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 and the Tsarist state in turmoil after the defeated in Manchuria, the French would not risk open warfare and the Germans would have to force them out of the border fortress zone. The studies in 1905 demonstrated that this was best achieved by a big flanking manoeuvre through the Netherlands and Belgium. Schlieffen's thinking was adopted as (Deployment [Plan] I) in 1905 (later called ) of a Franco-German war, in which Russia was assumed to be neutral and Italy and Austria-Hungary were German allies. "[Schlieffen] did not think that the French would necessarily adopt a defensive strategy" in such a