Germany Should Not Have Invaded Belgium in WW1

What Was the Schlieffen Plan? The Triple Entente of Great Britian, France, and Russia was formed in the early 20th century. The other major alliance in Europe at the time was the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, which was formed in the late 19th century. Thus, the Triple Alliance was right in the middle of the Triple Entente. If Germany ever declared war on one, the others, bound by the mutual-defense pacts part of the Triple Entente, would be forced to come to its aid. Given the geography, Germany would be unable to commit all of its forces against that country because that would leave its hinterlands undefended. But it would also be a bad strategy to split their forces in two, committing half to France and half to Russia, because they would be too small to properly attack either country. The Schlieffen Plan was a startegy meant to combat this problem. Massive speed would be imployed in a war against France, and the forcese would then swing east to Russia before Russia had a chance to respond. The plan looked something like this: [1]The reason for going through Belgium was because the French-German border was heavily fortified in response to Germany's devestating victory against the French during the Franco-Prussian war. But the defenses in Belgum were much sparser than those in France. In addition, the terrain of Belgium is flat, as opposed to the area around the Franco-German border which was more mountainous, making it more ideal of a spot to launch an invasion of France than the border itself. These two things would greatly faciliate a quicker invasion of France, and, if all went well, the capture of Paris in just a few weeks. With France take care of that quickly, the bulk of the forces stationed in France would be moved to the Eastern front to deal with the Russians. [2]On the Eastern front before the capture of Paris, the Germans put a small army in the Prussian area. This was meant to hold off any Russian attacks until the forces in France could reach that front. Why Was the Schlieffen Plan the Best? Basically, there were three options. The first was to attack France and defend against Russia. The second was to attack Russia and defend against France. The third was to attack both France and Russia. Defending against both France and Russia would be impossible, as it was the Triple Alliance that were the agressors. They would have needed to conduct some offensive campaign. Since my opponent has chosen to defend the second option, I will only argue against that option. First, Russia was much larger than France. The distance from eastern Germany to Paris through Belgium was around 150 miles. The amount of distance the German troops would have had to traverse was only 100-200 miles. On the other hand, the distance from Königsberg, the eastermost point in Germany, to St. Petersburg was 510 miles, and to Moscow, 675 miles. This was a much larger distance to traverse. In general, militarily, it is far easier to accomplish one objective that takes much less distance compared to another objective, all other things being equal, as the supply lines and communication lines get longer, and the organization and morale of the armies decreases as the distance and time increases. Second, Russia's forces, albeit larger than France's, were much more spread out, and mobilization took much larger for the Russians than for the French. During the war, mobilization and deployment took about three weeks for the Russians and a little less than a week for the French. This would have left a good bit of time from the Germans, who were able to mobilize and deploy their forces quickly, to knock France out of the war. [3]Third, the technological capacity of the Russians was much less than that of the French. For rifles, while the technology of the rifles used by the French and Russians was roughly the same, not all of the soldiers in the Russian army had rifles. At the beginning of the war, there was a huge shortage of rifles in the Russian ranks. In fact, initially, around 30% of the Russian troops did not have rifles. For machine guns, considering Germany was initially on the defensive, and since machine guns are mostly imployed by defenders, it was the Germans that had most of the machine guns. For artillery, France had around 4500 field artillery pieces and 7000 fortress artillery pieces. The Russian numbers are hard to pin down exactly, but it is known that Russian artillery strategy was flawed. Too much emphasis was placed on fortress artillery in comparison to field artillery. In 1906, the military budget had 700 million roubles set aside for fortress artillery and 113 million roubles set aside for field artillery. Thus, whereas 40% of France's artillery was in field artillery, only 15% of Russia's artillery was in field artillery. Also, the coordination between the Russian infantry and artillery crops was small, compared to that of the rest of Europe at the time. These two things indicate that France's artillery strategy was far superior to Russia's at the time. Airplanes, tanks, and poison gas were not factors at the beginning of the war. [4][5][6][7]And fourth, the political scene in Russia was much more volatile than in France. Of course, the Russian revolution occurred in 1917, a full three years after the start of the war, there were major cracks in the Russian political system at the start of the war. The unrest between the urban workers, the farmers, and the upper class was already very large at the time. It had already almost boiled over in 1905. A stalled offensive would have been much more dangerous for the Russians than a strong defensive, as morale could be applied to national defense in the latter case, but the stalled offensive was viewed as a fault of the Russian army and government. In conclusion, we see that the smaller size of France (making an invasion and knockout of France much easier than Russia), the spread out and un-mobilized nature of the Russian forces at the time (giving more time for the Germans to knock out France and quickly head to Russia than the reverse), the insufficiency of the Russians' military technology (making it easier for the Germans to defend Prussia), and the volatile nature of the Russian political situation (making a stalled invasion a dangerous proposition for Russia) indicates that an invasion of France with a defense from Russian forces first seems to have been the better course of action. So Why Did Germany Lose WWI? Ultimately, however, Germany lost WWI. However, we can hardly fault the Schlieffen plan. The Germans depleted the force of the Schlieffen plan by taking forces away from the offensive in France to the defense of Prussia. The Battle of the Marne was a victory for the French simply because the Germans didn't have the manpower to win it. If the Schlieffen plan had been executed as it was originally intended, the French stand on the Marne would likely have been broken, and that would have made the path all but open to the Germans. The reason there were German forces in East Prussia was because of the ineffectiveness of the Austria-Hungarian forces. The Austrian-Hungarian force that was supposed to cover most the Eastern front was untrained and unready to handle the Russian force that was opposing it. Despite the fact that the Austria-Hungarians and the Russians were rather equally matched initially, Russia was able to sweep aside the Austria-Hungarians rather easily. The outcome was essentially a full scale rout out of Galicia for Austria-Hungary. Here's a map of the campaign[8]: [8]As you can see, there was a massive retreat on the Austria-Hungarian side. It was this that drew even more German troops out of the Western front after the Battle of the Marne. If the Austria-Hungarians had been able to hold their line, the German 8th Army could have been shifted west and helped turn the tide at the Battle of the Marne. Sources[1]: . http://www.section117.com...[2]: . https://en.wikipedia.org...[3]: . https://en.wikipedia.org...[4]: . http://spartacus-educational.com...[5]: . http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net...[6]: . http://clevelode-battletours.com...[7]: . http://www.historynet.com...[8]: . https://en.wikipedia.org...