Talk:Schlieffen Plan

message: :I didn't realize there's much dispute. Strachan and Keegan (separately) write explicitly that the Plan was totally detached from the realities of logistics and combat; the right wing could not have been any stronger than it was and could not have had the mobility and strength needed to encircle Paris. I agree that this article seems like tired conventional wisdom rather than a reflection of modern scholarship. I'll see what I can do.--ArminTamzarian 09:20, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm slowly writing a new version of this article over at User:Mackensen/Schlieffen Plan, where I hope that all these issues can be addressed. Mackensen (talk) 16:35, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I read some where else on wikipedia I think, that the army mobilized by the Dutch was 500.000 men strong instead of the 90,000 mentioned in the article.???  —Preceding unsigned comment added by NH-obi (talk • contribs) 17:40, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Netherlands 

message: Surely if the Schlieffen Plan was made in 1905 it couldn't have been drawn up in response to the Triple Entente which was signed in 1907?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.245.28.240 (talk • contribs) 15:53, 10 January 2006.
:You're right, I've edited it.--Johnbull 22:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates 

message: It seems that the article fails to convey the full historical significance of the Schlieffen Plan. The eminent war historian John Keegan referred to it in his The First World War as arguably the most important document of the 20th Century in terms of global impact, yet there is no such discussion in the article. I am not an expert on the subject, so if someone more knowledgeable might add something to this effect, I'm sure the article would be improved. A.G. Pinkwater 01:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why no discussion of the impact of this plan and its relative failure on subsequent German and European military thinking.  Think about it - Put this plan upside down and backwards, i.e., clockwise instead of counter-clockwise and you have US general H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.'s plan to oust Iraq from Kuwait, with the lighter airborn units, helo-airborn units and light armor swinging to the northwest to descend upon Iraqi forces from the unsuspected northwest! SimonATL 04:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rotate anything, and it can look like everything else :) Particularly when discussing this kind of topic, we should be wary of seeing too many similarities between things: a lot of stuff ends up looking smilar, at first glance, to other things. However, I agree with the commenters that the significance of the Plan is a topic truly worth delving into. While it can (and has) been argued that the Plan got morphed beyond recognition, it is the philosophy of the Plan that was both oddly persistent over time, and fascinatingly part of a long-term modification in thinking (which started far before it, and continued well beyond the Plan). Dxco 04:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical importance 

message: Does anyone still believe this? Can anyone find a reference to this from a witness of his death?Keith-264 (talk) 19:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Schleiffen's last words

message: This article is one of a  number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue   are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.
The following request appears on that page:
Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Penfding changes"  would be appreciated.
Please update the Queue page as appropriate.
Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially
Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Pending changes

message: [The following comments were placed by 65.78.225.28 in the article page and subsequently reverted, as they discuss the article rather than directly improve it. I think, though, that they are worthy of attention by an expert. --Zvika (talk) 05:23, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Greatly Amazed is probably an exaggeration, but I do suspect that the Germans hoped that the Brits would hold aloof at least.  Britain had been making some friendly overtures in 1914. I think we need to differentiate between the German General Staff, who had to plan for a British intervention, and the German Diplomatic Corps, which hoped the Brits would stay out.  The British Army didn't play a large role in the events of 1914 (although I think some go too far in writing them off), but in the wider conflict, Britain's intervention was a disaster for Germany.  
The Wikipedia article says that Moltke “disagreed with at least some of the Schlieffen plan” but “having been devised in 1905, was now too much a part of German military thinking to be abandoned completely, so all Moltke could do is modify it”. In fact, the plan was dated December 1905. Schlieffen retired on 1 January 1906. At the very best, the plan had been “a part of German military thinking” for a month by the time Moltke became chief of the General Staff. However, Wolfgang Foerster, (who wrote the German official history in the early 1920s), told Gerhard Ritter (in the mid-1950s) that Schlieffen had actually written the plan in January and February 1906, which is to say, after Schlieffen had retired and while Moltke was already chief of the General Staff. The Wikipedia statement is completely wrong.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.78.225.168 (talk) 13:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Zvika, it seems regrettable that 65.78.22.168's excellent comments have never been properly addressed.  The article in its present form does not seem at all to reflect best scholarship of recent decades, but rather to perpetuate discredited, over-simplified myths about the events of August 1914.  To note only the most obvious problem, a tremendous number of statements in the article are made without any citations at all.  I could insert more "citation needed" indications at innumerable points in the article, but that would not really get us anywhere I suppose.  Still, the article as it stands does not come close to meeting encyclopedic standards.  And conceptually, it probably misses a core reality that German planning in 1911-14 involved more a belief that they must strike first to overcome their inherent geographic liability of facing major enemies on two fronts, rather than any belief  -- with the heavier armaments and forces that would be deployed as compared with 1870 -- that they could thereby score a quick knockout of either France or Russia. --Pechmerle (talk) 05:21, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments by 65.78.225.28 

message: Hi Wikipedians, to me the sentence referred in this section's title (...had Moltke not depleted ...) seems non-neutral, hence I tagged asking for a citation (and probably a rewording might help too). In Schlieffen's biography wikiarticle is said that some sources support this position (that Moltke's changes to plan brought it to failure) while other sources do not. Shouldn't these different positions be explained further in the plan's wikiarticle?  Regards, DPdH (talk) 09:47, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential NPOV in sentence "... had Moltke not depleted..."  

message: After the victory in the Franco-Prussian War, which was a cavalry and infantry war, the Germans must have planned for another war with and another attack on France. As the years passed and a new resurgant France rapidly paid off the massive German fine, the idea of such an attack must have receeded.
France was making massive investments in Russia which the Tsar was using to modernise his vast army. Increasingly the situation must have seemed to the Germans that an attack by Russia was by far the more likely and immediate threat. The Schlieffen plan must have been almost forgotten by 1900 and had the dust blown off it a few years later, for a brief period.
The war with France and Britain, rather than Russia, caught the German Army staff almost by surprise but all they had to  counter this was an invasion plan initially drawn up a generation earlier. It had to be dusted down and used as it was all there was. But for the invention of heavy shell artillery, machine guns and accurate rifle fire since the days of massed cavalry actions, it might even have been successful.AT Kunene (talk) 10:27, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The article also simply doesn't reflect well the obvious political-diplomatic realities that made planning for a two-front war an inevitable necessity for the German general staff.  All sides knew of the Franco-Russian treaty of mutual support, and of the Anglo-French entente.  As the previous commenter reminds us, it all began as an Eastern crisis, with the Austrian attack on Serbia.  The German politicians may have hoped that Germany coming to the aid of Austro-Hungary after the Russian declaration of war was triggered by Austro-Hungary's attack on Serbia would not lead to the triggering of the full web of alliances and the war of all against all that resulted.  But the German Army certainly did not share such an optimistic view of the scenarios for which they had to have strategies.  --Pechmerle (talk) 05:31, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Plan 

message: Should be a little bit more about how the plan required Germany to launch a war of offensive aggression whenever the French and/or Russians just decided to start mobilizing their reserves.  There are some obvious drawbacks to a plan that's guaranteed to translate increased tension into actual war...  AnonMoos (talk) 00:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly right.  But there have been a number of historical situations in which one side has treated the other's decision to mobilize its reserves as inherently an act of war in and of itself. --Pechmerle (talk) 05:44, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Political/diplomatic factors

message: The additional section has been marked for clean up for over 2 years and doesn't contain a single reference . It needs to be referenced and integrated into the text or should go Gnevin (talk) 13:54, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional

message: I've just read through this article for the first time and there is a sentence in the section 'Moltke's changes to the plan' that may cause some confusion when it comes to understanding the strategic deployment of German troops prior to the invasion. Unless of course I am guilty of misinterpreting it. 
The section states; "Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke made several changes to the Schlieffen Plan. Most importantly, he initially reinforced the east with 180,000 men from the right-wing armies, weakening the invasion force in favor of defense. Moltke balked at the weakness of the Alsatian "hinge" region, fearing that the massive strength of the right wing's hammer would allow the French to break through the relatively sparsely manned left-wing "anvil". This had been part of Schlieffen's design: his plan called for the invading French forces to be enveloped. Schlieffen had been willing to sacrifice some German territory in the short run to decisively destroy the French Army. Moltke refused to run the same risk and shifted some divisions from the right flank to the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine." 
To me, the bolded part paints the picture that troops were moved to the East, as in to the Eastern Front to face Russia, but further on it then becomes clear that "east" pertains to the deployment of troops to the Anglo-German border. This is exasperated by the fact that the entire article frequently mentions the shifting of troops between the Western (Anglo-French) and Eastern (Russian) Fronts. Shouldn't the part ". . .he initially reinforced the east with 180,000 men. . ." read something on the lines of ". . .he initially reinforced the Anglo-German border with 180,000 men. . ." or "he initially reinforced the Alsatian region with 180,000 men. . ." or some other variation that helps to clarify the strategic deployment of troops? Thesmartstag (talk) 09:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This does need to be addressed.  When I recently reorganized the article, I think I misinterpreted the material at the beginning of this section.  Having just now re-read an earlier version of the article (before I started to rearrange it), it appears that the 180,000 really were sent to the east to fight against the Russians, and then 80,000 more were sent to to fight the Russians immediately before the Battle of Tannenberg.  In addition, troops were also taken away from the right wing invasion through Belgium and sent to Alsace-Lorraine.  Tomorrow, I'll try to verify that a total of 260,000 troops were actually reassigned to fight against the Russians, and then make the change.JDefauw (talk) 04:32, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I made the necessary changes. Thank you for catching my mistake.  A source is provided in the Wikipedia article on von Moltke the younger for the statement that he moved 180,000 troops east before the war.  Even though I have not seen the source, I will assume that it is right.  The source is: Robert Crowley, What if?. "The What Ifs of 1914" (Penguin Group, New York, 2001), 275.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by JDefauw (talk • contribs) 19:28, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fantastic! Much clearer picture of the troop movements/deployments. I'm not familiar with that source either but it should do. Thesmartstag (talk) 14:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

text:  I noticed one or two grammatical errors which I tidied up and if it is alright I added two article links; breakthrough and the near destruction of the Russian Second Army while more German troops were in transit to the east in support of Ludendorff's recommendation not to weaken the invading force. Thesmartstag (talk) 14:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good.  I also provided a related article link to Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, which is short and well worth reading.JDefauw (talk) 02:11, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarity surrounding German troop deployments 

message: Belgian Resistance: The claim that the Belgians delayed the Germans by a month is a myth, deriving from Allied propaganda about "Brave Little Belgium." After a handful of small engagements, the Belgian Army retreated to Antwerp, arriving on August 20th, and was besieged. Of the forts, Liege was bombarded into surrender by August 14th, followed by Namur by the 23rd. That is, indeed, 21 days. But the German Army was not held up; as per the Plan, it continued to march into France while units stayed behind to mop up the forts. The article itself says, "the timetable for the Schlieffen Plan was going according to schedule before it was halted in France." It cannot have been both delayed for nearly a month and on schedule.
The Plan allowed 39 days for the encirclement of Paris. The invasion was on August 2nd; Paris should, therefore, have been reached on September 10th. The Battle of the Marne began on the 5th, when German troops were 10 miles from their objective and almost exactly on schedule. Although German troops remained behind, to guard against armed sorties from Antwerp, the most that the Belgians did was inflict heavier casualties than the Germans had anticipated.
The Belgian king did not flood the country. An area of about ten miles by one mile, between the River Yser and the Nieuport-Dixmude railway embankment was flooded, to impede the German advance towards the Channel ports and protect the Allied flank. The area was less than 0.1%, or 1/1200th, of the land area of Belgium.
German Underestimation: Britain and Belgium did not have a treaty. Belgium was forbidden to form treaties. Britain was a guarantor, under the Treaty of London, of Belgian neutrality, along with the other Powers, including Germany. Another way of putting it is that Belgium had what amounted to a treaty with everybody, against whoever might invade her.
Battle of Liège and the other pages branching from German invasion of Belgium have a more realistic description, partly taken from the German OH. You're quit right that this page reflects an earlier stage of research and needs to be adapted to take Zuber et al. into account. I'm tempted but stretched a bit too thin at the moment. My view is that while the Germans would have accepted a French debacle and pretended that it was what they planned all along, they were privately of the view that the sequel to the Marne was about par and that much of the German strategy in the west 1915-1917, was to exploit the position it had gained in 1914 to fight a defensive attrition campaign, in which the opponents had to try to emulate the German invasion of 1914 in the other direction.Keith-264 (talk) 13:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Belgian Resistance, etc. 

message: I've removed all the material that doesn't make reference to RH61/v.96 or refer to works that does, so the article as it now stands (6/6/14) is much shorter and has been written largely with reference to Holmes and a little to Zuber. But what the heck do we do with all the other stuff - the outdated, incorrect stuff that nevertheless gives background to German War Planning? It'd be a shame to just destroy it all forever, because I'm sure a lot of people have put a lot of effort into it, but it'd be a bit of a chore to correct it all. Worth it, I'd say, but still a chore.
If we don't manage to get a discussion going on this, I guess I'll just go ahead and edit it back in, with corrections where appropriate.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MAI 742 (talk • contribs) 11:42, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow!  This is ever so much better than the article was 12-18 months ago.  For the traditional (and incorrect) view that the "Schlieffen Plan" was THE operational plan for 1914, reference needs to be made to Gerhard Ritter's book, which reprints a version of Schlieffen's memo and then grossly over-interprets it.  For example, Ritter comes up with the 42-day timetable, when it is not in the Schlieffen text that he purports to be interpreting at all.  I have a downloaded copy of the Ritter book.  I need to get some references to it in here, as representing the traditional view and the source for many of those who followed that view from the '50's to the '90's.  Don't know if Holmes, whose work I haven't seen, mentions this issue, though I rather assume that he does.  But I have been swamped with my day job since the last time I did some input here.  Kudos to all to have made these enormous improvements.  Pechmerle (talk) 07:26, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite agree, MAI has brought the page into the C21st. I've got a copy of the Zuber book so I can remedy a few missing citations and page numbers. The history of Ze Plan! can go back in once the details of the real thing are sorted out. I got the pdf of Ritter too but haven't looked at it for a while. The quantity of  apologist post war writing and pop-history farrago is quite daunting though.Keith-264 (talk) 07:35, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll echo the remarks of the others - looks like really nice work, well done! Hchc2009 (talk) 14:32, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: A major revision that's more-or-less replaced the entire article, removing all the incorrect material until we can decide what to do with it

message: Shifted references to bottom of page and changed to sfns. Several new citations need page numbers.Keith-264 (talk) 09:21, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's a pretty fair summary, particulary the context in which Ze Plan! existed; what would you alter in the text to incorporate it?Keith-264 (talk) 15:01, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

text: Yet in the course of the war there was considerable centralisation of some aspects of battle (Artillery, corps command, air power) and a lot of tactical decentralisation (small infantry units). Did Moltke fall between two stools? Do you have any sources to cite?Keith-264 (talk) 21:03, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

text: thanks, do you know of any writing which refers to it? We need to avoid original research WP:OR.Keith-264 (talk) 13:36, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

text: It doesn't have to be in English, although it helps.Keith-264 (talk) 15:45, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  CE 

message: Managed to get a copy of Zuber and have added pages but in some cases only the chapter ranges. There are a couple of Holmes citations outstanding. Took the banner down.Keith-264 (talk) 08:46, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations 

message: became the main German deployment plan, as the Franco-Russian Entente expanded their armies and the German strategic situation deteriorated before 1914, Germany and Austria-Hungary being unable to increase their military spending to match them due to legislative deadlock.
What about the big German spending increase in 1913. Is the passage referring to the earlier 1900s-1910s?Keith-264 (talk) 06:06, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I have Wawro's recent book on Austria-Hungary before and during the war - I'm only part-way through it but it sounds as though the Hungarians repeatedly blocked attempts to strengthen the army, since they feared it would be used to against them. I can get page numbers if you like. Parsecboy (talk) 20:10, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arms race pre-1914 

message: I'm having trouble finding citations because I'm guessing the sources. Does anyone know which books are being referred to please? RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 06:17, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obsolete analyses 

message: Found a couple to replace citation needed tags but that's it. Not sure which Palmer and which Cohn are being mentioned in the text. Anyone know? Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 12:01, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation search 

message: I would like to suggest a rewrite/simplification of the intro section: it contains plenty of information from a passage about von Moltke's plans to details in the plan, but doesn't have a good thesis sentence explaining what the plan is. As someone with little historical knowledge, this article isn't very helpful: the first sentence is "The Schlieffen Plan was adopted as Aufmarsch I  in 1905 and modelled a Franco-German war, which would not involve Russia but was expected to include Italy and Austria-Hungary as German allies." May I suggest something more direct, like "The Schlieffen Plan was a 1905 German military deployment plan for a two-front war against both France and Russia".
Elude107 (talk) 07:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Owzat?Keith-264 (talk) 09:03, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro passage 

message: Added passages from Humphries and Maker on Der Weltkrieg, its view of Schlieffen and Moltke and their view of the debate.Keith-264 (talk) 22:47, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent additions 

message: Most of the material I think the article needs has been added but the History of the Schlieffen Plan section needs re-doing because of overlaps and omissions such as Creveld and Foley; the Zuber thesis needs a clearer exposition.Keith-264 (talk) 13:50, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additions 

message: "The plan was ruined by its flawed implementation in 1914 by [Moltke]", or so says our lead. I rather doubt that this is the case. If Moltke had sent additional troops into France, as Schlieffen originally planned, then German supply problems would have been even more serious. The Germans advanced until they ran out of supplies, so I don't think more soldiers would have helped. The Belgians blew up several railway bridges, which limited Germany's ability to send supplies to the front. H. Humbert (talk) 08:44, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I put a full stop in the wrong place, does it read any better now?Keith-264 (talk) 12:16, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moltke ruin the plan? 

message: Why does this article have to log everyone’s dates of birth and death? I edited these out, but got reverted by Keith-264 in the interests of ‘chronology’. In the unlikely event that someone wants to know whether Clausewitz was born on 1 June 1780, they can easily click the link. What is the relevance of these vital statistics? Valetude (talk) 10:37, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for asking why, I added the dates to show that the origins of the "Schlieffen Plan" lay in one of the traditions of Prussian war planning that went back to the Napoleonic Wars, it wasn't something that popped into Schlieffen's head in 1905. It's a short cut and is also why the article contains a history of the plan since 1918. The plan has been used as a polemical tool ever since and it's a balancing act, since going as far as the sources allow without crossing into OR isn't easy with the sources available. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 11:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn’t edit-out the years, only the irrelevant birthdays and deathdays, which seemed to me to clog-up the text. Valetude (talk) 11:21, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

text: I don't think they're irrelevant, they give a chronology showing how long a span the article covers. Keith-264 (talk) 11:31, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  But the years do that anyway. Who needs the months and days? Valetude (talk) 12:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chronology? 

message: Refers to a “Horst Bucholz” (Maltke too untrained.....).
I have searched Wikipedia for Horst Bucholz and can only find reference to the film star, most famed as Chico in The Magnificent Seven.
He seems a very unlikely source of knowledge on this subject, perhaps someone should verify this as real information and not a joke.
Horst bucholz (talk) 12:52, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Arden Bucholz Keith-264 (talk) 20:36, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robert Foley section 

message: added detail from the English translation of Der Schlieffenplan: Analysen und Dokumente after you got me off my backside. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 09:16, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits