SCHLIEFFEN, ALFRED, COUNT VON Prus sian soldier, was born on Feb. 28, 1833 in Berlin, of a Pomeranian family, the son of an army officer. He studied at Berlin Uni versity and the military academy and served in the war of 1866 against Austria and in that of 187o-71 against France as a gen eral staff officer. In 1891 he was appointed chief of the general staff of the army. He held this position for 15 years, exercising an extraordinary influence on the development of the German general staff and the whole German army. He faced the problem of a war on two fronts, which would have to be waged with a single huge army. He promoted the training of general staff officers in the leading of huge armies, urged on technical equip ment, and, finally, he threw all his energies into the effort to equip the army with mobile heavy artillery. He retired in 1907.
On his retirement Schlieffen put his views in writing. He is indeed far better known as an author than as chief of the general staff of the army. He was a disciple of Clausewitz, who in his turn had deduced his doctrine of strategy from Napoleon. Field marshal von Moltke, whose successor and disciple Schlieffen was, had also based his ideas on Clausewitz, and it was the Napoleon Moltke strategy that Schlieffen sought to carry on. The essence of their doctrine is that the enemy forces should be not merely defeated but destroyed. To this end it seemed to them necessary that not only the front but the flanks and if possible the rear should be attacked, so that the enemy should be forced to give battle on a reversed front. Schlieffen pushed this system to its logical con clusion. He saw Germany surrounded on all sides by enemies who, together, were far more powerful. than herself. It seemed to him that the only salvation lay in opposing one of the enemies with a superior force, inflicting on him a decisive defeat, and then, using a well-developed network of railways and manoeuvring on inner lines, turning upon the other enemy against whom until then a defensive attitude would have been maintained. For this end rapidly decisive blows were needed and his writings aimed at prov ing such blows to be possible and showing how troops could be handled for that purpose.
With a marked singleness of purpose Schlieffen sought out the appropriate examples in military history and presented them in a new guise. His works are not military history in the accepted sense; he used military history to corroborate his doctrines. His books are definitely instructional. He watched the military political situation of his own country, and feared, lest the grave hour should find, in the position he had had to leave, a man un equal to the overwhelming task. "A commander-in-chief must be
inspired by something superhuman, something supernatural, call it genius or what you will." Schlieffen died in Berlin on Jan. 4, 1913, but in 1914—seven years after his retirement—he still played his part in the world's history; for on retiring, he had bequeathed to his successor, General Moltke the younger, the plan for deployment against France. This plan embodies his strategic convictions. It is at once immensely bold and also simple. Only the bare minimum was to remain facing the Russians; in the West the left flank was to be held back and the troops in Alsace were to withdraw behind the Rhine and face attack on the line Metz-Strasbourg. The bulk of the army was to deploy on the right flank and, pivot ing on Metz, to drive forward against the line Dunkirk-Verdun. In this way the strongly fortified east front of France would be turned and the French army forced to give battle with a reversed front. Schlieffen intended not to give a recipe for victory, but to indicate the operative idea which, if logically carried out, would make possible the swift decision which alone could save Germany from her doom. The German army commander of considerably diluted the Schlieffen plan and, particularly in its execution, followed other courses than those pointed to by the dead strategist. And so it was that the inspired scheme of Schlieffen did not bear the fruits which were expected.
How armies are to be handled in the Schlieffen spirit the war on the Eastern front showed. The battle of Tannenberg has very justly been called a super-Cannae, and the campaign of Lodz, the German attack against the Warsaw-Thorn line—the best conceived operation of the whole War, which was directed solely against the right flank of the Russians—rests upon Schlieffen's ideas. The field marshal's influence on the German leadership in the World War is incontestable, and his lifework cannot be ignored by anyone who intends to study the history of the World War. See Graf Schlieffen, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1913) ; Cannae, selection from the above (Berlin, 1925).