Unaddressed remains the 'home by Christmas' mantra popular in all quarters at the onset of war. Choosing an Eastern plan would put paid to any such notion on the German part. Realistic planners would have quickly realized that any such war would be a lengthy one, considering the victory conditions against Russia would entail pursuit at least to the edges of Poland. Considering the past history of attacks on Russia, one could not reasonably expect terms at that point. In the event it required over three years of war to get Russia to the point of collapse and surrender. Selling that in preference to the potential Schlieffen rewards would have been difficult. I've had to brief out some very poor courses of action, and I can't see the long war being selected over the Schlieffen one.
All else being equal, a short war is naturally preferable to a long one, but a long war was beyond consideration. Moltke modified the Schlieffen Plan specifically to avoid violating Dutch neutrality so that it could serve as a "windpipe" in a long war. Even assuming a quick victory over France, the expectation was for a long campaign against the Russians.
It is true that it took three years for the Russian home-front to collapse, but this was with the initial blow directed against the French, rather than at annihilating Russian forces in Poland. If the Germans had discrete policy goals, such a victory would open an opportunity to negotiate a peace that would divide the Entente and likely gain territory. Unless there was a clear determination to seek territory in the West, the Germans only needed to demonstrate that the French alliance could not defend the Russians.
Successfully defeating a French offensive and inflicting a serious defeat on the Russians would give the Russians strong incentives to accept a moderate separate peace as they could only expect the situation to worsen. Further, if the Germans had underperformed in the East, they would have the opportunity to use their superiority to methodically defeat the Russians. In contrast, the Schlieffen Plan left them in a very exposed position in the West with a massive frontline that limited their ability to pressure the Russians and allowed the Western Allies to continually pressure them.
The key factor is the political purpose Germany is pursuing. It would need to be extremely high for the Schlieffen Plan to be justified, and all indications are that there was not a true commitment to such a costly policy, but the plan was selected nonetheless because the General Staff was averse to considering political factors. It was, as Gerhard Ritter calls it, the triumph of the practice of war (Kriegshandwerk) over statecraft.
I was doing a bit of painting and thinking about this. I note that the value of alternative history is commensurate with its likelihood of becoming reality. This is why I am focusing on that angle. Something like "Guns of the South" by Turtledove is entertaining but not very helpful as a historical analysis, since it had/has no likelihood of actually happening. Caesar avoiding his fate in the Senate that day in 44BC was entirely possible, so that could be instructive.
Your first paragraph implies a long war was expected in Russia, but I am not so certain of that. I think the assumption would be that peace could be achieved with the Russians once France was dealt with. With fewer incursions into Russian territory, this was more likely, as a reasonable review of Russian warfare over the past century or two would have demonstrated. Absent its Entente partner, I can't see Russia wanting to fight two Great Powers on its own to little gain. Of course, once you actually violated Russian territory with the intent to keep it, I would expect no quarter.
Note I said 'its Entente partner' because there is a decision tree about British entry. It is true that the violation of Belgian neutrality made this much more likely, but it was not impossible even were that not to happen. The German battle fleet was a very good reason to want to settle scores with Germany, and the discussions about entry into the war in London did not entirely revolve around the violation of Belgium. In fact, I view it as a pretext, whether to satisfy public opinion or in lieu of the desire to take Germany down a peg. Which makes sense from the overall view of British foreign policy, which was to always be the enemy of whatever the strongest power in Europe was.
There also seemed no resemblance between the 1914 situation and that in 1870, where Napoleon III was afforded no real assistance other than a place to flee to in exile. Staff communications had been underway for quite a while with the French pre-1914. My point is that it could have gone either way, even if the Schlieffen Plan was not executed.
Your final paragraphs indicate your view that the Ost plan would have been wiser on a variety of counts. I do not disagree, it probably would have been - aside from one key point i'm about to bring up. I just consider it vanishingly unlikely it would have been selected.
Germany collapsed in 1918 largely due to exhaustion. Loss of manpower was one issue but a larger one in my view is the very effective economic warfare waged by the mostly British blockade of Germany. At the very least, Germany was dependent on imported foodstuffs which were cut off by this blockade. Hence, the "Turnip Winter" of 1916-1917.
German leadership could not have been unaware of this dependency. They also cannot have been unaware of British proclivities toward engaging in such economic warfare - the dueling Orders in Council and Continental System of the Napoleonic Era should make this quite clear. Prussia was one power that suffered under them. Blockade had been demonstrated as even more effective when practiced by steamships during the American Civil War.
Hitler and his Nazi state made 'autarky' a key preparatory goal during the 1930s, meaning making Germany self-sufficient to mitigate the expected blockade. They failed to do so in every regard, but the fact that the Nazi state was able to fight until 1945 had something to do with this. This should make obvious that they knew precisely why Germany had lost in 1918 and didn't actually believe in any 'stab in the back' myths.
So we are to understand that no one in the German leadership under the Kaiser understood that the British Grand Fleet was superior to the High Seas Fleet. Also, no one on the Kaiser's leadership team believed that the British blockade would likely prove effective. No one understood the animus that the creation of that same fleet had caused in Great Britain? Or perhaps they understood all of these things and chose a possibility of a short, victorious war precisely for that reason.
As for why they felt the need to enter a war in the first place, I am speculating (with some backing) that there was a feeling that if France was not struck down again, the gains of 1871 would be reversed. Whether this happened via a single defeat or a series of reverses probably wasn't clear to them. They had no desire to absorb France, but they did wish it kept prostrate. There was also a general sense of doom amongst the crowned heads of Europe. Things were changing. They weren't wrong, as future events demonstrated, but sitting the anticipated war out was not something they could countenance. Therefore, I submit that the primary war aim of Germany was to humble France yet again to preserve its preeminent position in Europe. Russia was an irrelevancy.
In light of that, the primary German error was not doing whatever it took to keep Britain neutral. I can't fathom how that might have been possible, but one thing might have been to negotiate away the High Seas Fleet early enough to reduce British hostility, or to have never begun building it in the first place. In the event, nothing was done, and this is what doomed Germany to defeat, regardless of what direction it chose to go in.
As you say, not violating Belgian neutrality and fighting a defensive war against France is only the start for keeping Britain neutral. I think you may be right about the High Seas Fleet, and there might have been some way to negotiate it away with Britain - maybe agree on fleet sizes ala the later Washington Treaty? - but this is probably asking too much. The Kaiser had no proper strategic staff planning process, as Kiran points out, and there was no Bismarck (who remembered what it was like when Prussia was weak) to encourage caution. This is a poor analogy, but I think of the hubris of JCS/NSC planning for the last few decades in DC as equivalent to the Kaiser's - far too much hegemonic conceptions of power and diplomacy accompanied by a failure of imagination when it comes to shortcomings as well as out-of-the-box strategic planning.
Excellent presentation, as I noted unaddressed questions point by point I soon found you addressing them! Bravo. As noted, the Schlieffen plan placed enormous demands on the German infantry in particular. And as the General Staff kept hedging their bets they needed more formations some of which were filled by calling up reservists to make up the numbers. However, not all of these formations were given time for the training necessary to make them current on the latest doctrine and tactics. British and French officers in the west noted some of these units in the attack still using the Prussian tactics of 1870. Your reference to sunk costs is also on the mark as the war progressed as every nation adjusted their victory demands to reflect the sunk costs instead of the anticipated increased cost generated by the new objectives.
I read The Guns Of August years ago. Never really contemplated that the Germany had other, such obvious options. There is a very high cost to bad governance.
Kiran, thank you for this essay, very well presented. I wish planners in our J3/J5 were as thoughtful.
Like you and SecofWar, I have always pondered the issue of the what-if concept of 'defense in the West, offensive in the East.' My alternate history concepts have been played out in war games (such as *To End All Wars*), where Germany does seem to do better by standing of the defensive in the West and limited offensives in the East. As you say, this would have created a small chance for British neutrality and thus maybe preventing the 1918 catastrophe for the four eastern Empires.
Not sure if you've seen 'The Schlieffen Plan: Internatinal Perspectives on German Strategy for World War I' ed. Hans Ehlert, Michael Epkenhans, & Gerhard Gross (2014). It's partly in response to Terence Zuber's dispute over what the Schlieffen plan meant, and there's good discussions therein, though nothing as useful as your essay, if I may be so frank.
Still, it's fascinating because, as far as I can tell, there are no Ostaufmarsch plans in any of the surviving records, and this even though they weren't formally scrapped until April 1913. The Aufsmarsch order of battle for 1895-96, for example, had 16 Army Corps in the West and only 9 Army Corps in the East, many of which were Reserve divisions or Landwehr Brigades.
As an aside you might want to look at Dieter Storz' chapter on the fighting in the Vosges for what a limited Cannae might look like. Gunther Kronnebitter looks at the lack of planning with AH too.
Unaddressed remains the 'home by Christmas' mantra popular in all quarters at the onset of war. Choosing an Eastern plan would put paid to any such notion on the German part. Realistic planners would have quickly realized that any such war would be a lengthy one, considering the victory conditions against Russia would entail pursuit at least to the edges of Poland. Considering the past history of attacks on Russia, one could not reasonably expect terms at that point. In the event it required over three years of war to get Russia to the point of collapse and surrender. Selling that in preference to the potential Schlieffen rewards would have been difficult. I've had to brief out some very poor courses of action, and I can't see the long war being selected over the Schlieffen one.
All else being equal, a short war is naturally preferable to a long one, but a long war was beyond consideration. Moltke modified the Schlieffen Plan specifically to avoid violating Dutch neutrality so that it could serve as a "windpipe" in a long war. Even assuming a quick victory over France, the expectation was for a long campaign against the Russians.
It is true that it took three years for the Russian home-front to collapse, but this was with the initial blow directed against the French, rather than at annihilating Russian forces in Poland. If the Germans had discrete policy goals, such a victory would open an opportunity to negotiate a peace that would divide the Entente and likely gain territory. Unless there was a clear determination to seek territory in the West, the Germans only needed to demonstrate that the French alliance could not defend the Russians.
Successfully defeating a French offensive and inflicting a serious defeat on the Russians would give the Russians strong incentives to accept a moderate separate peace as they could only expect the situation to worsen. Further, if the Germans had underperformed in the East, they would have the opportunity to use their superiority to methodically defeat the Russians. In contrast, the Schlieffen Plan left them in a very exposed position in the West with a massive frontline that limited their ability to pressure the Russians and allowed the Western Allies to continually pressure them.
The key factor is the political purpose Germany is pursuing. It would need to be extremely high for the Schlieffen Plan to be justified, and all indications are that there was not a true commitment to such a costly policy, but the plan was selected nonetheless because the General Staff was averse to considering political factors. It was, as Gerhard Ritter calls it, the triumph of the practice of war (Kriegshandwerk) over statecraft.
I was doing a bit of painting and thinking about this. I note that the value of alternative history is commensurate with its likelihood of becoming reality. This is why I am focusing on that angle. Something like "Guns of the South" by Turtledove is entertaining but not very helpful as a historical analysis, since it had/has no likelihood of actually happening. Caesar avoiding his fate in the Senate that day in 44BC was entirely possible, so that could be instructive.
Your first paragraph implies a long war was expected in Russia, but I am not so certain of that. I think the assumption would be that peace could be achieved with the Russians once France was dealt with. With fewer incursions into Russian territory, this was more likely, as a reasonable review of Russian warfare over the past century or two would have demonstrated. Absent its Entente partner, I can't see Russia wanting to fight two Great Powers on its own to little gain. Of course, once you actually violated Russian territory with the intent to keep it, I would expect no quarter.
Note I said 'its Entente partner' because there is a decision tree about British entry. It is true that the violation of Belgian neutrality made this much more likely, but it was not impossible even were that not to happen. The German battle fleet was a very good reason to want to settle scores with Germany, and the discussions about entry into the war in London did not entirely revolve around the violation of Belgium. In fact, I view it as a pretext, whether to satisfy public opinion or in lieu of the desire to take Germany down a peg. Which makes sense from the overall view of British foreign policy, which was to always be the enemy of whatever the strongest power in Europe was.
There also seemed no resemblance between the 1914 situation and that in 1870, where Napoleon III was afforded no real assistance other than a place to flee to in exile. Staff communications had been underway for quite a while with the French pre-1914. My point is that it could have gone either way, even if the Schlieffen Plan was not executed.
Your final paragraphs indicate your view that the Ost plan would have been wiser on a variety of counts. I do not disagree, it probably would have been - aside from one key point i'm about to bring up. I just consider it vanishingly unlikely it would have been selected.
Germany collapsed in 1918 largely due to exhaustion. Loss of manpower was one issue but a larger one in my view is the very effective economic warfare waged by the mostly British blockade of Germany. At the very least, Germany was dependent on imported foodstuffs which were cut off by this blockade. Hence, the "Turnip Winter" of 1916-1917.
German leadership could not have been unaware of this dependency. They also cannot have been unaware of British proclivities toward engaging in such economic warfare - the dueling Orders in Council and Continental System of the Napoleonic Era should make this quite clear. Prussia was one power that suffered under them. Blockade had been demonstrated as even more effective when practiced by steamships during the American Civil War.
Hitler and his Nazi state made 'autarky' a key preparatory goal during the 1930s, meaning making Germany self-sufficient to mitigate the expected blockade. They failed to do so in every regard, but the fact that the Nazi state was able to fight until 1945 had something to do with this. This should make obvious that they knew precisely why Germany had lost in 1918 and didn't actually believe in any 'stab in the back' myths.
So we are to understand that no one in the German leadership under the Kaiser understood that the British Grand Fleet was superior to the High Seas Fleet. Also, no one on the Kaiser's leadership team believed that the British blockade would likely prove effective. No one understood the animus that the creation of that same fleet had caused in Great Britain? Or perhaps they understood all of these things and chose a possibility of a short, victorious war precisely for that reason.
As for why they felt the need to enter a war in the first place, I am speculating (with some backing) that there was a feeling that if France was not struck down again, the gains of 1871 would be reversed. Whether this happened via a single defeat or a series of reverses probably wasn't clear to them. They had no desire to absorb France, but they did wish it kept prostrate. There was also a general sense of doom amongst the crowned heads of Europe. Things were changing. They weren't wrong, as future events demonstrated, but sitting the anticipated war out was not something they could countenance. Therefore, I submit that the primary war aim of Germany was to humble France yet again to preserve its preeminent position in Europe. Russia was an irrelevancy.
In light of that, the primary German error was not doing whatever it took to keep Britain neutral. I can't fathom how that might have been possible, but one thing might have been to negotiate away the High Seas Fleet early enough to reduce British hostility, or to have never begun building it in the first place. In the event, nothing was done, and this is what doomed Germany to defeat, regardless of what direction it chose to go in.
As you say, not violating Belgian neutrality and fighting a defensive war against France is only the start for keeping Britain neutral. I think you may be right about the High Seas Fleet, and there might have been some way to negotiate it away with Britain - maybe agree on fleet sizes ala the later Washington Treaty? - but this is probably asking too much. The Kaiser had no proper strategic staff planning process, as Kiran points out, and there was no Bismarck (who remembered what it was like when Prussia was weak) to encourage caution. This is a poor analogy, but I think of the hubris of JCS/NSC planning for the last few decades in DC as equivalent to the Kaiser's - far too much hegemonic conceptions of power and diplomacy accompanied by a failure of imagination when it comes to shortcomings as well as out-of-the-box strategic planning.
Excellent presentation, as I noted unaddressed questions point by point I soon found you addressing them! Bravo. As noted, the Schlieffen plan placed enormous demands on the German infantry in particular. And as the General Staff kept hedging their bets they needed more formations some of which were filled by calling up reservists to make up the numbers. However, not all of these formations were given time for the training necessary to make them current on the latest doctrine and tactics. British and French officers in the west noted some of these units in the attack still using the Prussian tactics of 1870. Your reference to sunk costs is also on the mark as the war progressed as every nation adjusted their victory demands to reflect the sunk costs instead of the anticipated increased cost generated by the new objectives.
I have no commentary on your argument, but thank you for the excellent essay.
Fascinating.
I read The Guns Of August years ago. Never really contemplated that the Germany had other, such obvious options. There is a very high cost to bad governance.
Kiran, thank you for this essay, very well presented. I wish planners in our J3/J5 were as thoughtful.
Like you and SecofWar, I have always pondered the issue of the what-if concept of 'defense in the West, offensive in the East.' My alternate history concepts have been played out in war games (such as *To End All Wars*), where Germany does seem to do better by standing of the defensive in the West and limited offensives in the East. As you say, this would have created a small chance for British neutrality and thus maybe preventing the 1918 catastrophe for the four eastern Empires.
Not sure if you've seen 'The Schlieffen Plan: Internatinal Perspectives on German Strategy for World War I' ed. Hans Ehlert, Michael Epkenhans, & Gerhard Gross (2014). It's partly in response to Terence Zuber's dispute over what the Schlieffen plan meant, and there's good discussions therein, though nothing as useful as your essay, if I may be so frank.
Still, it's fascinating because, as far as I can tell, there are no Ostaufmarsch plans in any of the surviving records, and this even though they weren't formally scrapped until April 1913. The Aufsmarsch order of battle for 1895-96, for example, had 16 Army Corps in the West and only 9 Army Corps in the East, many of which were Reserve divisions or Landwehr Brigades.
As an aside you might want to look at Dieter Storz' chapter on the fighting in the Vosges for what a limited Cannae might look like. Gunther Kronnebitter looks at the lack of planning with AH too.