So why then, do we always come back to the mythical Schlieffen Plan? Because, towards the end of his career, during the winter of 1905-1906, Schlieffen published his Groβe Denkschrift (Great Memorandum), a sort of strategic testimony which would long remain the only document upon which historians worked, as the previous Schlieffen plans were lost, or so it was thought. This Memorandum still talks of the possibility of an attack from France alone (which seemed all the more likely, given that Russia had just been severely beaten by Japan), and the planned resistance by its fortresses. To avoid this trap, Schlieffen therefore set out to circumvent the frontier not only by going through Luxembourg and Belgium, but also through the Netherlands, because, he believed, its right wing could not be sufficiently deployed in Belgium as a result of the control which the forts in Liège and Namur held over the road and rail routes in the Meuse valley! As for Moltke, he would have done nothing more than pick up an almost exact replica of the famous memorandum. And so, through a fairly understandable semantic slide, the German attack plan of 1914 became the Schlieffen plan, and vice versa...

Bechet shows the major leap in Schlieffen's thought: until the Great Memorandum and even more so in his last plan of 1905-1906, Schlieffen did not plan to invade either Belgium or the Netherlands. At most, he anticipated one or two armies against the Belgian Ardennes. In the last plan, five armies out of eight were to go through Belgium, including two which would previously have carried out a movement circling the Netherlands. For him, the moment had come to envisage an extensive offensive against France, because Russia, broken and beaten, would not intervene. He also understood the task had to be completed quickly, because he recognised that, with the firepower which the armies had, the attacks would be bloody. 'Schlieffen recognised', explains Bechet, 'that if war was prolonged, it would exhaust the warring parties' economies. He also feared that the mobilisation of thousands of men for several years would sap society and would end up provoking a revolution.'  And he was to be proven right!

The 'real' invasion plan

So which plan was behind the invasion of our country in August 1914? Bechet shows that the plan concocted by Schlieffen's successor, Moltke the Younger (to distinguish him from his uncle, Moltke the Elder) differed on several points from Schlieffen's. First and foremost: there was no longer the question of a single offensive against France, while maintaining but a minimum of troops in the east. Moltke took into account the solidity of the French-Russian alliance and didn't think that Russia would fail to react, nor that it would take long to do so. He was therefore obliged to plan for more forces in the east than Schlieffen had anticipated, as well as a massive offensive against Russia. Second point: Schlieffen expected a defensive strategy from France. This was no longer the case in 1914: Moltke knew that France was preparing for an attack on Lorraine, which forced him to concentrate a greater number of forces there. The third difference: Moltke no longer wanted to invade the Netherlands. He was fully aware that the war risked being prolonged and of the importance of economic resources; he therefore didn't want the Dutch ports to be subject to a Royal Navy blockade. Finally, the fourth change: because the movement of the right wing was restricted to Belgium, our country's communication routes had to be exploited as best and as quickly as possible. This included deploying a surprise attack (Handstreich) against Liège to rapidly seize the city. 'This last point,' explains Bechet, 'automatically meant that the German army would be violating Belgian neutrality, without waiting to find out about French and British intentions. He had become caught up in a very restricted way of thinking, thus eliminating any later negotiations with the French and the British. He would be severely reproached for it later, but was this the only choice he had? '