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Unlock This CourseGermany's generals had one great fear. France lay to the west and Russia to the east, and the two were allies. In a war Germany would have to split its army and fight both at once. This is called a war on two fronts.
Count Alfred von Schlieffen, head of the German army until 1906, wrote his answer in 1905. It became known as the Schlieffen Plan. It rested on one guess: Russia was so huge, and had so few railways, that its army would need about six weeks to get ready. Germany could use those six weeks to knock out France.
The plan was a gamble. Everything had to go right, and to a strict timetable. It also meant attacking Belgium, a country Britain had promised to protect. You saw where that led in the lesson From Sarajevo to War: The July Crisis of 1914.
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Germany invaded Belgium on 4 August 1914. Within six weeks the plan was in ruins. There were four main reasons before the final battle.
The Germans expected to march straight through Belgium. But the Belgian army fought. The ring of forts around the city of Liège held out until 16 August, and the Germans had to bring up giant guns to smash them. Brussels did not fall until 20 August. The delay gave France and Britain time to move their troops.
Britain sent the BEF to France much faster than Germany expected. It was small, about 100,000 men, but they were well-trained professionals. On 23 August, at Mons in Belgium, their fast and accurate rifle fire held up a much larger German army for a day. The BEF then had to retreat, but it had slowed the German advance again.
Russia did not take six weeks. Its armies invaded eastern Germany in the middle of August, only about two weeks into the war. The German commander, Helmuth von Moltke, was alarmed. At the end of August he took two army corps away from the attack on France and sent them east. They were badly missed in the west.
Moltke had already altered the plan before the war. He made the right wing weaker than Schlieffen wanted, by moving troops to guard Germany's border with France. He also chose not to cross the Netherlands, so his armies were squeezed through the narrow gap at Liège.
One more change came during the fighting. By the end of August the German soldiers on the right wing were worn out. They had marched for weeks in summer heat and had gone further than their food and ammunition could follow. The right wing was now too weak to go round Paris. So General von Kluck, who led the army on the far right, turned to pass east of Paris instead of west. The city was not surrounded, and the side of his army was left open to attack from Paris. Allied airmen spotted the turn.
By early September the Germans had reached the River Marne and were within about 50 kilometres of Paris. The French government left for Bordeaux. But the French commander, General Joffre, saw his chance.
The Germans pulled back about 60 kilometres to the River Aisne. There, on high ground, they dug trenches and set up machine guns. The Allies attacked but could not shift them. Moltke was replaced as commander by General von Falkenhayn.
Why the Marne mattered. Paris was saved and France was not knocked out. That meant the Schlieffen Plan had failed. Germany now faced exactly what the plan was meant to prevent: a long war on two fronts.
Neither side could break through on the Aisne. So each tried to outflank the other by moving round the open end of the line, to the north. Each time, the enemy moved troops north to block the way and dug in. The two lines of trenches crept towards the coast.
This was the race to the sea. Nobody was really racing for the sea. They were racing to get round each other, and the sea is where they ran out of room. The last big battle was the First Battle of Ypres in Belgium, in October and November 1914. The BEF suffered very heavy losses but held the town, and the Channel ports of Calais and Dunkirk stayed in Allied hands. That kept open the short sea route for men and supplies from Britain.
By the end of 1914 the two sides faced each other along a line running from the Belgian coast to the border of Switzerland. There was no open end left to go round. You will see what this line was like in the lesson The Trench System and Life in the Trenches.
Don't say the Schlieffen Plan failed for one reason. No single cause wrecked it. Belgium, the BEF, Russia and Moltke's changes each cost the Germans time or men, and the Marne finished it off. Don't say Germany lost the war at the Marne either. Germany lost its chance of a quick win, but its army still held most of Belgium and a large part of northern France.
Describe TWO features of EITHER the Schlieffen Plan OR the Battle of the Marne (1914). [6 marks]
(Answering on the Schlieffen Plan.) One feature of the Schlieffen Plan was that it aimed to avoid a war on two fronts. Germany expected to fight France and Russia together. The plan was to defeat France in about six weeks, while Russia was still getting its army ready, and then move the German armies east by train.
A second feature was the attack through Belgium. France had strong forts on its border with Germany, so the main German force would go round them through neutral Belgium. A strong right wing would then sweep into northern France and pass to the west of Paris, trapping the French armies from behind.
What lifts this to the top level: it gives two clearly separate features of one topic, and each one is backed by precise supporting detail.
This question says 'describe', so say what the Schlieffen Plan was, not why it failed. Reasons for failure answer a different question and earn nothing here. For more help, see the Exam Skills lesson Paper 2 Section A Question (a): Describe Two Features.