Towards the Great War

Whatever is the case, no-one in this era could from now on neglect the impact of railway implantations, in the case of war, in common border zones. It had become well and truly vital to determine the potential variants in the plans for mobilising and then supplying warring troops. The interest accorded to the Belgian network by German and French strategies in the years which followed the 1870 Franco-Prussian war up until the First World War is the striking illustration of it.

At the turn of the century the Belgian military authorities thus integrated into their defence strategies a plan for the total discontinuation of the rail network, according to the danger which seemed to them the likeliest: from being first of all identified as French this ‘danger’ little by little became German in their opinion. ‘Did not the intelligence reports, the numerous press articles and the incessant French shouts of alarm concerning the German danger or the improvement of the railway network on the Belgian border lead quite naturally many French language and culture officers to become more interested in Belgian’s eastern border rather than its  southern one,’ wonders Christophe Bechet. ‘In any case, since the studies carried out by Brialmont in 1882 to fortify Liège, the idea that the French fortifications erected opposite the Franco-German border would in the end oblige the Reich troops to find a bypath in Belgian was well and truly in the minds of the Belgian military staff.’

Nonetheless, as Christophe Bechet demonstrates very well, the passage via Belgium was for a long time considered by German generals as a ‘strategic heresy.’ ‘Neither Moltke, or Waldersee, never really envisaged it between 1859 and 1891. The period which follows is more problematic.’ In basing his view on the rare archives available, the historian gets down to examining the problematic of the ‘Schlieffen Plan,’ which still today divides historians.

Alfred von Schlieffen, this major general with drooping moustaches, the author of multiple plans between 1893 and 1905, would certainly prove to be from the beginning less reticent than his two predecessors of envisaging the idea of passing through Belgian in the case of war. He considered that the Belgian army, too weak, would take refuge in its fortresses and that no British expeditionary corps would be capable of stopping enemy forces on Belgian territory.

‘Schlieffen’s strategic thinking developed a lot over time,’ points out Christophe Bechet. ‘But everything indicates that he never stopped wondering about the political and military opportunity of a passage through Belgium of which he moreover indeed anticipated the negative consequences.’

In December 1905, Schlieffen drew up a strategic offensive plan against France, a Denkschrift to which posterity has given the name the ‘Schlieffen Plan.’ The image of this plan in the minds of the general public is the following: the Franco-Russian alliance would oblige Germany to fight on two fronts: it would thus be necessary for the Reich to rapidly overcome first one and then the other of its two adversaries, beginning with France. Yet, behind the Alsace and Lorraine borders, Schlieffen knew that France was a real fortress and it wouldn’t be convenient to attack it frontally. He thus envisaged a major bypassing manoeuvre through the north, in other words Belgium, ideal deployment territory in his eyes to attack the French army.