the advance guard army at Nancy. They had no knowledge of Bonnal’s neo-Napoleonic concept of the operation.

The French Quick-Firing 75mm Gun

Beginning in 1896, the Germans rearmed their artillery with a 77mm gun that could fire about eight rounds per minute. In 1897 the French introduced their famous 75mm gun, the first artillery piece equipped with a recoil brake, which kept the gun stable in position and allowed a maximum rate of fire of twenty to thirty rounds per minute, with much improved accuracy.3 The recoil brake also permitted the French to put an armoured shield on the gun to protect the crew, as well as a seat for the gunner. The French kept the capabilities of the mademoiselle soixante-quinze secret until it was used against the Boxers in China in 1901, when the Germans discovered to their horror that their artillery was obsolete and their army completely out-gunned by the French.

The Germans began a frantic effort to develop and manufacture their own quick-firing gun. Until they did, the French would be guaranteed artillery fire superiority; the French artillery would suppress the unarmoured German guns and then crush the unprotected German infantry. The Germans did not begin to rearm with the improved ‘1896 n/A’ until 1905. Fielding was not completed until 1908. Attacking France before 1908 was tantamount to German national suicide. The argument advanced so often that Schlieffen intended the Schlieffen plan for a war in 1906 is, therefore, unlikely: Schlieffen knew full well that Germany could not conduct an offensive war until the new artillery had been fully fielded, the crews were trained and tactical doctrine modified to accommodate the new weapon.

Schlieffen’s Planning to 1903/04

When Schlieffen became chief of the general staff in 1891 it was clear that Germany faced the prospect of a two-front war: the Germans had allowed the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to lapse and Franco-Russian rapprochement was clearly under way. The most dangerous – and most likely – Franco-Russian course of action was to conduct simultaneous offensives. This would ensure that the Germans would be outnumbered on both fronts and would not be able to use their interior position to mass against one opponent.

Until 1900/01 Schlieffen usually deployed about two-thirds of the German army against France and one-third against Russia. Little of Schlieffen’s west front planning survives, but it is clear that with such a division of forces, the German army was too weak to conduct an offensive against France. A Denkschrift, written by one of Schlieffen’s senior staff officers in 1895, stated that an attack against the French border fortifications could not be decisive. Schlieffen’s first Denkschrift concerning an attack through Belgium, in 1897, concluded that the German army was too weak for such an operation. The only Denkschrift for an offensive in the west was written not by Schlieffen but by General von Beseler in 1900. It provided for an advance by half the army through the Ardennes and across the Meuse while the other half advanced from Lorraine to fix the French in place. The intent was to break the French border fortifications by attacking them from the front and rear.4 The disadvantage of this plan was that the French would be on an interior position between the two halves of the German army. They would probably hold off the German forces in Lorraine with the aid of their border fortifications and mass against the German right wing.

Beginning in 1899/1900 Schlieffen used two deployment plans (Aufmärsche). Aufmarsch I was for a war against France, though usually a force was left to defend East Prussia against the Russians. Aufmarsch II involved a stronger concentration in the east.

In 1900/01 and 1901/02 Schlieffen radically changed the war plan, deploying forty-four divisions in the east and only twenty-four in the west. This was called the Grosser Ostaufmarsch (Great Eastern Deployment). It appears that his intent was to maul the Russians, forcing the French to advance forward of their border fortifications and attack in order to rescue their Russian ally, at which point Schlieffen would utilise rail mobility to counter-attack against the French offensive. By the 1902/03 Aufmarschplan he returned the ratio of forces to forty-four divisions in the west, twenty-four in the east.5

All of Schlieffen’s Generalstabsreisen Ost, his general staff rides in the east, played a Russian offensive, with the Germans using rail mobility to counter-attack. The 1894 Generalstabsreise Ost was the template for the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914: the Germans exploited the fact that the Russians would be forced to deploy two armies, one attacking from Lithuania to the east, one from Warsaw to the south, which were divided by the Masurian Lakes. The Germans used rail mobility and interior lines to mass against the southern army and destroy it. The 1902 Generalstabsreise Ost played an Ostaufmarsch in which Schlieffen deployed nearly half the German army in the east, consistent with his deployment plans at that time. Nevertheless, the exercise still played a German counter-attack. In 1903 Schlieffen played a massive Russian attack down the Vistula, which was met by an equally massive German transfer of eleven corps by rail from the west to the east for a counter-attack.6

In 1903/04 Schlieffen planned only for Aufmarsch I, with sixty-five divisions in the west and ten divisions in the east. Aufmarsch II was written only as a ‘study’, not a formal war plan.

In the west, the Germans were spread evenly from St Vith in the Ardennes to Freiburg in south Germany. In Lorraine, the Germans were deployed well to the east, along the Saar. This formation was suited for a defence along the Saar against a French attack, followed by a German counter-attack with the 1st and 2nd Armies. This is somewhat surprising since the Germans probably expected to be opposed by thirty-two active and twelve reserve divisions – forty-four infantry divisions in total. It may be explained by the fact that, given the French border fortifications and the superiority of the French 75mm gun, Schlieffen did not feel that the German army was strong enough to conduct an outright offensive.

French 1900/01 Intelligence Estimate7

The 1900/01 French intelligence estimate said that the Germans had twenty-three corps (forty-six divisions) and twenty-four reserve divisions, seventy divisions in total, which was essentially correct. Five active corps and eight reserve divisions, eighteen divisions in total, would be deployed against the Russians, leaving fifty-two divisions against the French. The French based their estimate of the German deployment on the density and location of the German rail net. The Germans would deploy on line, without an advance guard or reserve, with a maximum density of one corps leading and a second following. The Germans active corps would deploy on a front from Metz–Diedenhofen (Thionville) to Sarrebourg. The German reserve divisions would deploy in three groups behind the left, centre and right.

The French 1899 hypothesis, that the Germans would attack with four corps from Alsace to turn the French right to the east of Epinal, had been rejected: the German forces in Alsace would be on the defensive. The German concept would be to launch immediately a violent offensive from Diedenhofen to turn the French left, while the German centre at Sarrebourg attacked towards the trouée de Charmes between Toul and Epinal to fix the French forces there in place.

The Germans would attack twenty-four hours after they had finished their deployment. If they attacked solely with their active army units, they could cross the border on the fifteenth day of mobilisation. If they waited until the reserve divisions and the supply units of the active army corps deployed, then they could not attack until the eighteenth day, in which case the French would have completed their deployment first. According to the French estimate, the most important point of difference between the French and German plans was that the German was ‘purely offensive’.

1903/04 Aufmarsch I West

The French estimate was apparently still applicable in 1903. If compared with the German 1903/04 deployment, it is clear that the French would have had some surprises too. The Germans employed sixty-five divisions in the west, not fifty-two. But even if the Germans did launch an offensive, it would have come much later than anticipated; they were not densely concentrated in Lorraine and the right wing extended further to the north than predicted.

1904/05

Russo-Japanese War, 1904

The Russo-Japanese War began on 8 February 1904. The Russians transferred forces from European Russia to Manchuria, but replaced the forces in European Russia by conducting a partial mobilisation. The Russians were defeated at the Battle of Mukden in August and Sha-ho in October. Port Arthur was besieged and would fall in January 1905. The war had no evident effect on German planning in 1904.

The German army held annual Festungs- (Fortress) Generalstabsreisen. In 1904 this exercise was held along the German fortifications on the Vistula.8 The scenario called for six German corps to defend against an attack by sixteen Russian corps. The Russians quickly overran East Prussia to the Vistula with the exception of Königsberg. This exercise is evidence that in 1904 the German army thought that the Russians were still a threat and would remain so in the future, otherwise the Festungs-Generalstabsreise would have been held in the west.

1904 International Affairs

On 8 April the Anglo-French Entente was concluded, settling all outstanding differences and paving the way for British military assistance to France in case of a war with Germany. Between 27 October and 23 November Russia and Germany conducted negotiations for an alliance, but these broke down over Russian unwillingness to compromise the alliance with France.

Document RH 61/v.96 (Summary of German War Plans 1893–1914)9

This document, in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, the German army archive, was probably compiled after the Great War by either a Reichsarchiv historian or a historian from the Wehrmacht historical section (Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt). There are numerous indications in internal Reichsarchiv documents that it was intended to publish a second, revised edition of at least the first, third and fourth volumes of the German army official history of the Great War, which covers the Marne campaign. RH 61/v.96 was probably written in the late 1930s and early 1940s in preparation for this second edition.

It survived the destruction of the Potsdam archive in 1945 most likely because it was not being stored in the archive proper but was being used in a nearby office building. It was confiscated by the Red Army and returned to the East Germans sometime after 1955 and was kept in the East German army archives in Potsdam until the fall of the Wall. It remained in Potsdam until this archive was closed in January 1996. The document was again available to researchers in Freiburg only in 2002.10 It is listed in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv index (Findbuch) RH 61, titled Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres (Army Military History Research Agency).

Based on guidance from the chief of the general staff, the imperial German army revised its war plan each winter and the new plan went into effect on 1 April of that year. Therefore, the plans were designated by two years, such as 1904/05; that is, effective from 1 April 1904 to 31 March 1905. The preceding year’s plans and most of the supporting planning documents were usually destroyed. It was therefore difficult for German army official historians working both before and after the Great War to reconstruct the German war plans.

The summary of each deployment plan begins with a list of the planning materials that were available. Sometimes general map sketches are included. Occasionally there is an enemy estimate. Border security is often discussed in great detail.

The documents and maps available to the author(s) of RH 61/v.96 were not reproduced but only summarised. None of these original planning documents survived and were probably destroyed when the Reichsarchiv was bombed. The author of RH 61/v.96 influenced the nature of the summary by his choice and description of the original documents. The compiler was both aware of the Schlieffen plan dogma and worked for the organisation that was the origin of that dogma. The author’s selection and interpretation of the material available to him would have been influenced by a desire to emphasise the importance of the Schlieffen plan. Nevertheless, like the rest of the Schlieffen School, there is no evidence that the author actually falsified documents. RH 61/v.96 must therefore be considered a secondary, not primary, source material. However, when evaluated professionally this is an invaluable document.

These are, as the name expressly states, deployment plans, not operations orders. The commander’s overall intent and concept of the whole operation was almost never given. The deployment was described, and sometimes the initial advance as well. As of the 1906/07 year the Aufmarschanweisungen – the opening instructions to the army commanders – were generally available. The initial German actions were contingent on enemy behaviour. Subsequent actions were dependent on the results of the first battles. The war plan seldom stipulated any actions after initial contact was made with the enemy.

RH 61/v.96 deals separately with each mobilisation year from 1893/94 to 1914/15. To the 1902/03 plan the notes are handwritten in German Standard script; from 1903/04 they are typed. This would seem to indicate that the handwritten notes were in preparation for Wilhelm Dieckmann’s Schlieffenplan manuscript. Dieckmann’s text covers the period to 1903/04 thoroughly: perhaps Dieckmann’s successor started the typed notes with the last year that Dieckmann described. There are only three pages of stenographic notes available concerning the 1912/13 plan11 and only five pages concerning the 1914/15 deployment plan, which was the plan actually used in 1914.

RH 61/v.96 adds valuable detail to Dieckmann’s manuscript, which tells us about Schlieffen’s planning to 1903/04. It gives the first detailed view of Schlieffen’s 1904/05, 1905/06 and 1906/07 plans, which are not in Dieckmann. It shows that Schlieffen did not implement the Schlieffen plan in any of his real war plans, and particularly not in the 1906/07 plan.

More importantly, for the first time this document gives us detailed information concerning the development of Moltke’s planning from 1907/08 to 1913/14. It shows that Moltke did not slavishly follow the Schlieffen plan but developed his own plans in order to meet the changes in the European military and diplomatic situation.

Aufmarsch 1904/05

The author of RH 61/v.96 had eight original documents available concerning the 1904/05 Aufmarsch: the Mobilmachungskalendar (mobilisation schedule); two maps of the covering force deployment in the west (one with an enemy estimate); two covering force deployment maps in the east; an order of battle for Aufmarsch I; and the Aufmarschanweisungen (deployment orders), without annexes, for Aufmarsch I West, Aufmarsch I Ost and Aufmarsch II Ost.

The summaries of these documents comprise eight typewritten pages with generous spacing, which allowed handwritten annotations, plus a page of handwritten notes giving the German order of battle. There are no maps of the deployment, only a general sketch for the east and west fronts.

1904/05 Aufmarsch I West

Aufmarsch I in 1904/05 was for a war with France alone; twenty-five corps and fifteen reserve divisions (probably sixty-seven divisions in total) were deployed against France, and four reserve divisions were left in the east ‘in order that the province [may] not be completely denuded of troops from the outset’.12 The great majority of the available information was concerned with border security. However, the bare outlines of the deployments were also described. The centre of mass of the 1st Army on the right (four corps, four reserve divisions) was now at Bitburg, considerably to the south of previous deployments (1902/03 and 1903/04), in which the right wing extended north to St Vith. The 2nd Army (four corps and two reserve divisions) was south of Trier; the 3rd Army (three corps and four reserve divisions) at Saarlouis, Saarbrücken and Metz; the 4th Army (four corps) at Saarbrücken, Saargemünd and Saaralben; the 5th Army (four corps) from Saarunion to Sarrebourg; the 6th Army (four corps) near Mutzig and Strasbourg; the 7th Army (three corps, five reserve divisions) in the upper Alsace.

For Aufmarsch II, a two-front war, I, XVII and XX Corps would also be left in the east – ten divisions in total; sixty-one divisions would be deployed in the west. The 1st, 3rd and 4th Armies each gave up a corps for the East Prussian army. It is safe to assume that the eastern forces intended to manoeuvre as in the 1894 Generalstabsreise Ost.

1904 Generalstabsreisen West

Schlieffen played two general staff rides (Generalstabsreisen) in the west in 1904. Neither concerned a deployment similar to that of the 1904/05 Aufmarsch.13 In the exercise the French had twenty-three corps, not the twenty corps that German intelligence estimated they had. The Germans had sixteen reserve corps, the equivalent of thirty-two reserve divisions, instead of the actual nineteen reserve divisions: thirteen of the German reserve divisions were non-existent ‘ghost divisions’.

The French left wing 4th Army (five corps) was at Verdun, but the main body of the French army (eighteen corps) was massed opposite German Lorraine. The German right was much further north, at Aachen, with seventeen corps in a triangle Aachen–Wesel–Cologne, a screen of six corps opposite the Ardennes, six more at Metz and nine echeloned behind Metz in the Palatinate.

In the exercise critique (Schlussbesprechung) Schlieffen said that the possibility of a German attack through Belgium was no secret: everybody in Europe (and even in America) foresaw such a German operation. The problem was that an attack through the Ardennes crossed the Meuse and divided the German army: the French would mass against the German right wing and defeat it in detail. If the Germans extended their right to march through the Belgian plain north of the Meuse, the approach march would take so long that the French could break through in Lorraine.

1st General Staff Ride West

Given a German right-wing advance through the north Belgian plain, Schlieffen’s French ‘school solution’ was to launch just such an offensive into Lorraine. In response, the German 1st Army (seven corps), followed by six reserve divisions, marched into Belgium between Brussels and Namur, which found no enemy forces and accomplished nothing. The 2nd Army swung south into the Ardennes and the 3rd also moved south into Luxembourg. The French 4th Army (eighteen divisions) turned north to meet them. But this was a sideshow. The French mass of manoeuvre (forty divisions) penetrated deeply into Lorraine, at which point the German main force counter-attacked from Metz and Strasbourg, enveloping the French.

This exercise was consistent with Schlieffen’s other Generalstabsreisen and Kriegsspiele (war games) in both the east and the west: the French or Russians attacked into German territory and the Germans manoeuvred, exploiting rail mobility, and counter-attacked. This exercise also bears a striking resemblance to the plan that the younger Moltke wanted to implement on 15 August 1914, when he believed that the French were going to attack with their main body (thirty-eight to forty divisions) in Lorraine.14

There was considerable opposition among the participating general staff officers to Schlieffen’s massive use of non-existent units, so Schlieffen played a second 1904 Generalstabsreise. This time the French spread their forces from Belfort in the south to Mézières in the north. The Germans deployed in two bodies, with ten corps in Lorraine, at or behind Metz, and eighteen corps north of the Moselle, from Cologne to Prüm. This dispersion resulted in a sweeping manoeuvre battle, with the Germans finally being surrounded along the Moselle between Trier and Coblenz.

Both in the west and in the east, Schlieffen’s exercises played a variety of scenarios to test possibilities that were never incorporated in the deployment plan. This was not wasted time. The 1903 Generalstabsreise Ost was not implemented in August 1914, but did serve as the template for Ludendorff’s Lodz counter-attack in November 1914.15 Nor did the Germans have to win all of Schlieffen’s exercises. Schlieffen’s objective was to teach and develop a ‘Schlieffen doctrine’ which exploited Germany’s interior position and rail mobility to counter-attack against the expected Russo-French offensive.

German 1904 West Front Intelligence Estimate

In midsummer 1904 the 3rd Department came to the conclusion that the French had extended their deployment to the north, for the following reasons.16 A French offensive, which until 1904 was a possibility, appeared unlikely in light of the Russo-Japanese War. It was far more probable that at the beginning of a war the French would not attack immediately, but rather await the German offensive in an assembly area behind their fortifications. A French defensive deployment which extended their left flank to the north, opposite the Belgian Ardennes, seemed more likely than the previous offensive concentration opposite German Lorraine.

The August 1904 estimate said that the French would deploy with:

German 1904 West Front Intelligence Estimate

1st Army (right flank, VII Corps – three divisions – on Vosges from Belfort to St Die, with four corps behind it at Belfort – Epinal)17

2nd Army (centre, five corps, Toul)

3rd Army (reserve, five corps, west of Toul)

4th Army (left flank, five corps, west of Verdun – Sedan)

1st Group of Reserve Divisions (four reserve divisions, behind right wing)

2nd Group (three reserve divisions, Neufchâteau)

3rd Group (three reserve divisions, Châlons sur Marne)

4th Group (four reserve divisions, Laon)

This probably came to fifty-five divisions in total (forty-one active and fourteen reserve). The French actually had twenty-two corps (probably forty-four divisions) and twelve reserve divisions for use with the field army – fifty-six divisions in total.18

French Plan XV (1903)19

The French deployed the advance guard 1st Army (four corps) at Nancy, with the 2nd Army (five corps) on its right at Epinal, and the 4th Army (four corps) on its left at Verdun. There were two reserve armies: the 4th (four corps) was behind the 1st, and the 5th (three corps) was behind the 2nd, with 19th Corps arriving from Algeria and 21st Corps from excess units in the Alps. When they would be available was not stated. A group of four reserve divisions was located behind the left, centre and right. The French thought the most likely German course of action was to attack the French left.

French Plan XV 1903 (with 1906 modification)