Shortly before the outbreak of hostilities and the Marne Campaign of 1914 Moltke was called to the Kaiser who had been told by Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky that the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey had offered British neutrality if France was not attacked. At this news, the Kaiser, seeing that a two front war could be avoided, told Moltke to reverse the western front forces to the eastern one against Russia. At this, Moltke refused, arguing that such a drastic alteration of a long planned major mobilization could not be done without throwing the forces into organizational chaos and the original plan now in motion must be followed through. Years later, General Hermann von Staab, head of the German railway division, would dispute this opinion with a book detailing a contingency plan that the German army had for such a situation.[2]:93–94 Although Grey’s offer turned out to be a wishful misinterpretation by Lichnowsky[2]:92 and the Kaiser told Moltke to proceed as originally planned, the general’s health broke down as a consequence of this clash, and on 25 October 1914, he was succeeded by Erich von Falkenhayn.
Tuchman, Barbara (1962). The Guns of August. Ballantine Press.
In fact it could have been altered. The German General Staff, though committed since 1905 to a plan of attack upon France first, had in their files, revised each year until 1913, an alternative plan against Russia with all the trains running eastward.
“Build no more fortresses, build railways,” ordered the elder Moltke who had laid out his strategy on a railway map and bequeathed the dogma that railways are the key to war. In Germany the railway system was under military control with a staff officer assigned to every line; no track could be laid or changed without permission of the General Staff. Annual mobilization war games kept railway officials in constant practice and tested their ability to improvise and divert traffic by telegrams reporting lines cut and bridges destroyed. The best brains produced by the War College, it was said, went into the railway section and ended up in lunatic asylums.
When Moltke’s “It cannot be done” was revealed after the war in his memoirs, General von Staab, Chief of the Railway Division, was so incensed by what he considered a reproach upon his bureau that he wrote a book to prove it could have been done. In pages of charts and graphs he demonstrated how, given notice on August 1, he could have deployed four out of the seven armies to the Eastern Front by August 15, leaving three to defend the West. Matthias Erzberger, the Reichstag deputy and leader of the Catholic Centrist Party, has left another testimony. He says that Moltke himself, within six months of the event, admitted to him that the assault on France at the beginning was a mistake and instead, “the larger part of our army ought first to have been sent East to smash the Russian steam roller, limiting operations in the West to beating off the enemy’s attack on our frontier.”
On the night of August 1, Moltke, clinging to the fixed plan, lacked the necessary nerve. “Your uncle would have given me a different answer,” the Kaiser said to him bitterly. The reproach “wounded me deeply” Moltke wrote afterward; “I never pretended to be the equal of the old Field Marshal.” Nevertheless he continued to refuse. “My protest that it would be impossible to maintain peace between France and Germany while both countries were mobilized made no impression. Everybody got more and more excited and I was alone in my opinion.”
Finally, when Moltke convinced the Kaiser that the mobilization plan could not be changed, the group which included Bethmann and Jagow drafted a telegram to England regretting that Germany’s advance movements toward the French border “can no longer be altered,” but offering a guarantee not to cross the border before August 3 at 7:00 P.M., which cost them nothing as no crossing was scheduled before that time. Jagow rushed off a telegram to his ambassador in Paris, where mobilization had already been decreed at four o’clock, instructing him helpfully to “please keep France quiet for the time being.” The Kaiser added a personal telegram to King George, telling him that for “technical reasons” mobilization could not be countermanded at this late hour, but “If France offers me neutrality which must be guaranteed by the British fleet and army, I shall of course refrain from attacking France and employ my troops elsewhere. I hope France will not become nervous.”
Aufmarsch nach zwei Fronten : auf Grund der Operationspläne von 1870-1914, written by General Herman von Staab, head of the Railway Department of the General Staff in 1925.
The book details in tables, charts and text how the German Army could have transferred 4 armies from the west to fight on the eastern front in the first days of World War I.
Scanned the book again tonight: pretty much what I have already stated. It is a slim book, 85 pages and two maps. Pages 1-41 cover the history of the German war planning from 1871 to 1914. Pages 41-51 discusses the actual 1914 operation. Pages 51-76 is a chapter called ‘Could the German Campaign Plan have been altered at the beginning of the war?’ (Konnte der deutsche feldzugsplan noch bei kriegsausbruch geändert werden). Here Staab’s makes his argument that the western deployment could have been changed. Unfortunately, he doesn’t support his argument with details of the existing Ostaufmarsch plan, but addresses the issue at a higher, theoretical level. This chapter is mostly a ‘don’t blame the Rail Section of the GS for the attack on France’ discussion.
Interesting to read this. You’ve no doubt read Tuchman; she makes it seem as though von Staab’s book had considerably more detail:
When Moltke’s “It cannot be done” was revealed after the war in his memoirs, General von Staab, Chief of the Railway Division, was so incensed by what he considered a reproach upon his bureau that he wrote a book to prove it could have been done. In pages of charts and graphs he demonstrated how, given notice on August 1, he could have deployed four out of the seven armies to the Eastern Front by August 15, leaving three to defend the West.
And of course she goes on to say that:
Moltke himself acknowledged “within six months of the event….that the assault on France at the beginning was a mistake and instead “the larger part of our army ought first to have been sent East to smash the Russian steam roller, limiting operations in the West to beating off the enemy’s attack on our frontier.”
p.s. Staab was quite a name for a German staff officer
