71–80 of 97 posts
Battle of annihilation became the fetish of the German army well before WWI. As the Germans already did it successfully in 1870 by encircling two French armies leading to what was - at the time - somewhat of a surprise victory. Why would one credit this obsession to a 2000 year old tactical victory (Cannae) and not the 40 year old strategic victories of Metz and Sedan? Schlieffen plan had the same aim but shifted nor…
Cannae is undoubtedly the ur battle of annihilation in the western world (particularly in the relevant period). I think it's reasonable to argue that Schlieffen was heavily influenced and motivated by it, and that perhaps the schematic simplicity by which it was portraited may have led Schlieffen and other German planners astray. But to lean completely on Tuchman to characterize the military planning of the Germans i…
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The american civil war was a full 50 years before WWI.
Yeah, but during the later stages of the American Civil war, machine guns mowed downs entire cavalry regiments. Many European officers didn't realize that made cavalry shocks useless and thus rapid advances would not be possible. Only infantry advances were possible and only under slower moving artillery cover. That made shock tactics mostly impossible until mechanized warfare became a thing in world war ii.
I remember crossing from France into Spain and back again somewhere in the early 80's, when Europe definitely still had physical borders and not realizing I had done so until it had happened. My surprise stemmed in part from the fact that on the map there was a clear line and in real life there was absolutely nothing at all. It really helped me to understand once and for all that maps are just pieces of paper and tha…
Borders exist for the sake of the common good, in a way that's analogous to private property, which also exists for the sake of the common good. I realize this must be a strange notion for those of us raised in a culture that's been shot through with liberalism and liberal/radically individualist ideas (I have here in mind the philosophical stance, not liberal institutions), where private property is understood as prior to the common good and where the common good is conceived as something that's grudgingly ceded from private property. But traditionally, the common good was taken to be prior to private property, and private property to be something the exists for the sake of the common good because it enables human flourishing. (Incidentally, this understanding resolves ethical problems concerning the use of what would otherwise be taken to be private property during times of crisis, such as whether the taking of food from a privately owned stockpile, by starving people, during a famine would constitute theft.)
Now, how particular borders are enforced or respected or treated is a matter of prudential political judgement. Schengen is not borderless. It is itself defined by a border that is enforced by Frontex! It is precisely the Schengen border that enables free movement within Schengen. Member states have determined that free movement between them and them only is for the common good of these member states. Furthermore, just because free movement is now possible doesn't mean borders have ceased to exist. Administrative borders still exist because they circumscribe legal jurisdictions, and these may or may not coincide with ethnic boundaries or cultural regions. States have simply become more permissive about enforcing movement because of their membership in Schengen. But if a crisis were to occur, such as a flood of migrants that threatens the good of a nation's population, you can be sure that member states would control the flow of people over their borders again, if only temporarily, to contain the crisis and protect the common good of the population. Protecting the common good is, after all, the job of the state.
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Author here - yes, this is what I was getting at. The false promise of a rapid victory over the French via encirclement from the right flank (in the style of Hannibal) really was a major factor in justifying the risks of war for the German General Staff. And because Schlieffen was preoccupied with the idea that an ancient battle could be a model for that approach, it distracted from the now-obvious technological chan…
Hmmm. I doubt it was Cannae, it was more of the 1870 Franco Prussian war. The Franco Prussian war lasted only six months. That war destroyed the myth of France's military might (from Napoleon)and created modern Germany. Moltke the Elder became a warrior god in Germany. Schlieffen was tasked on how to solve the problem with a war on two fronts; he expected to knockout France in a quick blow just like in 1870 and turn…
/joke
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Hmmm. I doubt it was Cannae, it was more of the 1870 Franco Prussian war. The Franco Prussian war lasted only six months. That war destroyed the myth of France's military might (from Napoleon)and created modern Germany. Moltke the Elder became a warrior god in Germany. Schlieffen was tasked on how to solve the problem with a war on two fronts; he expected to knockout France in a quick blow just like in 1870 and turn…
Not to mention that Cannae was famously a double pincer and the Schlieffen plan was not.
It was however the logical way to attack France from Germany given the geography. WWII generals, who weren't as obsessed with Cannae as Schlieffen, but were well aware the "Schlieffen Plan" was a failure, took the same route with better mobility and logistics and succeeded.
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> The Schlieffen plan developed by it's namesake general The Schlieefen plan didn't exist. > The Schlieffen memorandum of 1905, with its 1906 supplement, was not a plan. It was not operational. It did not go into details or issue orders David Frmokin's Europe's Last Summer Terence Zuber's Inventing the Schlieefen Plan shows that the "plan" was written in a memorandum at his retirement, which his daughter kept in her…
My friend, I have been eagerly gobbling up all the good literature I can get my hands on recently, do you have any suggestions on books that you feel do a decent job of examining the Shlieefen Plan? Besides The Guns of August which I just finished last month.
The second deals with prewar military strategy, showing that European militaries expected trench warfare and ineffective offensive, until the Ruso-Japanese war, which made them switch gears, believing a strong offensive and bayonets could overcome machine guns.
One interesting point is bayonet designs in the 1870s and 1880s were wide, meant to be used for digging, entrenching. But by the 1910s, they were suddenly long and thin to give soldiers "more reach" akin to spears!
The argument laid out in this post and in the title around maps, specifically the battle of cannae, leading to world war one is pretty weak. I buy that German generals were obsessed with the battle, but I don't see any evidence here that this caused the war. Going to war is first and foremost a political act even if it is followed by a military response. There's no mention of the complex politics of europe at the tim…
Yeah I think we can safely assume that the German general staff were familiar with Clausewitz.
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Author here - yes, this is what I was getting at. The false promise of a rapid victory over the French via encirclement from the right flank (in the style of Hannibal) really was a major factor in justifying the risks of war for the German General Staff. And because Schlieffen was preoccupied with the idea that an ancient battle could be a model for that approach, it distracted from the now-obvious technological chan…
I think there's something there, and I did enjoy your article. WW I had a lot of causes, at the head of which I'd put the Kaiser's stupidity and weakness. But yeah, Cannae did (and still does) exert a big influence on military planners. As others have pointed out, Schlieffen depended on massive luck and adherence to The Plan, neither of which obtained. It was not machine guns that made it fail.