Schlieffen Plan

The Schlieffen Plan (German: Schlieffen-Plan, pronounced [ʃliːfən plaːn]) was the name given after World War I to the thinking behind the German invasion of France and Belgium in August 1914. Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen was the Chief of the Imperial German General Staff from 1891–1906 and in 1905/06 devised a deployment plan for a war-winning offensive, in a one-front war against the French Third Republic. After the war, German official historians of the Reichsarchiv and other writers, described the plan as a blueprint for victory, that was ruined by its flawed implementation in 1914 by Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, who had been the Commander-in-Chief of the German army from Schlieffen's retirement in 1906 until he was dismissed after the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September 1914).