SCHLIEFFEN PLAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1940, Page 6

SCHLIEFFEN PLAN

GERMAN STATEGY. GREAT WAR TACTICS RECALLED. Whether Germany is trying the famous Schlieffen Plan again, extended to allow for an effort to provide air and sea bases in Holland, is not yet entirely clear. The indications are, however, that her strategy is based on this plan. It was in pursuance of this Schliefz’en Plan, in a modified form, that the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914. The idea was an encircling movement on the Allied flank, all along the line of the Franco-Belgian frontier. This avoided attacking the heavily-fortified French, posts on the German frontier and aimed at surrounding the French and British armies by an ultimate advance of the far wing of the Germans down from Belgium between Paris and the coast. The 1914 generals changed the plan, advanced on Paris from the front instead of the rear and failed at the Battle of the Marne. Count Alfred von Schlieffen, the originator of the plan, was dead a year before it was tried out. but his influence was still great in the German Army. He was appointed Chief of Staff of the army in 1891 and held the post for 15 years, exercising an extraordinary effect on the development of the German General Staff and the whole army. Like the elder Moltke, Schlieffen was a disciple of the noted strategist Clausewitz, whose ideas owed much to Napoleon. Their doctrine was that enemy forces should be not merely defeated, but destroyed, and thus to them it appeared necessary that not only the front, but the flanks and, if possible, the rear, should be attacked, so that the enemy should be forced to give battle on a reversed front.

Schlieffen, in the early years of this century, saw Germany surrounded on all sides by enemies, who, together, were far more powerful than herself. It seemed to him that the only salvation lay in opposing one of the enemies with a superior force inflicting a decisive defeat and then turning upon the other enemy, against whom defensive positions had till then been maintained. To achieve such aims rapidly decisive blows were necessary, and Schlieffen "s writings were designed to prove such blows possible and to show how troops could be handled for that purpose.