Robert Foley - Preparing the German Army for the First World War the Operational Ideas of Alfred Von Schlieffen and Helmuth Von Moltke the Younger

8/11/2019 Robert Foley - Preparing the German Army for the First World War the Operational Ideas of Alfred Von Schlieffen a

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German

First

Army

World War:

Operational Ideas ofvon Schlieffen and

Moltke the Younger

Preparing the

for the

TheAlfred

Helmuth von

Robert T . Foley

In the years after the First World War, German soldiers set about analysing the

conflict in great depth. In the wake of the initial shock of the defeat, they looked

understandably for reasons why the Kaiserheer lost the war for which it had spent

the previous 45 years preparing. Decisions taken in the war's first weeks, in particu-

lar during the battle of the Marne where most believed the conflict was lost, were

examined with a fine-tooth comb.) Key actors, such as Alexander von Kluck, Gerhard

Tappen and Hermann von Kuhl, published memoirs and essays defending their pro-

fessional reputations and their interpretations of the events in late August and earlySeptember 1914 that led to the German retreat from the Marne.2 More 'disinterested'

My thanks to Mr Bruce I. Gudmtmdsson, Dr Helen McCartney and Professor Derulis Showalter for their

assistance in the preparation of this article. The analysis, opinions and conclusions presented here are those

of the author alone, and do not represent tile views of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, the

UK Ministry of Defence, or any other government agency.

Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are the author's.

1. For example, see Hermarul von Kuhl, Der Weltkr ieg 1914-1918, 2 vols (Berlin: Verlag Tradition Wilhelm

Kolk, 1929), 1: 45; and Otto von Moser, Kurzer s tra teg ischer i iberbl ick i iber den Wel tkr ieg 1914-1918

(Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1923), 26f.

2. Alexander von Kluck, Der Marsch m i f Paris l l11d die Marneschlacht 1914 (Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1920);

Gerhard Tappen, H i s zur Marne (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1920); and Hermann von Kuhl, Der Marnejeldzug

1914 (Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1921).

WAR& SOCIETY, Volume 22, Number 2 (October 2004)

The University of Ne\v South Wales 2004

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2 WAR & SOCIETY

observers weighed into the arguments on one side or the other.3 Soon, however,

research turned from the events of t he fateful battle to t he planning and the

direction of Germany's overall war, in short, to an examination of the generalship of

Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger) who, as Prussia's Chief of the Great General

Staff from 1906 to 1914, was responsible for such matters.

Indeed, having died during the war, Moltke offered an easy target and a

tempting scapegoat for German failures, and he was vilified by his former sub-

ordinates. First, Moltke's prewar self-doubts were recalled,4 and he was portrayed as

a weak leader who did not have the force of will to make the difficult decisions

necessary in wartime.5 Later, he was blamed for changes made to the war plan drawn

up by his predecessor as Chief of the General Staff, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen,

changes which supposedly weakened the decisive right wing of the German army

and led to the defeat in the battle of the Marne.6 Also from his weakness of character

came purportedly his hands-off leadership style that in September 1914 allowed

the two armies of the German right wing to advance without positive orders from the

German high command.? These works depicted Moltke as unsuited for high command

and laid the German defeat at the battle of the Marne squarely at his feet.

Recent research by Annika Mombauer has gone a long way to refute this

interpretation of Moltke as a weak leader, not least by showing the key role he

played in the decision for war in 1914.8 However, there was another reason, usually

overlooked by historians, for German soldiers to analyse Moltke's generalship that

3. For example, see Artur Baumgarten-Crusius, Deu tsche Hee i fi ihnmg im Marnefe ldzug 1914 (Berlin: AugustScheri, 1921); and Wilhelm Miiller-Loebnitz, Die Fi ihrung im Marne-Feldzl ig 1914 (Berlin: ES. Mittler,

1939).

4. This view was given impetus by the publication of Moltke's memoirs by his wife, which included a

letter from Moltke in which he outlines his hesitancy to take up the position as Chief of the General

Staff in 1905. Helmuth von Moltke, Er innerungen , Br iefe , Dokumente 1877-1916 (ed. Eliza von Moltke)

(Stuttgart: Der Kommende Tag, 1922), 304ff.

5. See especially, Wilhelm Groener, Der Feldherr 'wider Willel1: Operative 5tudien i iber den W eltkrieg (Berlin:

ES. Mittler, 1931); and Wolfgang Foerster, G rafSchlief jen lind der Weltkrieg (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1921),21

ff. Even the German official history treats Moltke harshly: see Reichsarchiv, Del' Weltkrieg 1914-1918,

Bd IV: D e l' M a r n e- Fe ld zu g -D i e S ch la c ht (Berlin: ES. Mittler, 1926),533 ff.

6. Hermaml von Kuhl, Del ' deu tsche Genera ls tab in Vorbere itzmg lmd Durchfi ihrzmg des Wel tkr ieges (Berlin:

ES. Mittler, 1920), 166 ff.

7. Hans Ritter, Kr i tik des Wel tkr ieges: Das Erbe Moltkes l l11d Schlie ff ens im grossen Kr iege (Leipzig: K.F.

Koehler, 1920), 111 f.

8. Amuka MOlnbauer, H e lm u th v o n M ol tk e a n d th e O r ig in s o f t he F ir st W o r ld W a r (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001).


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Foley: O p er a ti on a l I de as o f S ch lie ffe n a n d M o lt ke 3

was unrelated to the political act of apportioning blame for Germany's defeat. Prior

to the war, Germany had developed a sophisticated system of professional education

within its army, and the desire of Germany's soldiers to learn from events and to

improve professionally did not end with the dissolution of the Imperial army.9 In

the interwar period, Germany's professional soldiers, many of whom were now un-

employed as a result of the restrictive Treaty of Versailles, felt compelled to

analyse the war and look for a reason for the rise of position warfare and with it the

attritional warfare Germany could not hope to win. Their motivation in doing this

was primarily to find ways to prevent a similar situation from arising in a future warthat most felt would have to take place to redress the wrongs of the previous war.IO

Thus, not only was Moltke's character and fitness for high command questioned, buthis ideas about how armies should fight and his abilities as a soldier were thrown

into disrepute.l1

Central to this interpretation of Moltke as a poor general was the/comparison

with his predecessor Schlieffen,who was almost invariably depicted as the 'masterteacher of the modern war' .12Interwar authors held up Schlieffen's ideas about how

the army should fight as being the epitome of how to conduct Bewegungskrieg (war ofmovement).13 While interwar authors sometimes praised Moltke's operational

preparation of the German army for war, they did so with hesitation. They

portrayed him as merely carrying on the ideas of Schlieffen, and not always very

well.14 Further, when they illustrated particular operational concepts, theyinvariably used examples from Schlieffen's teachings, rather than Moltke's.

Implicit within the writings of these authors was the belief that Schlieffen would

9. On this process see Arden Bucholz, Mol tke , Sch li e jfen and Pruss ian War Planning (Oxford: Berg, 1991).

10. Wilhelm Groener, Lebenerinnerungen (ed. Friedrich Freillerr von Gaertringen) (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck

& Ruprecht, 1957), 16. This was also one of the prime goals of the Reichsarchiv. See Helmuth Otto,

'Der Bestand Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres im Btmdesarchiv-, MiliUirisches

Zwischenarchiv Potsdam', Mili ti irgeschichtl iche Mitte ilungen 51 (1992): 430.

11. This viewpoint has remained largely lmchallenged: see Bucholz, Pnts s ian War Planning, 217 ff.

12. Kuhl, De l ' deutsche Genera lstab , 126; Friedrich von Boetticher, 'Der Lehrmeister des neuzeitlichen

Krieges', in Friedrich von Cochenhausen, V o n S ch a r nh o rs t z u S c hl ie ff en , 1806-1906: H un d er t J a h re

pr eu j5 is cJ z-de ll ts ch er Gen er a ls ta b (Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1933), 249-316.

13. The prime expositions of this point of view are: Foerster, Graf Schlie jfen; Wolfgang Foerster, A u s d et

G e nd a n ke n we rk st a tt d e s d e ll ts ch e n G e ne ra l st ab e s (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1931); Wilhelm Groener, Oas

Testament des Grafen Sc/zl ie jfen: Operative Studien i ibel' den W eltkl 'ieg (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1927); and Eugen

Ritter von Zoellner, 'Schlieffens Vermachtnis', Sonderheft to the Mili ti irwissenschaftl iche RundscJwu 3.Jg

(1938).

14. Kuhl, Vorbereitung, 140; Foerster, GrafSclzliejfen, 24f.


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4 WAR & SOCIETY

have prepared the German army better for the coming war. Frorp. this premise came

the belief that if only Schlieffen's operational ideas had been followed, trench war-

fare, and with it a long war of attrition that Germany could not possibly win, would

never have occurred.

While much of Schlieffen's writings about the conduct of war were published

in the interwar periodI5 (thus providing evidence for Schlieffen's supporters), the

publication of Moltke's service writings was delayed by the outbreak of the Second

World War.l6 With the destruction of Moltke's papers along with most of the rest of

the German army archives by Allied bombers in 1945, historians have been left

without the source material needed to re-examine this interwar interpretation of the

supposed inferiority of the teachings of the seventh Chief of the Prussian General

Staff. However, the recent discovery of copies of most of Moltke's 'tactical-strategic

problems' in the us National Archives allows us for the first time to question thisearlier interpretation.I7

Instituted by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the 'tactical-strategic

problems' were originally designed to be given to prospective General Staff officers

as a final test of their abilities; as such, they were more commonly known as

Schluflaufgaben (final problems). By the time that Schlieffen took over as Chief of

the General Staff, they were given to a much wider range of officers on the General

Staff and had come to playa crucial role in their training.I8 As General Staff officers

would 'fight' the Kaiserheer in wartime, the discovery of these problems allows for

a unique insight into Moltke's ideas about how the German army should conduct its

coming war and into what he was teaching his subordinates in the General Staff on

the eve of the First World War.

The copy of the problems now held in the us National Archives wasoriginally sent by Colonel A.L. Conger, the American military attache in Berlin, to

15. Alfred von Schlieffen, Dienstscllriften, Bd I:Die tak ti sch-stra teg isc llen Au fgaben aus den jahren 1891-1905

(Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1937); and idem, Dienstscllriften, Bd II:Die Groflen Genera /s tabsre i sen - Os t - aus den

Ja hre n 1891-1905 (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1938).

16. On the planned publication of Moltke's service writings, see Friedrich von Rabenau (chief of the army

archive) to all army archives, 22 May 1937, Alfred von Schlieffen papers, RG 242, M-961/Roll 1,

National Archives and Records Administration [NARA].

17. 'German General Staff Problems, 1892-1913', RG 165, box 620, NARA. These problems were translated

in 1928 by Lawrence Ecker, an employee of the US Embassy in Berlin. My special thanks to Bruce

Gudmtmdsson for bringing these problems to my attention.

18. Preface, Schlieffen, Dienstscllriften I, vii; Max van den Bergh, D a s D e u ts ch e H e e r v a r d e m W e l tk ri eg e

(Berlin: Sanssouci Verlag, 1934), 175 f; KuW, Der deu tsc lze Genera /s tab , 126; and Groener, Leben-

erinnenl11gen, 67 f.


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Foley: O p er ati on a l I de as o f S ch li effe n a n d M o l tk e 5

the Intelligence Section of the War Department in Washington in June 1928. Conger

had been loaned a set of Schluj3aufgaben by a friend in the Reichswehr for his own

'personal study and benefit'. This manuscript contained copies of 18 Schluj3aujgaben

issued by Schlieffen and six issued by Moltke. Conger had seen fit to have these

translated by a clerk in the American Embassy,19 not only because the problems were

valuable pieces of history, but because they were still being used for training German

officers and as such were an important piece of intelligence about the Reichswehr.20

Thus, this manuscript, when combined with the few surviving examples of Moltke's

comments to other staff problems, gives us problems for seven of his eight years as

Chief of the General Staff before the beginning of the war.21 With this evidence,

this article aims to add to our growing picture of the operational capabilities of the

German army before the outbreak of the First World War by subjecting Moltke's role

in preparing General Staff officers, and hence the Kaiserheer, for war to a much

needed reassessment.22

IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION

Drawing its inspiration from the traditions of Gerhard von Scharnhorst and Carl von

Clausewitz, the Kaiserheer was an institution that took training and education

19. A comparison with Schlieffen's published SchlLtfiaufgaben and the copies of several of Moltke's

problems fotmd in the papers of Wilhelm Groener has shown that the 1928translation is accurate, if

somewhat rough. Original copies of Moltke's problems for 1907, 1911 (not included in the Conger

manuscript), and 1913can be fotmd in the papers of Wilhelm Groener, RG 242, M137,rolls 19and 20,

NARA.

20. A.L. Conger to Lieutenant Colonel R.H. Williams, 26 Jtme 1928, RG 165, box 620, NARA. Conger

wrote: 'Please impress on everyone they go to the highly confidential nature of these problems. No

one on this side knows I have them except the man who loaned them to me and for that reason the

fact that we have them should particularly not be mentioned to any visiting German officer'.

21. Copies of two of Moltke's critiques to his staff rides have also survived in PH3/663, 'Grosse

Generalstabsreise 1906',and PH3/664, 'Grosse Generalstabsreise 1908', BtmdesarchivIMiliUirarchiv,

Freiburg [hereafter BA/MA]; and copies of Moltke's general comments on the army corps general

staff rides from 1906 to 1914 still exist in GSt. 1231, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv-Kriegsarchiv,

Munich [hereafter BayHSTA-KA].

22. Although this article is clearly related, it does not attempt to deal directly with the controversy about

the Schlieffen plan that has been running since 1999 and shows little sign of abating. For the most

recent salvos in this debate, including this author's own contribution, see Terence Zuber, 'The

Schlieffen Plan Was an Orphan', W a r i n H i st or y 11: 2 (2004), 220-5; Terence Holmes, 'Asking

Schlieffen: A Further Rely to Terence Zuber', War in His tory 10:4 (2003),464-79; and Robert T. Foley,

'The Origins of the SchlieffenPlan', War in His tory 10:2 (2003),222-32.


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seriously.23 Each commander had the responsibility to train his men to the utmost of

their ability, and every officer was expected to continue his education throughout his

career.24 To this end, senior officers throughout the various armies that made up the

Kaiserheer set up training programmes for their subordinates.25 Officers were

expected not only to be competent on the drill deck, but also to display the progress of

their learning in wargames such as staff problems carried out indoors and staff rides

carried out in the field. Their performance in such exercises served as important

indicators for promotions and assignment to other positions.26 Training and edu-

cational exercises were taken very seriously, therefore, by most officers.

The Chief of the General Staff had training and education duties similar to

any other commander within the German army, and it has always been clear that

Schlieffen took his duty as teacher to his younger officers very seriously. Indeed, he

took this task so seriously that he left his subordinates little free time, even

assigning problems to his officers over holidays.27 In addition to being used to train

officers in skills needed to perform their staff duties, Schlieffen viewed his staffproblems, staff rides and wargames as important preparation for high command.28

Thus, in a critique of the Schluj3aujgaben in 1903, Schlieffe!l wrote:

I do not see any reason why the future should not see a few of you gentlemen at thehead of an army. Nonetheless, I hope that you are at least called to lead an army

corps or a division or to stand by the side of a commander [Truppenjiihrer] as a

chief of staff or as a general staff officer. Then you will have to understand how to

judge the manCEuvres of an army.29

The seriousness with which Moltke took his educational duties is also clear.

Indeed, he took these duties so seriously that he challenged the erratic Kaiser

23. The military education culture of the Kaiserheer has not been well examined. For an introduction, see

Heiger Ostertag, B i/dung, Ausbi ldung und Erz ie l ll lng des Offi zi erkorps im deutschen Ka i ser reich 1871-1918

(New York: Peter Lang, 1990).

24. See Kriegsministerium, Felddienst-Ord11l111g (Berlin: E.S.Mittler, 1908),10.

25. A good example of an 'education plan' has survived in the US National Archives. It was written by

the commander of the Bavarian 6th Division. Pflauen, 'Ausbildtmg der Offiziere', 15 December 1905,

RG 242, T-78, roli21, NARA.

26. On the importance of such training to tlle careers of German officers, see Holger Afflerbach,FalkenhaYI1: Poli tisches Denken l l11dHal1deln im Kaiserreich (Mtmich: Oldenbourg, 1996),83 f.

27. Kuhl,Der deutsche Generalstab, 126.

28. Ritter, Kr it ik des We l tkr ieges, 7 .

29. Alfred von Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems 1903', in Robert T. Foley, Alfred von Schlie ffen's

M ili ta ry W ri tin gs (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 107.


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Foley: O pe ra ti on al Id ea s o f S ch lie ffe n a nd M o ltk e 7

Wilhelm IIin a way that Schlieffen never dared. As a requirement for his taking the

post as Chief of the General Staff, Moltke insisted that the Kaiser absent himself

from taking his usual disruptive role in the large-scale manreuvres held every year.3D

The prospective General Staff Chief told his sovereign: 'The worth of the great

manceuvres as preparation for war lies in the testing of the higher commanders

against an enemy who makes his own decisions ... If the decisions of the Commanding

Generals are always influenced by the interference of Your Majesty, the desire for

initiative will be taken from them' .31 The Kaiser agreed to Moltke's terms, and the

results were almost immediate. One foreign observer wrote of the first manreuvres

under Moltke's control: 'On the whole there seems little doubt that the new chief of

the general staff has infused fresh life into these manceuvres, and that a marked

advance has been made on previous years'.32 Moltke's reputation consequently rose

within the army.33

However, training subordinates in the mechanics of staff duties and for

higher command was only one function of such exercises. Despite the attention paid

by postwar observers to the tactical and operational ideas of the Chiefs of the

General Staff, these men had little formal means of influencing 'doctrine' within the

Imperial German army. The Ministry of War wrote drill regulations, and the

commanding generals of Germany's corps districts had substantial latitude to teach

whatever tactical and operational methods they saw fit.34Although recent research

has gone a long way towards showing that the General Staff was not the only source

of tactical and operational concepts in the Kaiserheer,35 General Staff officers

nonetheless played a crucial role in 'fighting' the German army in the First World

War.36 (Indeed, much of the tactical innovation during the war came from young

30. Moltke, Erinnenmgen, 308ff.; Mombauer, Moltke, 58 ff.

31. Moltke, Erinnenmgen, 310.

32. War Office, General Staff, 'Report on Foreign ManCEuvres 1906', W0106/6170, National Archives,

Public Record Office, Kew [hereafter PRO].

33. See Franz Endres, 'Kaisermanover 1906', MKr. 3165, BayHSTA-KA; Mombauer, Moltke, 88; Groener,

D as Te stamen t de s Gra fe n Sc l1 lief fe n, 79 .

34. Bergh, Das deutsche Heel' , 38 ff.

35. Antulio J . Echevarria, II, A ft er C la u se w it z: G e rm a n M i li ta r y T h in ke r s Be fo re t h e G re a t W a r (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 2000), and Eric Dorn Brose, T h e K a i s er 's A r my : T h e P o l it ic s o f M i li ta r y

T e ch n olog y i n Ge r ma n y d u ri ng t he M a ch i ne A g e, 1870-1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),

both downplay the role of the Chief of the General Staff in developing tactical and opera tiona I ideas

in the Kaiserheer.

36. Upon being given command of the Fifth Army in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II told his son, Crown Prince

Wilhelm, that he was to do whatever his Chief of Staff, Constantin Sclunidt von Knobelsdorf, told


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General Staff officers, such as Hermann Geyer, Fritz von LoBberg, and Max Bauer,

who entered the General Staff during Moltke the Younger's tenure as Chief.)37 In

order to influence how the German army would fight, Schlieffen and Moltke relied on

the key roles that their subordinates would play once they had left the confines of

the Great General Staff in Berlin. Thus, the two men also used these training

exercises as a means of imparting their views on the conduct of warfare, and from the

available material we can gain a good view of how each man wanted their sub-

ordinates to fight future wars and battles.

LESSONS IMPARTED

Both Schlieffen and Moltke the Younger faced broadly similar strategic situations.

Since the negotiation of the Franco-Russian Military Convention in 1892, Germany

was compelled to plan to fight on two fronts in the event of a general European war.38

While Germany could count on the support of her firm ally, Austria-Hungary,against Russia, she had to face alone in the west France, and possibly Great

Britain.39 Although the German army was stronger than the French, it would be

weakened by the need to send at least some forces to the east to deal with an

expected Russian invasion. Thus both Schlieffen and Moltke recognised that the

German army would have to fight outnumbered on both fronts.4 o While recent

research by Stig Forster has cast doubt on the traditional interpretation that

him to do. Kronprinz Wilhelm, Meine Erinnerzmgen aus Deufschlands Heldenkampf (Berlin E.S. Mittler,

1923),4.

37. Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 (New York:

Praeger, 1989); and Martin Samuels, Command orControl? Command, Training and Tactics in the British

and German Armies, 1888-1918 (London: Frank Cass, 1995).

38. Indeed, Germany had begun to plan for this contingency much earlier. Already in 1877 Moltke the

Elder began to develop plans for a war against France and Russia simultaneously. See Helmuth Graf

von Moltke, Die Aufmarschpliine 1871-1890 (ed. Ferdinand von Schmerfeld) (Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1929),

65 ff.

39. Although Italy was supposed to send a force to the Franco-German border in the event of war,

neither Schlieffen nor Moltke truly believed that Italian aid would be forthcoming. See Schlieffen to

his sister Marie, 13 November 1892, reprinted in Alfred von Schlieffen, Briefe (ed. Eberhard Kessel)(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, 1958), 296.

40. Both pushed very hard for increases in the German army to even the odds somewhat. See Ludwig

Riidt von Collenberg, 'Graf Schlieffen und die Kriegsformation der deutschen Armee', Wissen und

Wehr ]g. 1927: 605-34; Mombauer, Moltke, 145 ff; and Stig Forster, Der doppelte Milifarismus: Die deutsche

He eresrii stu ngp oli tik zw isc hen Statlls -qu o-S ich eru ng lmd Agg ressio n, 1890-1913 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner,

1985).


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Foley: O p er a ti on a l I de a s o f S ch li eff en a n d M o lt ke 9

Schlieffen and Moltke trusted completely in a short war,41 it is clear from their staff

problems that neither man stopped training for a 'decisive' battlefield victory.42

This situation increased the importance of creating a corps of officers capable of

fighting more intelligently than their larger enemies, an officer corps capable of

identifying and exploiting fleeting opportunities on the battlefield. In Moltke's

words: 'We must not believe ... that we will face easy problems in a future European

war which the near or distant future may bring. But in every [situation]' however

difficult it may be, there will be favourable moments which can be exploited. If they

are recognized, rapid and energetic action must be taken' .43To prepare their sub-

ordinates for such a war, the wargames of both men abound in examples of smaller

German forces combating larger enemies.

Given its expected numerical inferiority, both Chiefs of the General Staff

stressed to their subordinates that the German army had to strive for decisive action

in every case. Generally, this meant the 'annihilation' of the enemy army, or at least

a substantial enough portion to force the enemy to end the war on German terms.44Both men stressed the necessity of taking advantage of a divided enemy whenever

possible in order to defeat him piecemeal. For example, during the General Staff

Ride (East) in 1894, the commanders of a notional weak German army faced the

advance of two separated Russian armies. When faced with such a scenario,

Schlieffen advised his subordinates 'to exploit this situation'. He told them to

'attempt to strike one Russian army decisively and then turn against the other'.45

Moltke offered similar advice. In his problems of 1909, Moltke assumed a multi-pronged French advance against Germany with one army advancing in Alsace, one in

Lorraine between Metz and Strassburg, and a third via Luxemburg. He stressed: 'The

victory of the Germans over the French secondary army will not cause the main armyto halt or turn around; it will still only be a partial success. It is otherwise if the

41. Stig Forster, 'Der deutsche Generalstab lUld die Illusion des kurzen Krieges, 1871-1914.Metakritik

eines Mythos',Militiirgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 54(1995):61-95.

42. See also Robert T. Foley,German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and Attrit ion

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),ch. 3.

43. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1909',in 'German General StaffProblems', 370.

44. Both Schlieffen and Moltke used the term Vernichtung extensively. However, this did not mean the

physical destruction of the enemy, but rather the destruction of the enemy's ability to continue

fighting. Thus, Schlieffen wrote: 'Capitulations [Kapitulationen] have taken the place of slaughters [in

modern battles of annihilation]': Schlieffen, 'Camlae', inSchlieffen's MilitanJ Writings, 210. Cf. Jehuda

L. Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their

Imp act on the Germa n Con duc t afTwo World War s (Westport, CT:Greenwood, 1986).

45. Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1894',inSchlieffen's Military Writings, 14.


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10 WAR & SOCIETY

main army in Lorraine can be beaten. With its defeat the operations of the secondary

army will immediately collapse' .46

However, for both Chiefs of Staff, it was not as simple as defeating

decisively the largest enemy army. Both men pointed out repeatedly the inter-dependence of the disparate enemy armies; if one were destroyed, the others might

not be able to carry out their missions. Under the direction of Schlieffen and Moltke,

wargames taught General Staff officers to examine the situation from the enemy's

perspective and to try to come up with the enemy's most likely course of action, not

least by having one set of officers direct the 'enemy' forces.47 From there, officers were

encouraged to look for the key elements of an opponent's probable plan and attempt to

disrupt it.

Attempting to examine the situation from the enemy's point of view also had

another important role for Schlieffen and Moltke. Both men recognised the

limitation of intelligence and consequently laid great emphasis on teaching theirsubordinates to operate within the 'fog of war'. Schlieffen in particular stressed that

putting oneself in the shoes of the enemy helped deal with the uncertainty that

accompanied any battle and helped reduce reliance on intelligence, which could

often be misleading. In 1892he wrote: 'There is absolutely no sure intelligence about

the strength of the enemy ... Moreover, exact information about this force is neither

to be awaited nor is it required. In reality, an abundance of exaggerated and contra-

dictory reports will arrive, more likely to obscure the facts of the case than to clear

them Up'.48

Moltke too acknowledged the importance of being able to operate with

incomplete information. In 1907 he told his subordinates: 'In war there is no such

thing as complete certainty. The adversary has his own will and may perhaps do

something entirely different from what we hope. One can therefore only reckon with

probabilities and cannot wait for clarification of his intentions. One would otherwise

always come too late'.49 However, while it may be true as Brose has argued recently,

46. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1909', in 'German General Staff Problems', 372.

47. See Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1910', in ibid., 417.

48. Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1892', inSchlieffen's Military Writings, 75. See also his 'General

Staff Ride (East), 1899', ibid., 48 f.

49. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1907', in 'German General Staff Problems', 341. See also Chef des

Generalstabes der Armee, Nr 5090, 'Bemerklmgen zu den Korps-Generalstabsreisen 1906', 29 April

1907, BayHSTA-KA, GSt. 1231, and Moltke's discussion of the final staff ride he led before the war in

Foerster, Schlieffel1, 25 ff.


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that the German army had an ambivalent attitude towards technology before 1914,50

it is clear that Moltke put great stock in the emerging technology of aircraft to help

fill in the intelligence picture in future war. In his Schluj3aufgaben of 1910 he wrote:

'Thanks to good balloon reports, the news at hand regarding the enemy gives a very

accurate picture of the situation' .51 The next year he again discussed the key role air-

craft would play in future conflict: 'Air reconnaissance will have the result of

determining the deployment and the maneuvers of the enemy earlier than has

previously been the case'.52

Regardless of the intelligence available, both men taught the ruthless sub-

ordination of all available means to achieving a rapid and decisive victory. In their

view, forces held back from the battlefield as a strategic or operational reserve, as

was the French and British practice at the time,53 had no place in modern war,

particularly in a numerically inferior German army.54 In a General Staff Ride in 1894

Schlieffen wrote: 'the bringing about of a decision by means of a reserve held back

from the battle is ... barely possible. The battle lines are too long to bring reserves to

the decisive point in good time, and the battlefield is too large to know where this

decisive point will be when it is not predetermined by the general operation plan' .55

In Moltke's words: '[When] the commander-in-chief is seeking a decision, he must

unite everything that is available'.56 To this end, both men stressed repeatedly that

even fortress garrisons should be used to provide more troops and artillery for the

decisive attack. As Schlieffen put it: 'fortress troops will not merely observe the

fight from the ramparts, as if from the walls of Troy, and simply fill the spectators'stands. They must climb down and participate' .57 Moltke wrote similarly: 'The send-

50. Brose, Kaiser's Army, 159-65.


52. Moltke, 'SchluBaufgaben, 1911', in M-137/19, Groener papers, NARA.

53. On the Entente practice, see British General Staff, War Office, Field Service Regulations, Part I:

Operations (London: HMSO, 1909), 112-20; Wilhelm Balck, Die franzosische lnfanterie-Taktik in ihrer

Entwickelung seit dem Kriege 1870/71 (Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1902),53 ff.

54. Cf. Zoellner, Vermiichtnis, 24 f.; and Wallach, Dogma, 50 f.

55. Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1894', in Schlieffen's Military Writings, 24. See also Schlieffen, 'Die

taktisch-strategischen Aufgaben, 1898', Dienstschriften I, 51 f.


57. Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1905', in Schlieffen's MilitanJ Writings, 114. See also, Schlieffen,

'Die taktisch-strategischen Aufgaben, 1894', in Dienstschriften I, 24 f; Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic

Problems 1907', and 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1913', in 'German General Staff Problems', 337 and

427.


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12 WAR & SOCIETY

ing of the main reserve of a large fortress to take part in a tactical decision outside

the fortress is often necessary, since one can never be strong enough in battle and one

must not leave available forces unused' .58

Another means of balancing the uneven forces somewhat was to make use ofterrain. Perhaps unsurprisingly in an organisation that placed map-making at the

core of its peacetime business,59 the two General Staff Chiefs paid close attention to

teaching their subordinates about the important role played by geography in war. In

their wargames, Schlieffen and Moltke repeatedly used terrain features, such as

lakes, rivers, forests, and fortresses, to their own advantage. In the first instance,

such features were useful for keeping enemy armies divided, and hence liable to

defeat in detail. In the east, both Schlieffen and Moltke acknowledged the

importance of the Masurian Lakes in keeping advancing Russian armies separated.

Also in the east, the fortress of Konigsberg offered a protected point from which

attacks against the flanks or rear of invading Russian armies could be launched.

Finally, the Vistula River with its fortresses at Thorn and Posen provided aformidable obstacle to delay a Russian advance.6 o In the west, the terrain was

dominated by the great fortress complex of Metz and Diedenhofen (today

Thionville) in the north and the fortress of Strassburg and the Vosges Mountains inthe south.61 Metz/Diedenhofen either offered protection for the German right flank

or divided invading French armies, while Strassburg and the mountains set limits on

a possible French invasion from this direction. In fact, geography and fortresses

created a sack along the western border into which invading French forces couldmarch and be caught.62 Moreover, large rivers in the west, such as the Rhine and the

Moselle, were also useful in separating or delaying enemy forces.63

58. Chef des Generalstabes der Armee, Nr 5258, 'Bemerkungen zu den Korps-Generalstabsreisen', 18 May

1906, GSt. 1231, BayHSTA-KA.

59. Bucholz, Prllssian War Planning, 68 ff.

60. For examples, see Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1894', 'General Staff Ride (East), 1901', and

'Kriegsspiel, 1905', in Schlieffen's Military Writings, 14,52 f. and 121 f.; and Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic

Problems, 1907', in 'German General Staff Problems', 336 f.

61. Schlieffen and Moltke encouraged the construction of new outworks for these fortresses. See Oberst

a.D. Heye, 'Die Festung Metz', Vierte!jahresheftefiir Pioniere (1936), 215-22.

62. Indeed, this scenario was used frequently in wargames before the war and was written into the

German war plan of 1914 as a possible German reaction to a French invasion. See Conrad Krafft von

Dellmensingen, 'Kriegstagebuch', entry for 22 August 1914, BA/MA, W10/50642.

63. For example, see Schlieffen, 'Die taktisch-strategischen Aufgaben, 1897', in-Dienstschriften 1,46 f.;

Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1909', in 'German General Staff Problems', 370, and his

'Generalstabsreise 1908', BA/MA, PH3/664. See also Zoellner, Vermiichtnis, 28 f.


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Foley: O p er a ti on a l Id ea s o f S ch li ef fe n a n d M o lt ke 13

Terrain features also could be used to assist an attack. For instance, rivers

were useful features upon which to pin enemy forces in order to facilitate their

destruction. In his final problems of 1907 Moltke told his officers: 'We will ... decide

for the attack upon the enemy's left wing. If this can be enveloped and beaten, the

adversary can be crowded against the lakes ... He will have an exceptionally

difficult retreat and it is to be hoped that a large part of his combatant forces will be

annihilated' .64 Fortresses were also to play an active role with the field army. In his

Kriegsspiel of1905 Schlieffen instructed his subordinates on the role of the fortress of

Konigsberg in a future war: 'In this fortified area, an army can be assembled to fall

upon the flank of the [Russian] army'.65 Moltke felt similarly about the role of

fortresses. In his General Staff Ride of 1906 he told his subordinates: 'We have built

Metz into a fortress of great size in order to use it operationally. Its widely dispersed

forts give an army of many corps the opportunity to assemble unseen by the enemy in

complete protection and to strike out by surprise' .66

With no reserve held back from combat under the commander's hand andpossibly a numerically inferior force, Schlieffen and Moltke advised their sub-

ordinates to concentrate their forces at the point of decision in order to achieve a

local superiority. In Schlieffen's words: 'proper manceuvring must assemble all

available forces at the decisive point' .67Moltke expressed himself similarly. In his

Schluflaufgaben he stressed repeatedly that it was important 'to assure oneself of

local superiority on that part of the prospective battlefield on which one desires to

conduct the decisive attack'.68 For both Schlieffen and Moltke the area where such a

decisive attack should take place was on the enemy's flanks.

In common with most German officers of their day, both Schlieffen and

Moltke eschewed frontal attacks in favour of attacks against an enemy's flanks andrear.69 The increased range and capability of modern firearms and artillery had con-

64. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1907', in 'German General Staff Problems', 339. See also

Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1903', inSchlieffen's M ilitary Writings, 103.

65. Schlieffen, 'KriegsspieI1905', inSchlieffen's Military Writings, 122.

66. Moltke, 'Generalstabsreise 1906',8 f., PH3/663, BA/MA. See also Moltke, 'Generalstabsreise 1908',26,

PH3/664, BA/MA; and Chef des Generalstabs der Armee, Nr 4044, 'Allgemeine Bemerktmgen zu den

Korps-Generalstabsreisen', 12 April 1910, 1231, BayHSTA-KA, GSt.

67. Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1899', inSchlieffen's M ilitary Writings, 42.

68. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1907', in 'German General Staff Problems', 338. See also his

'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1907', and 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1913', in ibid., 355, 423, 433.

69. Schlieffen's emphasis (or obsession as some have said) on flank attacks and envelopments has been

well documented. For more recent treatments, see Gunther Rothenberg, 'Moltke, Schlieffen, and the


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14 WAR & SOCIETY

vinced most German soldiers of this period that purely frontal attacks would be

suicidal for the attacking troops?O In his 'War Today', published in 1909, Schlieffen

expressed this belief clearly when he wrote:

It is no longer possible, as it had been in the eighteenth century, to deploy againstone another in two lines and to fire salvos into one another at not too great a dis-

tance. In the space of a few minutes, both armies would be eradicated from the

Earth by rapid fire. It is no longer possible to storm the enemy position in

Napoleonic columns, columns as wide as they are deep. They would be smashed by

a hail of shrapnel. It is also not possible to overwhelm the enemy, as it was

recommended a short time ago, through the fire of thick swarms of skirmishers

[Schiltzenschiirme]. These swarms would be quickly massacred.71

Moltke felt similarly: 'Modern combat, particularly frontal combat, will be a long,

weary and bloody struggle. The strength of the front has constantly grown with the

improvement of firearms and the experience of the recent wars bear [sic] witness tothe fact that the victory is almost always won only by envelopment'.72

Moreover, both men feared that a purely front attack would allow an enemy

merely to withdraw and live to fight another day. Schlieffen feared that a frontal

attack on its own would lead to an 'ordinary' rather than a 'decisive' victory.73 He

believed that 'the result of [a frontal attack] is, even in the best of cases, only

limi ted. Indeed, the enemy will be pushed back, bu t he will renew his resis tance in

another place in a short space of time',74 Moltke also felt that frontal attacks could

not in themselves bring about a decision on the battlefield. In 1909 he wrote: 'Even in

the most favourable case the Germans cannot accomplish anything further by this

form of attack than to crowd the enemy together. They would throw the enemy back

in the direction from which he came, that is upon his communications, but they con-

Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment', in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavell i to

the Nuclear Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); and Wallach, Dogma, 35 ff.

70. Antulio J. Echevarria II, 'A Crisis in Warfighting: German Tactical Discussions in the Late Nineteenth

Century', Militiirgesclzichtliclze Mitteilungen 55 (1996),51-68.

71. Schlieffen, 'War Today', inSchlieffen's Military Writings, 195 f. When Schlieffen submitted this article to

Moltke prior to its publication, Moltke expressed his agreement with Schlieffen's ideas. See Moltke to

Schlieffen,3 December 1908, reprinted in Schlieffen, Briefe, 308f.

72. MOltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1907', in 'German General Staff Problelns', 336.

73. Wallach, Dogma, 45; Emmanuel von Kiliani, 'Die Operationslehre des Grafen Schlieffen lmd ihre

deutschen Gegner (I. Tiel)', Wehrkunde ]g. X (1961),73 f.

74. Schlieffen, 'War Today', in Schlieffen's Military Writings, 200.


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Foley: O p er a ti on a l I de a s o f Sc h li ef fe n a n d M o ltk e 15

tinue to have him opposite them: they have not gained any decision',75 Thus frontal

attacks were merely useful in assisting the decisive envelopment. In 1903 Schlieffen

wrote: 'In strategy and in tactics, the same rule applies: he who wants to envelop,

must attack the front firmly in order to prevent the enemy there from making any

movement, thus enabling the enveloping wing to be effective',76

Such flank attacks and envelopments had two goals: first, to cause the

psychological collapse of the enemy. For Schlieffen, this effect came primarily from

the threat posed to the enemy's lines of communication, which he believed were even

more vulnerable in the days of mass armies,77Moltke expressed it in more personal

terms: 'one must consider that every rifle put into action ... against the rear of the

French will have twice the impact of one put into action [on the French front]'.78 The

psychological effect of a flank attack or envelopment, however, could not always be

counted on to achieve the far-ranging results demanded by both Schlieffen and

Moltke from any attack. Therefore, the main aim of a successful flank attack or

envelopment was also to force the enemy army into a tactically unfavourable

situation. Schlieffen expressed this idea in his Schluj3aufgaben in 1905, when he

admonished his subordinates: 'Why do you not want to look after the noble examples

that have been handed down to you by the history of your Fatherland? All great

captains have done fundamentally the same thing'. To Schlieffen, the key to the

victories of men such as Frederick the Great and Napoleon was that 'the enemy was

to be forced onto another front, was to be beaten, and was to be forced back in the most

unfavourable direction',79

From an examination of his Schluj3aufgaben, it is clear that Moltke thought

in very similar terms to his predecessor. In 1909 Moltke told his subordinates: 'The

decisive thing in a flank attack on a large scale is its direction. It must be such that in

75. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1907', in 'German General Staff Problems', 375. See also his

'Generalstabsreise 1908',34, PH3/664, BA/MA.

76. Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1903', inSch li e ffen 's Mi l ita ry Wr i tings, 98.

77. For exalnple, see his 'General Staff Ride (East), 1899', in ibid., 46. See also his 'Tactical-Strategic

Problems, 1901', in Dienstschriften I, 87. Cf. Wallach, Dogma, 43, who argues that Schlieffen re-

introduced a 'geometrical principle into the art of war'.


79. Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1905', in S ch l ie ff en 's M i li ta r y W r it in g s, 113 f. See also his

'Kriegsspiel 1905', in ibid., 138. Schlieffen's emphasis on attacking enemy flanks reached its apogee

with the publication of Grosser Generalstab, S t lld ien Z l lr Kr iegsgesc lz i ch te l ind Takt i k , vol. III: D er

Sclllachtei folg, mit we/chen M itte ln wllrde er ers trebt? (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1903).


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16 WAR & SOCIETY

case of victory the enemy front comes into an untenable situation' .80 Later, in his dis-

cussion of the 1909 problems, he explained more fully how he envisioned attacks

against an enemy flank might operate:

The promise of success in [a large-scale flank attack] is ... to be sought in the effectwhich its direction must exercise upon the enemy's front if it succeeds. The greater

the masses are, the more difficult the retreat movement for the defeated. The

masses, following the pressure of the attacker, will be forced to crowd together

upon a narrow area; the retreat roads of the front are blocked by the backward

surging troops of the routed wing and it becomes impossible for the masses to

deploy anew. 81

However, while both men agreed about the importance of flank attacks and

envelopments in winning a battle decisively, Moltke took the concept further than

Schlieffen, advocating double envelopments in a way that Schlieffen never did

while Chief of the General Staff. As Sigfrid Mette and, more recently, Terence

Holmes have pointed out, it was only after his retirement that Schlieffen took to

using the battle of Cannae, a double envelopment, as a model 'battle of annihilation';

during his time in the army, he used Frederick the Great's victory at Leuthen, a one-

sided envelopment, as his idea1.82 Although a few double envelopments occurred

during Schlieffen's wargames and staff rides, he never put particular emphasis on

this form of combat.83 Moltke, on the other hand, openly advocated the use of double

envelopments and actively instructed his officers in i ts employment. In his

Schluflaufgaben of 1911 he wrote: 'The concept of annihilation comes out much more

strongly from a simultaneous attack [against both flanks] than from an attack against

the front and left flank [of the enemy]'. He went on to discuss how it should be used:

'A double envelopment [ de r A ng ri ff m it b eid er se iti ge r U m fa ss un g] is especiallyeffective when strong forces advance simultaneously against both flanks of the

enemy. The binding of the enemy front that is always of the greatest importance

during an attack that envelops one flank, loses its significance during a double

envelopment.'84

80. Moltke, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1909', in 'German General Staff Problems', 377 f.

81. Ibid., 382.

82. Sigfrid Mette, V0111 Geist Deutscher Feldherren: G enie und Technik, 1800-1918 (Zi.irich:Scientia, 1938),226

ff. Cf. Wallach, Dogma, 42 ff; Terence Holmes, 'Classical Blitzkrieg: The Untimely Modernity of

Schlieffen's Calmae Programme', Journal of Military History 67: 3 (July 2003),752 ff.

83. For example, see his 'Kriegsspiel1905', inSchlieffen's Military Writings, 132ff.

84. Moltke, 'Sthhillaufgaben, 1911',in Groener papers, M-137/19, NARA.


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Foley: O p er atio na l Id ea s o f S ch li effe n a nd M o ltk e 17

Whatever the method of attack chosen, however, both General Staff Chiefs

faced the challenge of how to command Germany's mass army, and here is where the

greatest difference between the two men becomes apparent and where the seeds of

the postwar criticism of Moltke were sown. European armies had increased in size

dramatically during the period between the German Wars of Unification (1864-71)

and the outbreak of the First World War. While Moltke's uncle had led 462,000 men

against France in 1870, the German field army in 1914 numbered some 2.5 million and

faced a war on two fronts.85 Moreover, the increased effectiveness of modem weapons

meant that the size of battlefields themselves had grown dramatically. (Moltke

assumed that an attacking army corps would have a front of 6 kilometres, while a

defending corps would occupy 8 kilometres.86) This enormous increase in size and in

scale had a profound impact on how armies were commanded in the field. As

Schlieffen noted, 'the art of commanding an army has changed fundamentally since

earlier times. The commander can no longer direct the battle solely with the

assistance of adjutants and orderlies. The expansion of armies has become too great' .87

To deal with this command problem, the German army under the influence of

Helmuth Graf von Moltke (the Elder) had developed a system of 'directive

command'.88 Under this system, the high command told subordinates what they

needed to achieve, rather than how their tasks were to be performed. Subordinate

commanders were left to determine themselves how best to accomplish the mission

assigned to them. This system had several advantages. First, it allowed the high

command to concentrate on the big picture and future planning while the subordinate

commands dealt with the details of particular actions. Second, it a llowed

commanders on the spot, who would invariably have better knowledge about a

particular situation, to make rapid decisions without fear of being overruled fromabove. This system had generally functioned well during the Franco-German War in

85. Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961),60; Reichsarchiv, De r

Weltkrieg Bd I: Die Grenzschlachten im Westen (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1925),38 f.

86. Chef des Generalstabes der Armee, Nr 3964, 'Gesichtspunkte fUr die Anlage und Leihmg von Korps-

Generalstabsreisen', 12 March 1914, 1231, BayHSTA-KA, GSt.

87. Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1894', in Schliejfen's Military Writings, 23.

88. This systerTI was first propagated in the German army in 1869 by Moltke the Elder's 'Instructions for

Large Unit Commanders'. This manual was reissued in 1885 and 1910 and even served as the basis for

the Reichswehr's famous Truppenfiihrung. See Daniel J . Hughes (ed.), Moltke 011 the Art of War: Selected

Translations (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993), 171 ff.


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18 WAR & SOCIETY

1870-71, and the German army maintained it as its official command 'doctrine'

throughout the First World War.89

For directive command to function properly, however, subordinate

commanders needed to have a firm understanding of what the higher commandwanted to achieve and had to subordinate their actions to this goal. In an army hIll

of independent-minded officers, Schlieffen feared that this would be difficult to

accomplish. Indeed, he often made reference to where the system had broken down

during the Franco-German War of 1870-71.90 Thus, Schlieffen put great stress on the

importance of the responsibility of subordinates to understand their commander's

goals. In 1899 he wrote:

subordinates have the duty to understand completely and fully the intentions of

the supreme commander. They must not have eyes merely for the roles of their

own units, but most also understand the whole situation [die gesnmte Lnge] and

conform and subordinate their decisions and orders to this. Only when sub-ordinates know how to bring their necessary independent decisions and actions in

line with the intentions of the higher commander can they correctly carry out

their missions.91

Indeed, Schlieffen was clearly sceptical enough of directive command to advocate its

abandonment under certain circumstances.92

Schlieffen expected that the budding communications technology of the

early twentieth century would make the problem of command easier in future war. In

his Schluflnufgnben in 1901 he wrote: 'According to current theory, with the help of

the telegraph, modern mass armies can be as easily and as surely led as one would

have in earlier times directed a corps of 15,000 to 20,000 men'.93 While in 1901 hemerely hoped that telegraphs could play such an important role, by 1909 he was con-

vinced that 'modern Alexander', located centrally behind the front lines, would issue

his orders to his disparate armies via the field telegraph and field telephone.94 In

89. See Samuels, Command or Control; and Bradley J . Meyer, 'Operational Art and the German CommandSystem in World War I' (PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1988).

90. Schlieffen, 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1903', and 'Helmuth von Moltke', in Sch lie ff en' s Mi l itary

Writings, 106 f., and 230 f.

91. Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1899', in Scl1lief fen 's Mili tary Writings, 49. See also his 'GeneralStaff Ride (East), 1894', 'General Staff Ride (East), 1899', and 'Kriegsspiel1905', in ibid., 23 .,48 . , and

138 f.

92. See his 'Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1903', inSch lie ff en' s Mi l itary Wri tings , 98 .

93. Schlieffen, 'Die taktisch-strategischen Aufgaben, 1901', in DienstscJzrijten I, 84.

94. Schlieffen, 'War Today', in Schlief fen 's Mili tary Writings, 199.


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short, Schlieffen hoped that modern communications technology would go some way

to replacing what was, in his view, a problematic system of directive command. He

advocated a much more proactive higher command, one that did not shy away from

intervening when necessary to direct the overall battle.

Moltke, on the other hand, was a firm believer in the directive command

system introduced by his famous uncle. He went so far as to say that 'the higher the

commander, the less the interference in the duties of the subordinate commanders'.95

However, this is not to say, as did his critics after the war, that MoItke proposed

abdicating responsibility for command. In 1911 he indicated clearly the positive role

he envisioned the High Command playing in battle:

an attack made by two separate groups at first lacks unity, as at the beginning of

the advance there exists no communication between the two groups. However, this

will come if the corps are properly commanded. The responsibility for this falls to

the High Command [Heeresleitung]. The High Command also has to attend to thesimultaneity of the attack. More than this, it cannot do. Once the corps are set

into motion, the remainder must be left to the Commanding Generals.96

While Moltke believed firmly in directive command, he also set out its

parameters clearly to his subordinates. In his comments to the army corps General

Staff rides of 1912 and 1913 he wrote: 'In certain quarters there is uncertainty about

the basic difference between commanding armies and army corps. An army command

[A.O.K.] will from time to time have to c hoose whether ord er s [Be feh le] or

directives [Weisllngen] are appropriate for their subordinate army corps, etc. Army

corps commands [Generalkol111nandos] will almost always direct their divisions bymeans of orders'.97

Like Schlieffen, Maltke believed that the intentions of the higher command

must always guide the actions of subordinate commands. This said, he went further

than Schlieffen in advocating that the higher command take an active role in

making its intentions known. He stressed that 'the Commanding Generals must be

informed about the intentions of the High Command, but this is best accomplished

orally through the sending of an officer from the Headquarters'.98 However, it is


96. Moltke, 'SchluJ5aufgaben, 1911', in Groener papers, M-137/19, NARA.

97. Chef des Generalstabes der Armee, Nr 3964, 'Gesichtsplmkte flir die Anlage und Leitlmg von Korps-

Generalstabsreisen', 12 March 1914, 1231, BayHSTA-KA, GSt.

98. Ibid. During the First World War, Moltke made extensive use of his staff officers to keep in touch with

the front line headquarters. The most infamous of such visits was Richard Hentsch's trip to the First

and Second Army headquarters during the battle of the Marne, which led to the German retreat. See


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20 WAR & SOCIETY

clear from his staff problems, as well as from his actions in the First World War,

that Moltke believed the higher command should refrain from meddling in the

affairs of its subordinate commands.

Both Schlieffen and Moltke hoped to overcome some of the difficulties ofcommanding a widely dispersed army by developing an early version of what is now

known as the 'operational art'. Schlieffen viewed the clash of two mass armies as

one huge battle spread over space and time, in which the smaller battles fought by

the independent armies and army corps, what he termed 'Teilsehlaehten', would

form the tactical encounters of traditional battles. These large numbers of battles,

which would take place far away from one another as the individual corps or groups

of corps came into contact with the enemy, would be welded together by the supreme

commander into a 'Gesamtsehlaeht', or 'complete battle'. The Teilsehlaehtel1 would

be given significance by the supreme commander's plan. Just as a commander of old

gave units particular goals on the battlefields of days past, a modern commander

would give specific goals to his army corps. Each would playa part in the supreme

commander's overall plan. In Schlieffen's words: 'The success of battle today depends

more upon conceptual coherence than on territorial proximity. Thus, one battle might

be fought in order to secure victory on another battlefield'.99 The army corps would, in

essence, play the role once assigned to battalions or regiments in traditional battles.

Indeed, this very idea formed the basis for his famous 1905 plan.

Moltke viewed modern wars similarly. In 1907 he wrote: 'Every tactical

success is highly valued and will be appreciated and exploited by the high

command' .100Moltke stressed that the high command should have a clear idea of

what it wanted to accomplish with its disparate battles and needed to stick to its

goals. He wrote: 'however much his sentiments may sway back and forth, thecommander must steadfastly keep in view the clear and fast lines of the great

common action into which all the individual actions must be fitted'.101

However, despite the advances in communications technology, fighting this

Gesamtsehlaeht with armies spread from Belgium to the Swiss border was much

more difficult than either Schlieffen or Moltke imagined. Moltke's hands-off

leadership approach did not help matters. While such an approach may have

Wilhelm MiHler-Loebnitz, Die Sendung des Oberstleutnants Hentsch am 8.-10. September 1914 (Berlin: E.S.Mittler, 1922); Mombauer, Moltke, 253-60.

99. Schlieffen, 'War Today', in Schlieffen's M ilitary Writings, 218.

100. Chef des Generalstabes der Armee, Nr 5090, 'Bemerktmgen zu den Korps-Generalstabsreisen 1906',29

April 1907, 1231, BayHSTA-KA, GSt.

101. Moltke, Tactical-Strategic Problems, 1909', in 'German General Staff Problems', 386.


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functioned effectively in 1870-71, in 1914 it helped unravel the German war plan, so

that no matter how many 'individual actions' the German army won at the

operational level, Moltke was unable to turn these victories into something

grea ter. 102

Another area of significant difference between the two Chiefs of Staff was on

the question of surrendering territory to the enemy. Schlieffen did not hesitate to

advise his subordinates that national territory should be voluntarily given up to the

enemy in order to gain a more favourable military situation at some other point.

Moltke, on the other hand, made it clear to his officers that national territory

should not be surrendered without a fight. In 1907 he wrote that 'the duty of the

Commander of the German forces assembled in Prussia is to protect the territory east

of the Vistula'.lo3 In other words, the commander of the weak German eastern army

had to stop the Russian invasion before it conquered East Prussia. This desire to keep

the enemy out of German territory as much as possible would have consequences for

Moltke's war plan. While in his wargames and in his war plans Schlieffen was quite

happy to surrender terrain to achieve a decisive victory on another part of the front,

Moltke would not do this. Thus, in 1914, Moltke deployed substantial forces to protect

south Germany from a French invasion.lo4 Further, he did not hesitate to dismiss the

commander of the German Eighth Army when he looked likely to withdraw his

weak forces behind the Vistula and surrender East Prussia to the Russians.los

However, far from demonstrating that Moltke was a weak character and a

poor general, his decisions in 1914 were in keeping with the operational concepts he

developed while Chief of the General Staff and show the originality of his

thinking. In 1914 he was convinced that the invading Russian armies could be

defeated piecemeal. Had the Eighth Army retreated to t he Vistula, the twoseparated Russian armies would have been free to join forces, and the combined army

would have been too large for the Eighth Army to defeat. The outcome of the battle

of Tannenberg showed the correctness of his reasoning. In the west, Moltke's decision

to deploy a sizeable force to protect south Germany from a French invasion allowed

him to attempt a more ambitious undertaking than envisioned in the original

'Schlieffen Plan'. After the defeat of the French invasion in 1914, Moltke ordered his

102. Recent research by Bruce GudmlU1dsson has shown how effective German tmits were at defeatingtheir French cOlU1terparts in open battle. Bruce GudmlU1dsson, 'Battle of the Frontiers, 1914', paper

presented to the Society for Military History Annual Conference, University of Calgary, May 2001.


104. Mombauer, Maltke , 92 ff.

105. Ibid., 244-50; Demus Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash a/Empires (Camden: Archon Books, 1991), 196ff.


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Sixth and Seventh Armies to attack.106 Thus, to complement the wing enveloping the

French fqrces from the north, Moltke added a southern wing, a decision that offered

the prospects of completing a double envelopment of the French army.l0? That

Moltke's undertaking ultimately failed had less to do with the supposed weakness

of the German right wing, as many of Moltke's detractors would have it, than an

overestimation of what was possible in the age of modern mass armies, especially

the great difficulty in coordinating the actions of such widely separated forces. In

contrast to the postwar picture painted of him, Moltke's operational decisions in

August 1914 show him to be an ambitious commander willing to take risks to achieve

far-reaching objectives. In keeping with this prewar thinking, he aimed to maintain

the initiative and to destroy completely the French field army.

THE SCHLIEFFEN MYTH

In 1938, in memory of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Schlieffen's death, EugenRitter von Zoellner, a former General Staff officer, published 'Schlieffen's Legacy' as

a special edition of the official army journa1.108In common with most of his con-

temporaries, Zoellner argued that Schlieffen had been the master teacher of the

Kaiserheer and that the army owed its successes during the First World War, such as

they were, to Schlieffen. In particular, he implied that Schlieffen had been the

106. Based on the development and deployment of heavy artillerYJ Brose argues that Moltke had planned

this double envelopment from 1911 and that this was incorporated as 'Case 3' in the army's deploy-

ment plans. See BroseJ Ka i se r's A r m YJ 165-82. HoweverJ archival evidence does not support this.InitiallYJ Moltke repeatedly stressed the role of the Sixth and Seventh Armies as flank protection for

the decisive right wing. It was only after Moltke was convinced that the French were all but defeated

that he ordered his left wing to attackJ to the astonislunent of the Sixth Army. See Conrad Krafft von

DellmensingenJ 'Kriegstagebuch'J entries for 17-22 August 1914J BA/MAJ W10/50642. IndeedJ

Dellmensingen's entry for 22 August describes Case 3 as a defensive measure: 'when the threat to the

flank in Lorraine had been successfully parriedJ either defensively or offensivelYJ it was not intended

to advance beyond the upper Mosel and the Meurthe line. The Sixth and Seventh Armies were to

halt thereJ organise a defensive positionJ and send away tmits. What strength could be freed was to

march northeastJ in the direction of Metz'. After the defeat of the French invasionJ Dellmensingen

assumed that Case 3 would be ordered by Moltke and was surprised when the Sixth Army was

ordered to attack instead.

107. See Hermann Gackenholz, Entsche id l lng in Lo thr ingen 1914: Der Opera tionsp lan des j iingeren Mol tke t l11d

seine Durcli fi ihrzmg auf dem linken deutschen Heeresfli igel (Berlin: Jmlker tmd DilnnhauptJ 1933); and Hew

StrachanJ The Fir s t Wor ld War , vol. 1: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University PressJ 2001)J243 ff.

108. In 1914, Zoellner was sent from Mtmich to tile Oberste Heeresle it lmg to serve as one of the Bavarian

representatives. Somewhat ironically, as a Bavarian officer, Zoellner would not have served in the

Prussian General Staff tmder Schlieffen or Moltke had it not been for the outbreak of the war.


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intellectual father of what most felt to be the German army's greatest victory of the

war: the battle of Tannenberg. In support of his claim, Zoellner discussed in some

detail Schlieffen's General Staff Ride (East) of 1894, which bore a similarity to the

battle in August 1914. In the ride, as in the battle, a weak German force of five army

corps faced two separate Russian armies, one advancing from the northeast, the other

from the southeast. As in 1914, the ride resulted in weak forces screening the Russian

army advancing from the northeast, while the bulk of the German forces con-

centrated against the Russian army advancing from the southeast, and annihilated

it.109 In Zoellner's view, Schlieffen had prepared his subordinates clearly and

properly for what they would face in 1914.

Zoellner, however, did not need to look so far in the past for an example of a

prewar training exercise with similarities to the battle of Tannenberg. Rather than

discuss a 20-year-old staff ride, he need only have looked at the Schluj3aufgaben

given three years before the outbreak of the war. In 1911 Moltke issued a set of

problems that examined how a German army of six army corps would defend itself

and the eastern German borders from two separated Russian armies of seven and six

corps, respectively. As in 1894 and in 1914, Moltke advised his students to concentrate

against the Russian army advancing from the southeast and merely hold the army

advancing from the northeast with a weak force of Land'wehr and cavalry. Indeed,

Moltke advised the annihilation of the Russian army by the means of a double

envelopment, much like that used at the battle of Tannenberg three years later,1l0

Present in the Great General Staff in Berlin when Moltke issued these

problems were a number of the individuals who played key roles in the battle of

Tannenberg. In 1911 Erich Ludendorff (chief of staff to the Eighth Army during the

battle) was head of the Aufmarschabteilung. Also in the Ro te B ud e in Berlin at thetime were Max Hoffmann and Paul Grunert, who in 1914 were the first General Staff

officer and the quartermaster general respectively of the Eighth Army.Ill On the

other hand, no one who had participated in Schlieffen's 1894 staff ride was in any

important command position during the battle of Tannenberg.112 Yet, despite having

been familiar with Moltke's 1911 Schluj3aufgaben, Ludendorff, like Zoellner,

attributed his victory to Schlieffen's training rather than to that of Moltke, when

109. Zoellner, 'Schlieffens Vermachtnis', 21 H.

110. Moltke, 'Schlu15aufgaben, 1911', in Groener papers, M-137/19, NARA.

111. One could also add Georg Graf von Waldersee, who had been chief of staff to the Eighth Army until

LudendorH's appointInent. See KriegsministeriuITI, Rangli ste der Konigl ich Preuf li schen Armee und des

XIII . (K on ig lic h W ii rt tembe rg isch el1) Ar mee ko rp s fii r 1911 (Berlin: ES. Mittler, 1911), 15 H., and ReicllS-

archiv, Der Weltkr ieg 1914 bi s 1918: Bd II:Die Befreiung OstpreujJens (Berlin: ES. Mittler, 1925), 358 H.

112. Schlieffen, 'General Staff Ride (East), 1894', in Schlie ffen's Mili tary Writ ings, 25 f.


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writing about how he felt after the victory at Tannenberg: 'I thought of General Graf

von Schlieffen, and thanked this teacher'.113How was it then that Ludendorff, who

had only joined the General Staff several months before Schlieffen retired, could

attribute his abilities to Schlieffen's training?As the analysis above has demonstrated, for the eight years he spent as

Chief of the General Staff before the outbreak of the First World War, Moltke

taught his subordinates roughly the same operational approach as Schlieffen. Both

men focussed on educating their subordinates to fight intelligently against a

numerically superior foe. The concept of annihilating key portions of the enemy's

forces through flank attacks and the avoidance of purely frontal attacks lay at the

heart of both their teachings. Indeed, Moltke even took the concept further than

Schlieffen by advocating and teaching the double envelopment, a form of attack that

Schlieffen only embraced after his retirement; and it was this form of attack that

the Eighth Army carried out at Tannenberg. Moreover, both men encouraged the

development of a 'wargame mentality' within the General Staff by stressing the

necessity of examining the situation from the enemy's perspective in order to under-

stand what it was he might be trying to accomplish. From this would come

knowledge of the key aspects, and hence key targets, of the enemy's plan of action.Even on the topic of command, Schlieffen's and Moltke's ideas shared more simi-

larities than differences. On almost every issue picked out by postwar German

officers as the central elements to Schlieffen's Be'lvegungskrieg, Moltke either taught

the same lessons as, or even developed the concepts further than, Schlieffen. His

Schluj3aujgaben clearly show the extent to which Moltke prepared the German army

operationally for the First World War and demonstrate that Moltke's ideas should

be ranked along with those of Schlieffen as one of the most important sources of thedoctrine of the Kaiserheer, and later the Reichswehr and the Wehnnacht.

Indeed, while Schlieffen has traditionally been hailed as the father of the

concept of the double envelopment in the German army, Moltke's staff problems

demonstrate that it was he rather than Schlieffen who formally introduced the

concept into General Staff training. During his time as Chief of the General Staff,

Schlieffen concentrated on one-sided envelopments, using Leuthen as his model

battle. Moltke, on the other hand, instructed his subordinates actively in the use of

double envelopments and attempted to carry out an ambitious double envelopment on

a grand scale in August 1914. In tum, those officers who had begun their General Staff

training under Moltke before the outbreak of the First World War, such as LudwigBeck, Wilhelm Heye, Gerd von Rundstedt, Fedor von Bock, Gunther von Kluge and

113. Erich Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserrinerzmgen1914-1918 (Berlin: E.5. Mittler, 1919),45.


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Ewald von Kleist, carried his lessons to their subordinates during the war, into the

interwar period, and ultimately into the Second World War.

The fact that Moltke's role in the intellectual development of the German

army has been largely forgotten today owes much to the creation of the 'SchlieHenmyth' during the interwar period. Originally, this myth was developed to show

that Germany could have won the war if only Schlieffen's original war plan had

been followed to the letter. By casting the blame for altering the original plan, hence

losing the war, on one man, Moltke, his subordinates appeared innocent of the guilt of

the defeaL114To maintain this fiction in the highly charged political environment of

Weimar Germany, everything connected with Schlieffen eventually grew in

significance, while everything to do with his successor became tainted with his

failure. In 1921 the Gen er a ls tab sv er ein Gr af Sch li ef fen (General Staff Society Graf

Schlieffen) was even established to perpetuate the teachings of the sixth Chief ofthe General Staff. lIS

The establishment of the Gen er a ls tab sv er e in Gr af Schli e ff en coincided with

the re-training of the Reichswehr. The General Staff officers who survived the

dissolution of the Kaiserheer began teaching the Reichszvehr in the art of

Bewegun gs kr ie g as a means of purging the bad habits of trench warfare and as a way

of avoiding the reappearance of attritional trench warfare in a future war.116To do

this, they used examples from the teachings of a soldier who was put forward as the

one who would have led Germany to victory in 1914-Schlieffen.117 That his hapless

successor had done just as much, if not more, to prepare the Kaiserheer to fight a war

of movement was conveniently forgotten. With the German army archives destroyed,

historians have largely accepted this negative interpretation of Moltke the Younger

until his long-hidden tactical-strategic problems resurfaced three-quarters of acentury later permitting its re-examination.

114. MOlnbauer, Moltke, 2-6; Wallach, Dogma, 87-93.

115. 'Satzungen der Vereins der Angehorigen des ehemaligen Generalstabes', 22 February 1921; and

'Bericht tiber die erste ZusammenklU1st der VereiniglU1g Graf Schlieffen', 16 March 1921, in N512/14,

Nachlass Wilhelm Dommes, BA/MA.

116. For example, see the staff problelns in N35/18, 'Militarisches AusbildlU1gsmaterial, 1922', Nachlass

Hans von Haeften, BA/MA, which clearly shows the difficulty in purging the 'bad habits' of trench

warfare from the jmuor officer corps of the Reichswehr.

117. 'Taktische UblU1gsal1fgaben und Studien vom Generalstabsverein Graf Schlieffen', W10/50164,

BA/MA.

Documents

Robert Foley - Preparing the German Army for the First World War the Operational Ideas of Alfred Von Schlieffen and Helmuth Von Moltke the Younger