The Germans put the Schlieffen Plan into operation on August 4th. From towns and cities all over Germany, more than 6,000 trains set off to deliver one and a half million German troops to their planned positions. The Germans positioned seven armies against the French in, what looked on a map like a straight line dropping from the north east near Cologne, where Germany bordered Belgium, to the Black Forest region to the south, facing Alsace-Lorraine. The French had placed their five armies in the North East of France running from the Ardennes into Alsace-Lorraine.
The plan was for the German 1st and 2nd armies to push through Belgium and part of southern Holland before turning south to take Paris almost head-on; its 3rd, 4th and 5th armies would do the same but from a more direct route through Luxembourg and through the Ardennes, approaching Paris more from the east. In this way, not only would Paris be taken, but the French armies, attacking Alsace and Lorraine in the north east of France, would be encircled and trapped between the German armies that had executed the plan and the German 6th and 7th armies facing the bulk of the French forces. That was the plan, anyway.
The French Plan XVII constituted a frontal attack in Alsace-Lorraine. The French advanced but were stopped by well-defended machine gun posts. They lost 300,000 men in just two weeks. They realised that they were in danger of being encircled by the German 7th army and so executed a tactical retreat. Meanwhile, the British landed their Expeditionary Force of some 150,000 men at French ports. But if the war was indeed to be won quickly, it was always more likely that it would be the Germans with their Schlieffen Plan that would be the winners. So, what went wrong?
The Germans met fierce resistance from the Belgians, the twelve forts at Liege held out against the German onslaught for almost two crucially important weeks, from August 6th to August 17th. They were also slowed down by the French, who brought troops from the failed assault in Alsace-Lorraine, and they also faced the British Expeditionary Force at Mons. Still, by the beginning of September with Belgian resistance broken and German advances all across the line of its 1st to 5th armies (and the German 6th and 7th armies comfortably holding the bulk of the French forces in Alsace-Lorraine), Helmuth von Moltke, the German commander-in-chief, still felt able to boast that ‘in six weeks all this will be over.’[1]
Moltke had been criticized, even blamed for Germany’s initial failure to secure victory, because of the changes he had made to the Schlieffen Plan before the outbreak of war. However, Russia had recovered from defeat in the Russo-Japanese War much more quickly than had been anticipated. Also, its railway-building had progressed quickly so that it would be able to mobilise more speedily. Consequently, it was prudent to commit more German troops to defend their shared border against Russian forces. For their part, the French were committed to an offensive into Alsace-Lorraine so it also seemed prudent to commit more German troops against the French too.
Consequently, Moltke planned to commit more German troops to Germany’s eastern border with Russia, whilst in the push against the French, he increased the size of the German left wing to twenty-three divisions by using additional reserves and kept the right wing that would push through Belgium at the planned fifty-five divisions. This should have no effect on the plan as a whole. Everything he did seemed prudent in the face of changed circumstances.
However, he made another change when he decided not to violate Dutch territory. This meant that the bulk of German troops, some 580,000 men plus horses, plus artillery, plus supplies, had to squeeze through a narrow gap, some six miles either side of the Belgium city of Liege, as well as right through it, when the city was heavily fortified. It would also be important for Germany to ensure the critically important railway lines were not destroyed or else the push into France would be made much more difficult.
Moltke then made further changes with the plan in execution, i.e. after war had broken out. These can be put down to two things: First, the Russian mobilisation was much quicker and more successful than expected, and when German refugees from East Prussia, fleeing the advancing Russian armies, were seen on the streets of Berlin pushing their possessions in prams, their children in bare feet, pressure piled on the German government to do something. Secondly, there was the strength of the resistance that the Germans continued to meet all along the Front. Both of these factors led Moltke to make tactical changes that proved to be critical to the success of the Schlieffen Plan. Moltke sent two army corps from the 2nd and 3rd armies (some 15% of his total force) to defend East Prussia and he sent a further 25% of his forces to defend Alsace-Lorraine. This meant that the Schlieffen Plan, which had still to be successfully completed, had only 60% of his available manpower when the Schlieffen Plan had envisaged 90% as being necessary.
The 1st army, commanded by Alexander von Kluck, being on the extreme right or west, had the furthest to march, some 500 kilometres in just three weeks (25 kilometres a day). This with heavy packs and whilst fighting their way through Belgium and into France. The logistics were considerable, for example field kitchens couldn’t keep up. Napoleon would have been beside himself because in 1914 German soldiers marched on empty stomachs. Communications were very difficult too. Radio was in its infancy and the 1st army had only two transmitters and, in any case, there was only one receiver at army HQ. It also took time to decipher the codes. What was more, the French quickly learnt how to jam the airwaves. This resulted in the army losing touch with both HQ and the 2nd army to its left (or east). Also, the 1st army had had to alter course in order to help the 2nd army, commanded by Karl von Bulow, which was facing particularly difficult resistance.
Still, for the British Expeditionary Force, as it was for the French, it was a desperate affair. The British were forced to retreat as the French retreated – nearly 250 kilometres in 13 days – or else they would have been totally isolated and swamped by vastly superior numbers. But they had to fight as they retreated and it looked in August that if the war was to be over quickly, it would be because the Germans had won.
Meanwhile, on September 2nd, the French government and its parliament fled Paris for Bordeaux, whilst Paris itself prepared for the worst. As thousands of Belgian refugees entered the city, Parisians were leaving it, heading south for safety (in total, a million would leave). In the city, trenches were being dug and barricades built on the approach roads leading into the city.
But the French had responded to the Schlieffen Plan. Its commander-in-chief, General Joffre, formed a 6th army to face the German 1st army. The French now also realised that they had an opportunity to attack Kluck’s flank as it passed to the north of Paris in an effort to join with Bulow’s 2nd army. It was a desperate affair. As Parisians fled their capital, some 10,000 reservists left for the front using whatever transport was available (including a fleet of hundreds of taxis, the ‘taxis of the Marne’).
It was this French attack that became known as the Battle of the Marne lasting from September 5th to September 12th that was to prove crucial. It was nothing less than a battle to save France. The Germans pitted over one and a quarter million men against a million French and the remaining 125,000 that made up the BEF. The German army, which had been advancing for 33 consecutive days was exhausted, its supply lines stretched (they had advanced to a point some 150 kilometres from their nearest railheads) and, faced with combined British and French assaults, Kluck’s army was forced to move back and so Bulow’s army too had to move back lest the gap between the two armies widen to the point where they could be outflanked. The Schlieffen Plan had failed. For Germany, Moltke was replaced by Erich von Falkenhayn as commander-in-chief (Moltke went off to have a nervous breakdown) and new strategies had to be worked out.
Both sides tried to find a way around each other’s armies. The Vosges mountains made this impossible in the south- east of the long line of armies, and there was only a narrow gap to exploit between their current positions and the French coast. So began the “Race to the Sea.” The ports were also crucial strategic points if more British forces and supplies were to be landed. In October the Germans went back through Belgium, taking Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Ostend before being thwarted by the Belgians when they flooded the River Yser. Antwerp, like Liege earlier, had put up a vital stubborn resistance that bought the British troops time to get into position in Flanders as well as the Channel ports themselves.
The Germans attacked at Messines and Ypres, outnumbering the British and Indian troops, two to one, and for three weeks of intense fighting both sides suffered terrible losses but without significant gain. The First Battle of Ypres ended without either side making any significant gain. But it meant that Germany had lost the race to the sea. In these first desperate months of war, the Germans had suffered 667,000 casualties (killed, wounded or missing), the French 995,000 and the British 96,000; the British Expeditionary Force was all but wiped out. This was a scale of loss unimaginable before the war had started and, as winter approached, both sides accepted that their forces were too exhausted to continue. A stalemate had been reached.
The Schlieffen Plan had failed and France had not been defeated.
[1] Robert Wolfson, Years of Change, p. 156