With the creation of the Franco-Russian Alliance and the failure of the
Reinsurance Treaty in the late nineteenth century, Germany needed a
strategy for fighting a two-front war. In response, Field Marshal Count
Alfred von Schlieffen produced a study that represented the apex of
modern military planning. His Memorandum for a War against France, which
incorporated a mechanized cavalry as well as new technologies in
weaponry, advocated that Germany concentrate its field army to the west
and annihilate the French army within a few weeks. For generations,
historians have considered Schlieffen's writings to be the foundation of
Germany's military strategy in World War I and have hotly debated the
reasons why the plan, as executed, failed.
In this important volume, international scholars reassess Schlieffen's
work for the first time in decades, offering new insights into the
renowned general's impact not only on World War I but also on nearly a
century of military historiography. The contributors draw on newly
available source materials from European and Russian archives to
demonstrate both the significance of the Schlieffen Plan and its
deficiencies. They examine the operational planning of relevant European
states and provide a broad, comparative historical context that other
studies lack. Featuring fold-out maps and abstracts of the original
German deployment plans as they evolved from 1893 to 1914, this rigorous
reassessment vividly illustrates how failures in statecraft as well as
military planning led to the tragedy of the First World War.
