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Schlieffen Plan Essay

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Before World War 1 began, countries started to make alliances between themselves in case they were actually going to war. They thought that the entire world was at peace, but it all changed with a simple battle that tied all of the alliances together and formed the Great War. Facing a war at two fronts, Germany had developed a battle strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan, named after the German Chief of Staff, Alfred von Schlieffen. By 1905, Europe had effectively divided into two camps or groups: Germany, Austria and Italy (Triple Alliance) on one side and Britain, France and Russia (Triple Entente) on the other. Schlieffen believed that the most important area for any future war in Europe would be in the western area (France). Their original …show more content…

Not meaning that there weren’t enough men initially, but the fact that casualties could not really be properly replaced during the plan. The German Army was as well equipped in general as any of the other countries, but that was the regular troops. This was not so for the reserve and replacement troops, who were not even trained with the new equipment, were not as well trained anyhow, did not have machine gun crews or artillery regiments, and could not really implement the plan. Also, the plan relied on speed for success and this is was another factor that the Germans failed to accomplish. At the beginning of the war, Germany had 5,000 cars and 1.4 million horses, but in order to really move the troops they’d need trains. Once the Germans invaded Belgium and France, the Belgians and French destroyed the track as they retreated so it had to be laid again. Things got worse when Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 because, in a Treaty of 1839, Britain had promised to defend Belgium (BBC, 2016). Lastly, and perhaps even more important was the lack of communications. This antecedent of Blitzkrieg required better communications than what was available in

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