Alfred Graf von Schlieffen was a Field Marshal and Chief-of- Staff of the German Army. In 1905/6 he formulated a plan for war on two fronts: against France in the West and her ally in the East, Russia. The initial massive blow was to fall on France on the Western Front, whilst Russia, the arch-enemy, was held in constraint. Once the French were defeated, the whole force of the Germany military machine was to be transferred by rail to attack the Russians on the Eastern Front.
The principle elements of the attack on France in the original plan were, firstly, an extensive use of railways (Military Plan) to rapidly transport men and material to the front. (A 32 hour exercise involving 11,000 trains transporting 2 million men, 600,000 horses and all necessary supplies). And, secondly, the violation of the national borders of Belgium and Holland - unless access was willingly ceded - to facilitate a massive 'right hook' swinging around the rear of the French army, enabling a relatively unimpeded German march on Paris.
In the event, in August 1914, the then chief of staff, General Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, (much in the shadow of his famous Field Marshal uncle - Moltke The Elder) modified the plan. He kept much larger forces than planned on the Eastern Front and in Alsace Lorraine - where he feared the French would retaliate in force. This avoided breaching Dutch neutrality, but limited the room for manoeuvre of the famous 'right hook.'
In effect, this reduced the numbers of German troops available for the outflanking move to seven Armies: 60% of the mobile part of the German army, instead of the planned 90%.
The outcome of the plan was not as foreseen. Although the Belgian army was effectively swept aside and neutralised into a small defensive pocket around Antwerp, the 'right hook' was successfully retarded by the joint and heroic efforts of the French Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Armies and the BEF. Eventually, a relatively static trench war developed east of Paris and the important channel ports.
The much watered down Schlieffen Plan had failed in its aim to, 'end the war before Christmas' (1914) and the war continued for another four years. The combined casualties of both sides in this campaign totaled almost a million.
France 1914: Plan XVI.
This plan was designed by General Victor Michel to provide for Total Offense (L'Attaque à Outrance) to counter the foreseen German attack (The Schlieffen Plan) through Belgiumin 1914. However, the essence of Plan XVI also involved the violation, by France, of the neutrality of Belgium. To avoid this, it was replaced by a new scheme, Plan XVII, designed by the Commander-in-Chief himself - General Joseph J. C. Joffre. This revised plan relocated the major French effort to the Alsace-Lorraine Front, as predicted by Schlieffen, whilst at the same time protecting the corridor through Belgium. The British Expeditionary Force was to secure the western flank.
Within a week of the German advance into Belgium and France, the main part of Plan XVII was launched in a mass attack between Metz and Belfort on the Alsace-Lorraine border; its objective, The Rhine.
Although such strategically and psychologically important frontier fortress towns as Verdun were stubbornly held by the French, the Germans gained the vital St. Michel salient. The scene was set for the enactment of the first ever really 'Total War' where entire divisions went into the line to be almost obliterated by a virtually unceasing campaign of artillery fire, attack and counter-attack all based on a troglodyte existence in dug-out, bunker, trench and shell-hole. The German answer, in 1916, to the French offensive of 1914 in Alsace-Lorraine, was another plan called Operation Gericht. It too ultimately failed to achieve its objectives.
Russia, 1914: Plan 20.
In September 1914, the Russians had the intention of mobilising their army by the record time of 18 days; previously the best estimate was 75 days. But their rush to start mobilisation, under pressure from their allies, forced them into major operations in East Prussia and Poland, before they were properly prepared. The outcome was the Battles of Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes where the German partnership of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, with inferior numbers of troops, achieved such a serious defeat of the Russian army that it never really recovered.
And, as planned, the German Army continued to hold the line against a much larger Russian Army so the Battle of France could continue.
France, 1916: The Neville Offensive. (Name of Plan and/or Code Name unknown).
General Robert G. Nivelle was a high-flier with the gift of the gab. His role in the recapture of Fort Douaumont in the Verdun sector made him a national hero and opened the gates to his boundless ambition. With the active support of Lloyd George (Nivelle's mother was British), but less so of his own Minister of War, Painlevé, Nivelle was also given the command of British units. They were intended
to provide a diversion for a frontal attack in the Chemin des Dames sector where 1.2 million Frenchman were to go forward behind a creeping barrage. The Germans captured a French officer with all the detailed plans of the offensive and, to make Nivelle's intentions even clearer, he had openly boasted of his 'miracle cure' to end the war. It was a total disaster. But, carried away with his own rhetoric, Nivelle continued to clutch at straws and persisted in launching further costly attacks. By the 9th May 1916, when the battle was formally ended, the French army alone had suffered 100,000 casualties. In reality, this proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and that of the French poilu, and a wave of mutinies broke out.
Never again was the French Army to go into the field with the élan and verve for which it had hitherto been famous. Indeed, some military historians believe the debacle of 1940 dates from this squandering of the cream of French manhood.
France, 1916: The First Battle of the Somme (Name of Plan and/or Code Name is unknown).
On the 14th February 1916 the Generals Haig and Joffre met at Chantilly in France. Spurred on by Kitchener's instructions to alleviate the throes of France, amplified by the death struggle at Verdun and the weakened state of the French Army, post-Nivelle, Haig agreed to a combined Anglo-French offensive astride the Somme River. D-Day was decided upon as 1st July 1916. For Haig this represented his first real chance to break through the German lines. General Sir Henry Rawlinson was chosen to draw up a plan to deploy the 4th Army - largely made up of Kitchener's volunteer New Army - plus elements of the British 3rd and French 6th Armies. Unfortunately, Rawlinson's plan of progressive 'bite and hold' attacks on the enemy lines, was subsequently fatally altered by Haig in preference for a more ambitious attack on a wider front following an unprecedented artillery barrage. Once the defenses of the German lines were destroyed, Haig foresaw that his beloved cavalry would swarm through the breaks in the front-line and on into the open country behind the German lines. Equally unfortunately, Hamilton accepted the changes.
No code name - or any other specific operational name, other than The Somme Offensive or, much later, The First Battle of the Somme - seems to have been allotted to this Plan.
The outcome of this offensive is so well known as not to need repeating in detail. In short, the initial attack on Day 1 was met by the well-entrenched 2nd German Army. The advancing British troops were massacred with machine-gun fire and artillery as they crossed open land, on a clear bright day, to face masses of largely unbroken wire. The German defense line was not generally broken, so the cavalry could not advance and another stalemated battle of attrition continued until mid-November, when exhaustion, and the coming winter, forced a halt. The results were pitifully slim: an advance of only 8 miles against a cost of 615,000 allied casualties, 420,000 British.
Belgium 1917: The Third Battle of Ypres Plan a.k.a. The Messines Ridge and The Northern (Passchendaele) Operation.
Field Marshal Haig had long felt that the key to ending the war lay in Flanders and, in particular, the Ypres salient. Even his Somme offensive had been forced upon him by the need to support the weakening French armies. The Nivelle Offensive had further exacerbated the need and so the multiple-objective plan for the Third Ypres Offensive was hatched, with the Second Army of General Sir Herbert Plumer, and the Fifth Army of General Sir Hubert Gough, as the key players.
Plumer attacked General Sixt von Arnim's 4th Army at Messines Ridge using a clever combination of 24 deep mines (containing 1 million pounds of high explosive), good communications and heavy artillery support with creeping barrages where indicated. Seventy-two Mark IV tanks and 300 aircraft were also employed. The attack was a success with all three lines of trenches being seized and held.
The second part of the plan was not launched until 31st July 1917. Gough's Fifth Army flanked by part of the British Second Army and the French 1st Army advanced across the Gheluvelt Plain which was already breaking up into a boggy morass by the preparatory artillery barrages. Extraordinarily heavy and unseasonal rains persisted, and the hoped for support by the tanks was quickly banished as they became bogged down and eliminated by artillery fire. Still the antagonists struggled on in these impossible conditions with the less exposed German troops centred on concrete bunkers and the many wooded areas of later renown.
By August 16th Gough realised the attack was impossibly costly and, with over 50,000 casualties, recommended abandonment. Haig, advised that German morale was crumbling, decided to continue and replaced Gough with Plumer.
Plumer revitalised the attack plans to more closely match the fluid tactics of the enemy and the rain stopped. The attack resumed behind a creeping barrage on the 20th September and 2nd Army reached its objectives over-running the Wilhelm Line; 5th Army also made good progress. On the 26th September the Australians took Polygon Wood and the 5th Army, Zonnebek. Further ANZAC and 5th Army successes were achieved on the 4th October. At this point the rain recommenced and both Plumer and Gough recommended a halt in operations. Neither believed the tactical objectives could be achieved. Haig declined their advice, and in further operations (into which he drew the newly arrived Canadian Corps) the infantry finally took Poelcappelle ( 9th October) and Passchendaele (6th November); all operations ended on 20th November 1917.
In the 3rd Ypres the advance into the salient was about five miles. The British casualties were 245,000 and the Germans about the same. Of the Commonwealth casualties, 89,000 were missing and never found.
Germany,1918: The Kaiserschlacht (The Kaiser's Battle) Plan.
In 1917, General Erich Ludendorff, deputy Chief of Staff to Hindenburg, realised that the imminent arrival of the Americans on the Western Front would change the entire strategic balance of the war. Therefore, he decided that, 'we must beat the British' who were currently facing manpower shortages due to the heavy losses inflicted at Passchendaele. He and his staff prepared a whole series of plans. First he considered attacks on either side of the Ypres rivers, Plans George I and 2. Later came consideration of Plan Mars and Valkyrie in the Arras/Vimy sectors and, finally, discussions centred on Plans Michael I, II and III in the south, respectively in the St. Quentin, Albert and Bapaume sectors: St. Michael was Germany's patron saint. Further deliberation ruled out Flanders as being still too wet, and time was of the essence. The Vimy sector raised the problem of the powerful hold by the British of the ridge itself and the adverse topography. So, needs must be that the first attack would be in the south, where coincidentally, the British were increasingly extended because of current weaknesses in the French Army. There, once the British Front was broken, the German armies would be able to swing north for Plan Valkyrie at Vimy, and, finally, when the ground had dried out, Plan Mars in Flanders. The entire plan was dedicated to the Kaiser and was called The Kaiserschlacht - The Kaiser's Battle.
The basis of the plan was that of the bandmaster: a single conductor of the battle, with a vast repertoire of men and material at his disposal, to wreak the maximum physical and psychological damage on the enemy at his weakest points. It foresaw creeping barrages with mixtures of gas, shrapnel and explosive shells to sow confusion, disorientation and demoralisation. All backed by well-trained units of storm-troopers and battalion sized units of infantrymen and their support arms to mop up by-passed strong points, and to seize and hold yielded territory. Behind this philosophy was a generally understood commitment to the storm-troops of rigorous counterattack when these advance assault units became beleaguered and vulnerable.
On 21st March 1918 a barrage of three million shells presaged an attack by 65 Divisions of the German Second, Seventeenth and Eighteen Armies on the British in the Arras sector. Despite unprecedented gains in territory, and in the face of a desperate headlong fighting retreat by the British, the Michael Offensive ground to a halt in a 40 mile deep salient, with the German armies low on supplies and inertia. A second thrust, code named Plan Georgette in the Ypres salient suffered a similar fate as did Plans Yorck and Gneisenau in the French sector.
By 13th June 1918, Ludendorrf was obliged to call off the Michael offensive and, apart from a final desperate and unsuccessful offensive - code-named Plans Blucher, Rheims and Marne - in the Marne sector, the Germans had lost the
