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Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871-1914. By Terence Zuber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-925016-2. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 340. $72.00.
Terence Zuber's Inventing the Schlieffen Plan aggressively attacks a set of historical shibboleths: that Alfred von Schlieffen prepared a detailed invasion plan for war against France in 1905-6; that he favored the doctrine of the unfettered offensive; and that he wanted German troops to sweep west of Paris. Zuber will have none of this. There was never a Schlieffen Plan, the general actually favored a defensive-offensive approach, and the famous 1905 Denkschrift simply represented a plea for additional military manpower. His earlier articles in War in History prompted fierce retorts from those defending the more familiar Plan in a debate of almost theological intensity. Yet already Zuber's views have become influential, for example, in the first volume of Hugh Strachan's monumental history of the First World War.
Zuber argues that the "Plan" resulted from deliberate attempts in the early 1920s by Generals Wilhelm Groener and Hermann von Kuhl, among others, to silence critics like Hans Delbruck who blamed the generals for losing the war. By arguing that the hapless Helmuth von Moltke wrecked the perfect "Plan," responsibility for the loss could be shifted to one dead general instead of the vaunted General Staff. The official German history also conveniently omitted the 1914 operational plans, making impossible an independent assessment of the roles of Schlieffen and Moltke. Nor did the 1945 destruction of many of the army archives make...