Schlieffen Plan Schlieffen Plan The Schlieffen Plan (, ) was the name given, after the First World War, to German war plans and the influence of Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen and his thinking on the invasion of France and Belgium on 4 August 1914. Schlieffen was Chief of the General Staff of the German Army from 1891 to 1906. In 1905 and 1906, Schlieffen devised an army deployment plan for a war-winning offensive against the French Third Republic. After losing the First World War, German official historians of the and other writers described the plan as a blueprint for victory. (Colonel-General)
Schlieffen Plan to participate. Schlieffen had thought about such an attack on two general staff rides () in 1904, on the staff ride of 1905 and in the deployment plan I, for 1905–06 and 1906–07, in which all of the German army fought the French. In none of these plans was a two-front war contemplated; the common view that Schlieffen thought that such an offensive would guarantee victory in a two-front war was wrong. In his last exercise critique in December 1905, Schlieffen wrote that the Germans would be so outnumbered against France and Russia, that the Germans must rely on a