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If this plan had been carried out in its original version, the French might have been defeated in the first few weeks of the war, although in the original memoranda outlining the plan, Schlieffen himself had considered the likelyhood of success to be slim, with three main problems unsolved - how to neutralise the very strong fortifications and garrison of Paris, the inability of the transport network to take the number of troops his plan required, and an unsolvable shortage of troops even after full mobilisation.. However, in the years between the retirement of Schlieffen in 1906, and the outbreak of the First World War, the plan was repeatedly watered down by General Helmuth von Moltke, his successor as chief of the German General Staff. First, he decided not the break Dutch neutrality, only that of Belgium, leaving the important 35 corps struggling through a narrow gap to reach France. Next, loath to allow surrender of German soil, he limited the scope of the withdrawl planed for Alsace-Lorraine. Finally, and for the same reasons, he moved more troops to East Prussia, intending to defend against any Russian attack near the borders. Thus the 2.1 million troops envisaged by Schlieffen as attacking through Belgium and Holland became 1.5 million troops attacking through Belgium, while the French armies, instead of being trapped some way inside Germany when the attack came, were instead close to the frontier and able to be redeployed much quicker. Even so, the German plan nearly succeeded, and was only defeated after the battle of the Marne (5-10 September 1914).
The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, a good historical atlas that makes the overall nature of the war clear. Contains over 150 maps, covering just about every major aspect of the conflict from the pre-war tensions that led to war to the Armistice in 1918. [see more]
