Abstract
The existence of the Schlieffen plan has been one of the basic assumptions of 20th-century military history. It was the perfect example of the evils of German militarism: aggressive, mechanical, and disdainful of both politics and of public morality. World War I began in August 1914 allegedly because the Schlieffen plan forced the German government to transform a Balkan quarrel into a World War by attacking France. In the end, the Schlieffen plan failed at the battle of the Marne. The Schlieffen plan has become ‘common knowledge’. Yet it has always been recognised that the Schlieffen plan included inconsistencies, which have never been satisfactorily explained. On the basis of newly discovered documents from German archives, this book presents a radically different picture of German war planning between 1871 and 1914, and concludes that, in fact, there never really was a ‘Schlieffen plan’.
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