Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Why the Schlieffen Plan failed
I feel like Germany should have thought through their plan better, it seems like they were so excited when war was declared that they just needed to immediately carry it out. They should have thought about the fact that their army was huge and it was going to be hard to feed and move. I think it was a good plan, I'm definitely not saying that it was a bad plan because I think it was pretty ingenious for them to think of encircling their enemy in an unsuspecting way, but it wasn't thought through to the length that it should have been. They should have had a steady food supply, and a way to transport it to them already planned out. Also it should have been considered that the army was going to get tired after a few weeks and not be as productive, thus not being able to carry out the plan as well as they thought. Thus overall I think it was a good plan i just don't think every detail was thought through thus it caused its failure.
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I think that's an interesting way to look at it. I think because the plan ultimately failed we see it as being bad, but it had elements that were very remarkable. And I agree with you, Germany needed to plan ahead a little more, or at the very least have been prepared to adapt when problems arose.
ReplyDeleteI think that the German army was desparate at the beginning stages of the war. Even though they managed to hold off all of their enemy nations for several years, it was a miraculous feat. Germany thought that they would get wiped off the face of the map if Britain, France and Russia all fought Germany at the same time, with only A-H as an ally. The Schlieffen plan, I think, was a desparate pre-emptive strike that Germany thought to be their only hope.
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