The Marne, 1914

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The Marne, 1914 Page 6

by Holger H. Herwig


  Schlieffen meticulously crafted his grand design. The first twenty days of mobilization were laid out down to the minute for 20,800 trains of fifty cars each that were to transport 2.07 million men, 118,000 horses, and 400,000 tons of war materials to the fronts.14 Each active army corps was assigned 140 trains, each reserve corps 85, and each cavalry division 31. Thirteen major rail lines were secured for the Westaufmarsch alone, and 660 trains per day were to run along each line. Major operations, Schlieffen lectured the General Staff, needed to be calculated down to the last detail. “It must be the same as it is at battalion-level exercises.”15 The campaign against France was to be over in forty days, after which the armies would race across Germany to deal with the slowly mobilizing Russian armies. Schlieffen had decided on a high-risk offensive between Thionville (Diedenhofen) and the Dutch border with all available forces (five armies of seventeen active corps) for political reasons: Russia’s poor performance in its war against Japan that year convinced him that the French would stand on the defensive for years to come.16

  In his last “General Staff Tour West 1905,” Schlieffen twice had his operations staff game three scenarios (Steuben, Kuhl, Freytag) for a campaign against France. In each case, he led the German (blue) side, which defeated his adversary (red). The most interesting for our purposes is Case Freytag II, in which Schlieffen pursued the retreating French armies across the Marne, cut them off from Paris by turning south before he reached the capital, “pursued the French east of Paris,” drove southeast, and finally broke them against the Swiss border by the fifty-sixth day of mobilization.17

  It was an all-or-nothing throw of the dice, a high-risk operation born of hubris and bordering on recklessness. It was coordinated with neither the Chancellery, the Navy Office, the Foreign Office, the Finance Ministry, the War Ministry, nor the Austro-Hungarian ally. It disregarded Carl von Clausewitz’s concepts of interaction, friction, escalation, reassessment, the “genius of war,” and the “fog of uncertainty.” It violated the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands, thus making Britain’s entry into the war more probable. It was crafted without regard for existing German troop strengths. The final memorandum failed to mention that Germany was eight corps shy of Schlief -fen’s original prescription. And while it envisaged first the siege and then the battering of Fortress Paris by seven or eight corps, none of these as yet existed even on paper.18

  Moreover, the Schlieffen Plan was based on a number of fragile assumptions: that the Russians would take at least forty days to mobilize; that the Dutch and Belgian railroad systems would assure his speed of advance; that the element of surprise would throw the French (and British) off their guard; and that the German railroad system would be able expeditiously to transfer the bulk of the armies from west to east in time to stall the Russian steamroller. And Schlieffen’s 1905 blueprint was riddled with hedge words such as if, when, perhaps, and hopefully. It was a classic best-case scenario, an “audacious, yes, overly audacious gamble, whose success depended on many strokes of luck.”19

  Schlieffen was not without his critics.20 Senior commanders questioned his “miraculous” strategy. Karl von Einem-Rothmaler pointed out that whereas the Elder Moltke in 1870–71 had led a Prussian army of 462,000 soldiers, Schlieffen proposed directing one of 2 million. Colmar von der Goltz questioned the concept of a forty-day Blitz through Belgium and France. Gottlieb von Haeseler argued that one could not expect to capture a great power such as France “like a cat in a sack.” Martin Köpke, Rothe’s predecessor as deputy chief of staff, as early as August 1895 had warned his chief against such an all-or-nothing strategy. France’s numerical superiority in troop strength and its vast network of fortresses along its eastern border with Germany precluded another quick victory such as that scored by the Prussians against Napoleon III at Sedan in 1870. “We cannot expect quick, decisive victories,” he cautioned, as even “the most offensive spirit” could achieve little more than “a tough, patient and stout-hearted crawling forward step-by-step.” Foreshadowing what was to come twenty years later, Köpke argued that Schlieffen’s plan, if enacted, would degenerate into “siege-style” warfare.21 The “storm of steel” that dominated the modern battlefield by 1905 was lethal: Prussian troops suffered 68 percent casualties at Mars-la-Tour in 1870, whereas the Japanese Nambu Brigade incurred 90 percent losses during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. What nation would accept that loss rate for an army of two million young men?

  SCHLIEFFEN PLAN 1905 AND FRENCH PLAN XVII

  Schlieffen apparently accepted Köpke’s critique—and continued with his operational planning. For his critics offered no viable alternative. Germany could not fight a protracted war against a superior hostile coalition either in terms of men and money, or without endangering domestic stability (the “red specter,” as Schlieffen put it). It could not divide its armies equally between the west and the east and hope to stay on the defensive indefinitely. Above all, the General Staff could not simply admit that war was no longer a viable option for Germany without calling into question its very existence. It was a Hobbesian choice.

  ALTHOUGH SOME REVISIONISTS HAVE argued, “There never was a ‘Schlieffen plan,’”22 Germany’s senior military leaders had no doubt as to its existence well before 1914. As early as 1907, Moltke had Karl von Fasbender, chief of the Bavarian General Staff, game various aspects of it. In 1912, Wilhelm II asked his senior military planners whether they were prepared to execute the Schlieffen Plan. Two years later, Moltke confirmed that he had inherited a copy of Germany’s “one” operations plan from Schlieffen. Throughout the march to the Marne (“the basic idea of the Schlieffen operation”), Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Groener of the Prussian army’s railroad section wrote his wife praising “the late Schlieffen” as “the man who thought up all the ideas we are carrying out.”23 Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, commander of Sixth Army, throughout August and September 1914 compared every operation mounted by Moltke to “the Old Schlieffen” or to “the Schlieffen Plan.”24 Moltke’s successor, Erich von Falkenhayn, cryptically noted on taking command of the General Staff in mid-September 1914: “Schlieffen’s notes are at an end and therewith also Moltke’s wits.”25 Colonel Wilhelm Müller-Loebnitz of the General Staff (and later official army historian) knew of the existence of the plan well before 1914 and participated in many of the maneuvers designed to test it. Moreover, Schlieffen had frequently and “thoroughly discussed” the plan with Müller-Loebnitz as far back as 1905.26 And the editors who produced the fourteen-volume official history of the war (Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918) had no problem identifying that operations plan to have been Schlieffen’s.

  In fact, there existed no formal German war plan. Only Wilhelm II in his function as Supreme War Lord could exercise “the power to command.”27 As is well known, the kaiser was utterly unable to carry out such a demanding role. Thus, war planning fell by default to the chief of the General Staff, Moltke, even though he commanded not a single soldier, battalion, regiment, division, or corps. He could issue no formal orders, purchase no equipment, and authorize no war plan. His position was not embedded in the Constitution of 1871. And until a state of war was decreed by the kaiser and his chancellor (with the approval of the Bundesrath, or Upper House) and the various federal armies united into one German army in August 1914, the chief of the General Staff remained a purely Prussian official, one without formal command over the other federal armies.

  THE YOUNGER MOLTKE LITERALLY inherited the Schlieffen Plan in January 1906, for Schlieffen upon retirement had “purposefully” left the memorandum of 28 December 1905 in the General Staff’s iron safe.28 Who was this man, who later would march 2.147 million men into battle?29 Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke was all things to all people. To his friends, he was decent, honest, earnest, and cultured. To his detractors, he was dour, pessimistic, insecure, and an “occultist.” For he had learned what one German prince called “wretched faith-healing”30 from his wife, Eliza, and her spiritual mentor, the Austrian theosop
hist Rudolf Steiner.* Friends and foes alike agreed that Moltke was a complex figure, and one without the sharp Napoleonic eye for the main prize (coup d’oeil) or the necessary ambition and drive (feu sacré).

  Born on 25 May 1848, Moltke saw action during the Franco-Prussian War in the Vosges, at Sedan, and during the siege of Paris. He rose quickly in rank to become Wilhelm II’s personal adjutant. He dabbled in music and painting. He was a tall, corpulent man. He aspired to command an army corps, but his famous name eventually placed him at the head of the General Staff. He neither sought nor desired the position, fearing not only the kaiser’s well-known penchant for meddling in military affairs but also the “difficult inheritance” of becoming Schlieffen’s successor.31 He was appointed to the post on 1 January 1906, just before turning fifty-eight. While senior army commanders were shocked by the appointment, Wilhelm II crowed that Moltke was just the right man because he, the kaiser, did “not require a General Staff.”32

  Moltke quickly adopted Schlieffen’s blueprint. He shared it with only a few members of his planning staff and cut off all communications with Schlieffen, obviously intent on establishing his own credentials independent of the “master.” He maintained most of Schlieffen’s blueprint, but eventually changed some of its bolder force concentration. As a result, Germany went to war on 4 August with a “modified Schlieffen Plan with similar goals.”33

  The basic similarities are glaring.34 Both men believed that Germany was “encircled” by hostile powers, and that only military action could “break” the iron ring. Both accepted that Germany would be numerically inferior in a future war; hence, it had to dictate the timing and pace of that conflict. This led to a third common constant, namely, that the main thrust of the offensive had to fall on France. In 1909, as the annexation crisis over Bosnia-Herzegovina evoked a possible Austro-Russian war, Wilhelm II revealed that he knew the Schlieffen Plan. “In order to be able to march against Moscow,” he noted, “Paris must be taken first.”35 That same year, Moltke reminded his Austro-Hungarian counterpart, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, that in case of a two-front war, he would advise the kaiser “to deploy the main mass of German forces initially against France,” leaving only a minimum number of troops “to guard our eastern provinces” against Russia. He gamely promised Conrad that the German army would redeploy in the east “3–4 weeks + 9–10 days transport” after the start of hostilities in the west.36

  In December 1912, Moltke went out of his way to make certain that both the chancellor and the Prussian war minister were aware of the German plan in the event of war. He informed Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and Josias von Heeringen in writing that “given its central location,” Germany needed a thin screen against one enemy in order to hurl its main forces against the other. “That side always can only be France.” More, “in order to take the offensive against France, it will be necessary to violate Belgian neutrality.”37 Therewith, all pretense at innocence by the Reich’s political elite regarding the Schlieffen Plan was destroyed. After the war, Wilhelm von Dommes of the General Staff recalled that Moltke had confided in him that he had discussed the basic contours of the Schlieffen Plan already with Bethmann Hollweg’s predecessor, Bernhard von Bülow.38 During the critical first week of August 1914, Moltke assured the Bavarians that he remained true to Schlieffen’s concept: Germany’s strategy was to “advance upon Paris with all our might via Belgium in order to settle accounts quickly with France.”39

  The basic differences are also important.40 First, Moltke feared the impact of a British naval blockade on the German food and raw materials supply. Hence, he canceled Schlieffen’s march through the Maastricht Appendix in southern Holland, for that country would have to remain “the last windpipe, through which we can breathe.”41 Put differently, Germany planned to import strategic materials “under cover of the [neutral] American flag” through neutral Holland in time of war. Moltke’s decision, while politically advantageous, brought to the surface new “technical problems.” To wit, the six hundred thousand men of First and Second armies as well as their horses and trains would now have to break into Belgium (and then France) through a twenty-kilometer defile between the Ardennes Forest and the Maastricht Appendix. In the way stood one of Europe’s most formidable fortresses—Liège (Lüttich),* guarded by a belt of twelve massive steel and concrete forts with four hundred guns and a garrison of perhaps thirty thousand men. Schlieffen had planned to bypass it by marching through southern Holland. Moltke in his “Deployment Plan 1909/10” decided to take Liège by way of a bold strike (Handstreich) with five infantry brigades by the fourth or fifth day of mobilization.42 But if this failed, he, like Schlieffen, was more than ready to advance through the Netherlands.43 The assault on Liège was one of the General Staff’s “best-guarded secrets,” hidden especially from the gossipy kaiser.

  Second, Moltke developed doubts concerning Russia’s predicted slow mobilization. In retirement, Schlieffen assured staff officers that the Russian armies marching against Germany would not reach even Galicia in Russian Poland “before the dice were cast in the west.” Austria-Hungary’s “fate,” he stated, would be decided “not along the Bug but rather the Seine” River.44 Moltke was not so sure. With a massive infusion of capital from France, Russia had expanded and modernized the railway system leading to its western border with Germany. In 1912, Moltke noted his concerns about the expected pace of Russian mobilization in the margins of Schlieffen’s draft, concluding that his predecessor had underestimated the strength of the Franco-Russian military alliance.45 Still, Moltke could not bring himself to abandon Schlieffen’s blueprint. He expanded the Prussian army by 9,000 men in March 1911 and by 117,000 in March 1913; in February 1913 he canceled the General Staff’s only operations plan in the east.

  Third, Moltke grew increasingly nervous about concentrating seven-eighths of his forces on the right wing, which would form the eventual hammer to swing around Paris. It seemed too great a gamble. It “made no sense,” he lectured his future deputy chief of staff,* Hermann von Stein, to advance with the bulk of the army into a region (Belgium) where the enemy likely would not concentrate its forces.46 Already in 1905, Moltke noted on Schlieffen’s great memorandum that the French would not oblige Germany and simply stand on the defensive. The “inherent offensive spirit” of the French and their desire to regain the “lost provinces” of Alsace and Lorraine pointed toward a French offensive the day war was declared.47 Thus, whereas Schlieffen had hoped for a major French drive across the Vosges Mountains to make his sweep through Belgium and northern France that much swifter and more effective, Moltke began to worry about the under-strength of the German left flank facing France in the south, with its vital industries in the Saar. In his “Deployment Plan 1908/09,” Moltke for the first time assigned an entire army corps to defend Upper Alsace; thereafter, in “Deployment Plan 1913/14,” he increased the southern flank to include Seventh Army (two active and one reserve corps) to defend Alsace and the Rhine, and Sixth Army (four active corps) to hold southern Lorraine. In the process, he reduced the relative strength of the right wing from Schlieffen’s 7:1 to a mere 3:1.48

  Perhaps Moltke was emboldened to undertake this critical shift of forces by what has been called “one of the greatest [coups] in the history of espionage.” Berlin’s man in Paris, officially designated “Agent 17,” was in fact an Austrian national, August Baron Schluga von Rastenfeld. Working in a shroud of mystery—Schluga refused to inform Berlin of any of his sources, which were mainly open-source materials and conversations at cocktail parties—Agent 17 shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914 had provided the General Staff with a document showing that the French would deploy their forces in the center of their main line of advance on the fifth day of mobilization.49 The German sweep through the Low Countries would thus evade the French offensive through the Ardennes.

  In talks with his Italian counterpart, Alberto Pollio, in 1912, 1913, and 1914 as well as with the newly appointed commander of Italian Third Army, Luigi Zu
ccari, in April 1914, Moltke received assurances that Rome would dispatch Third Army to the Upper Rhine by M+17 “as soon as the casus foederis was established.”50 But there was widespread doubt in Berlin whether the Italian promise would eventuate, and thus by 1914 Moltke committed no fewer than eight German corps to his left flank, both to tie down French forces opposing them and to deny their being shunted north to face the great wheel through Belgium and northern France.51 His critics never forgave him for this “dilution” of the critical right wing.

  Still puzzling to scholars is the fact that in light of his concerns with the Schlieffen Plan, Moltke in the first six years of his tenure at the General Staff failed to create the forces required to execute the grand design, or to acquire desperately needed modern war materials (such as aircraft and communications systems), instead channeling funding to the three main branches: artillery, infantry, and cavalry.52 Nor did he manage sufficiently to expand the reserves—while lamenting as late as May 1914 that thirty-eight thousand qualified young men annually evaded the draft owing to a shortage of funds. This is especially puzzling given Moltke’s growing fears that the British might undertake amphibious assaults on Danish Jutland or on Schleswig-Holstein at the onset of a continental war. Whereas Schlieffen in 1905 had cavalierly decreed that the British were of no concern to him since the decision in the war would come in France,53 Moltke recognized correctly the British threat and decided to base IX Reserve Corps (roughly twenty thousand men) in Schleswig-Holstein for what he feared could be a three-front war.

 

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