True enough about the “improving” - but his plan did end up working quite well. Almost certainly better than a Schlieffen type plan would, I think.
Yeah, the German WWII plan worked wonderfully, though it always dazzles me the extent to which the allies threw themselves so enthusiastically in the exact wrong directions at the worst possible times, from initial deployment of the French armies to throwing all the reserves up north to attempt to relieve the Dutch.
Now there is something I did not know. Thank you very much for that observation, MMI. I have always worked under the assumption that the German advance was too swift for the rail lines to be effectively disabled, and I assumed that they were functional within a few weeks of their being captured. Bad, bad assumption on my part.
That helps explain in part why the Germans decided to move as they did. It still seems quite obvious to me that the French counterattack would have to come from the vicinity of Paris, but maybe the Germans knew that as well, and simply couldn’t find a way to neutralize it. That would explain the sudden caution before the Marne.
I think there was an assumption that the French were beaten - while the English might still be perceived as a threat, albeit a minor one. From flipping through Keegan and Gilbert last night it seemed that the Germans (at the front anyways) thought the French couldn’t stop the retreat. There were a number of minor local counterattacks by the French that took the Germans by surpries.
The French were expecting the Germans to attack Paris, which is why Gallieni had a newly formed army there. They were suprised when they captured the German plans to discover that the next axis of German attack was south-east towards the British rather than towards Paris.
Unfortunately, none of the sources I have here seem to cover German motivations for the attack south-east, setting up the Marne.
SO basically, what happened was the eastern front in WWII. Bad luck, an unworkable plan that didn’t adequately supply troops, and and overextended military force tried to zip towards the capital and decapitate the enemy.
The substitution was hardly quick. They spent the entire winter playing wargames with various scenarios. The only one that gave them even a chance was Manstein’s. And even then, it was mostly luck. The French and British had so many opportunities to crush the invasion it wasn’t even funny.
For instance, recon had established that there was a large troop buildup outside the Ardennes - but the Allies dismissed it, thinking that was the feint. The trails through the Ardennes was so narrow, that the entire German advance could have been stopped in its trackes had the front column of tanks been destroyed. It would have been a major roadblock and the Germans would have been easy pickings.
The main problem was that while the Germans spent the winter constantly revamping their offensive and making extremely intelligent guesses as to what the French would do in given situations, the Allies sat around and made small modifications to the same plan they had from the beginning.
Part of it was that the German military didn’t believe at all that they could beat the French in an invasion. Their fear and general feelings of inferiority prompted them to constantly rethink and retool and probe for weaknesses and use unconventional thinking just to even have a chance of winning. The Allies, on the other hand, were so confident that they could win that they didn’t try nearly as hard.
Had the Germans used a Schlieffen plan in WWII, they would have been annihilated before they had a chance to get through Belgium. Everyone was looking for them there.
The Germans damned near dropped the ball in 1940. After Guderian forced a crossing at the Meuse above Sedan he was ordered to wait for von List’s infantry to move up. If I remember rightly, Guderian was so pissed he threatened to resign if he wasn’t allowed to move, and his commander (von Kleist?) fired him.
Because Guderian was tight with Hitler he was able to complain directly, and the compromise, as I recall, was that Guderian was reinstated and a “reconnaissance in force” was authorized, which turned out to be the dash to the Channel which trapped so many Allied troops on the wrong side of the Wehrmacht. Even then Guderian had to cheat by pretending that he was still at his Corps HQ, which was not permitted to move.
This is all coming from my memory of Guderians autobiography, Panzer Leader, so I hope I got the details right. Perhaps I can check tonight. Even if I did, it doesn’t mean Guderian’s version of the story is the SD.
Back to 1914: this site claims that the German First Army was instructed to encircle Paris from the east.
Perhaps the motivation behind the southeast move was to shorten the supply lines somewhat before the planned encirclement of Paris. That’s all I can figure.
Maybe the answer lies in the motivations of that fairly low-ranking General Staff officer who precipitated the German withdrawal from the front. Unfortunately, his name and the details behind his influential decision escapes me.
Depends on your perspective. Barbarossa, in the first 2 or 3 months, was very, very close to being as spectacular a victory as France was. The Russians decided to sacrifice a large portion of their countrymen and resources where the French decided diplomacy was the better route - but both campaigns were spectacularly succesful and largely went precisely as planned (once Barbarossa stretched after it’s 8th or 10th week, the plan had already failed).