The point about the Schlieffen Plan is that it offered a wrong solution to the problem of a two front war.Karl Heidenreich wrote:
However we must address the Schlieffen Plan. Germany, trapped amongst two enemies, devised this plan in order to try to survive, just as that. The plan considered an attack on France before this nation will be ready to fight and, at the same time, try to invade Germany at the same time that Russia was attacking from the East, which is something not mentioned: the Russians were invading the German Empire, which is why the Battle of Tannenberg took place. Again: the overall allied plan was offensive in natura and the Schlieffen was a counter measure to that. I am not going to say that it was merely "defensive" measure, it was highly offensive in a Clausewitzianian way, but the allies' plan were that same too and with the fact that they spilled the first blood.
Regards,
Germany had only a short border with France, stretching across Alsace-Lorraine. It could be easily fortified and held with relatively small forces, as the failure of the French Plan 17 in August 1914 demonstrated. Had I been Alfred von Schlieffen I would have reversed the Schlieffen Plan to target Russia first and block the French attacking from the west to a stanstill of attrition that only the Germans could eventually win. The trump card in such an alternative strategy is that Britain (and Belguim) are kept out of the conflict with Germany, so there are no British (or Belgain) forces fighting with the French, and no British blockade of Germany.
Russia, facing Austria as well as Germany, would collapse fairly quickly, but providing the German defence in the west holds there is no pressure of time for this to happen. Both Russia and then France go down eventually, and a politically savvy Kaiser could buy British support by offering lenient peace settlements that still cripple France and Russia militarily but at the same time didn't offer any detriment to the British position.
But the Kaiser was not politically savvy. He was an egotitical bully with no real understanding of grand strategy and logistics. That was the charaCter that started and eventually lost WW1.