FIGHT TO THE END WW1

The Schlieffen planwhat are these do you know?Hill I think

By 1914, both Germany and France had plans prepared for an outbreak of war. The French High Command had drawn up Plan 17 in 1912-13. It was based on an attack from Champagne across the German border into Alsace-Lorraine. In August 1914 it went into immediate effect.

In Germany, the 'Schlieffen Plan', had been drawn up by the German Chief of Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, in 1905, was set in motion. It was intended to win the war in the west in six weeks.

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The Schlieffen Plan had been drawn up to deal with a situation in which Germany had to fight a war on two fronts. The Germans assumed that the more dangerous opponent would be Russia, so the Plan was intended to knock out France before the Russian army mobilised. The Plan was based on the belief that the Russian army would take six weeks to mobilise. In six weeks France would be defeated. An army of 1,500,000 men would advance through Belgium, swing around the French army, encircle Paris and then France would collapse.

The Plan looked good on paper, but Schlieffen had not taken account of the distances that the German armies had to cover in the strict timetable he laid down. It also assumed that forces on the French right would be allowed to advance into Germany to draw them away from the German forces advancing through Belgium. But the Plan was changed by von Moltke, the new Chief of Staff, who withdrew forces from the right wing of the German army, to strengthen the left.

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A further complication was the intervention of Britain. When Germany declared war on Belgium on 3 August 1914 the Belgian government appealed to Great Britain for help. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was hurriedly got together and despatched to Belgium within three weeks. In the meantime, the German army met much stronger opposition in Belgium than was expected. The Belgian forts at Liege held out for twelve days and Brussels was only occupied on 20 August.

This meant that the BEF was in position to meet the advancing Germans at Mons on 23 August and again at Le Cateau on 26 August. The British were professional soldiers. They were heavily outnumbered, but they were trained to fire thirty rounds a minute from their new Lee Enfield Mark III rifles. They managed to slow the advance of the Germans, although they could not stop it.

In the east, the Russian army had taken the Germans by surprise and had attacked after two weeks, before it was fully mobilised. Two German army corps were sent east as reinforcements.

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 This weakened the German forces in Belgium. Consequently Von Kluck, the commander of the German First Army, on the extreme right, gave up the attempt to encircle Paris and turned south. The Germans then met French forces along the river Marne. In a battle lasting eight days, the Germans were forced to fall back to the river Aisne. The Schlieffen Plan had failed

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