Plans of Attack
The Schlieffen Plan. By Gerhard Ritter. (Oswald Wolff, 30s.) THE doyen of German historians has written a Monograph on the celebrated Schlieffen Plan. This Plan was largely responsible for the strategy of the German General Staff and the diplomacy of William II in the period preceding the First World War. Schlieffen, who was Chief of the General Staff between 1891 and 1905, completely altered the previous mobilisation arrangements for a general war. Whereas his predecessors had called for a one-front war, and contemplated a major °ffensive primarily directed against Russia, Schlieffen shifted the emphasis towards the West. Ke wanted, before turhing East, to eliminate France by a single battle on the Cannm scale. His Plan underwent many alterations in the course of his tenure of office; but its essence remained the same, namely a swift and total destruction of the enemy in one manoeuvre. The military planning required an alteration in diplomatic arrangements; and strategy was to prevail over diplomacy, so that the speedy defeat of France required a violation et Belgian neutrality. Schlieffen went even flirther alld, in his final memorandum written six years after he had retired, advocated the inclusion of Holland in his invasion plans. Ritter traces the evolution of these concepts and the reactions of diplomacy. He shows how Sir ,lierlrY Wilson, a group in the Foreign Office, '0°d the French Government as a whole, flirted with the idea of violating Belgian ,nentrality; but that this fell through mainly because of the attitude of the political leadership 111 Britain. The military on both sides were think- IrI8 in similar terms. The difference was that in Germany the strategists won, and that the politi- cians there were not only weak but believed that military considerations took first place in the shaping of English and French diplomacy. The Germans started the war, therefore, with a prodi- gious diplomatic blunder which did not even bring the military success which had been expected. The Germans, in fact, invaded Belgium because they were already convinced that Britain would not remain neutral; and for this misjudgment— if it was a misjudgment—the diplomats rather than the military are to blame.
Ritter is unfair to Schlieffen. His plan nearly succeeded, even if it was modified by Ludendorff and the younger Moltke. And what other plan would have worked more successfully? The real blunderers were the Kaiser and the Foreign Ministry; and their calamitous errors, in turn, rose out of a political system in which the military were allowed the first and the last word.
DESMOND WILLIAMS
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