Conclusion-part two
The overall operational plan applied in Belgium in August 1914 was at best a gambler’s gambit. As early as August 4, the OHL was considering canceling or delaying the operation. The only definite way to implement the plan was to follow the route originally indicated by Schlieffen. In other and plainer words, Moltke had to cross the Maastricht Appendix. Only in that way did he have reasonable chances to outflank Liège, directly approach the Belgian Army’s flank, and assure that the vital logistical lines of communication with Germany would be open. The obvious negative was that would bring the Netherlands into the war. Crossing the Maastricht Appendix would guarantee neither success nor the discovery of the BEF. Militarily, however, it did provide a way to ameliorate all the problems inherent with forcing the gap at Liège. Who should have made this decision? Rather than leave the decision to the political authorities, as Moltke the Elder would probably have done, the junior-version Moltke accepted a high-risk military plan and did not tell his ostensible political superiors of the risks.
The consequences began immediately and then metastasized. German failure to eliminate the Belgian field army early in the campaign and its successful retreat createda consistent, massive force drain culminating in the requirement to watch Antwerp constantly for any possible sortie. What difference might have Fourth Reserve Corps and Ninth Reserve Corps made to the right wing had they not been covering Antwerp?
Moltke put far too few cavalry divisions on the far-right flank—significantly fewer than Schlieffen. The three divisions of HKK 2 could not cover all the tasks assigned. We have shown that additional divisions were available So why did the staff present a plan where eventually there just was not enough cavalry to handle the tasks assigned? After the war, many critics lamented that HKK 3 had been wasted and would have been better utilized in the open spaces of the right wing in Belgium. Moltke realized that his initial deployment was not proceeding as intended. Two to three days after the general advanced started, he tried to move HKK 1 north and combine with HKK 2. This was an overly ambitious correction. It took eight days—”fog and friction” once more determining events in a movement that was incredibly difficult, especially for inexperienced formations and commanders. Then it merely placed HKK 1 on the right flank of Second Army—just outside the cavalry’s crucial operational zone. This could have been avoided had HKK 1 originally been placed at least on the right flank of Third Army. Or, if the plan had followed the intention of Schlieffen, HKK 1 could have started in the same area as HKK 2 and provided more muscle to turn the Belgian field army away from Antwerp. This deployment, however, required crossing the Maastricht Appendix—in 1914, a nonstarter and a classic case of catch-22.
If the German GGS was one of modern history’s “perfect organizations,” then the bar has been set very low. There are just too many problems with the plan executed by Moltke to give it even a passing grade. The staff failed, the Handstreichfailed, the reconnaissance failed, the campaign failed. And as near-run things as were the fate of the BEF after Mons and the subsequent battle of the Marne, the campaign’s opening events provide significant evidence that the German Army at the decisive point was not configured for success in its first and only great war.In response, the preceding text has developed several points.
First, the German cavalry’s mission was reconnaissance—not direct battlefield shock action in the fashion of Seydlitz or Murat. That meant finding and feeling out the enemy; maneuvering like a boxer so as to encourage the opponent to set himself up for a decisive infantry-artillery blow. Successful reconnaissance could achieve that in two ways. One involved providing sufficiently comprehensive, sufficiently accurate information to the higher commands to enable them to structure and coordinate their own movements appropriately. The other was playing an economy-of-force role that freed divisions and army corps from subsidiary missions and made them available for the decisive point. In the latter case, for example, the cavalry’s rendering unnecessary the diversion of a half-dozen divisions to the siege of Antwerp would have added significant depth, breadth, and impact to the German’s extreme right wing.
Second, the German cavalry possessed the force structure of an effective, if relatively small, multimission-capable combined-arms team, able to both collect information and fight for it. Horsemen with some ability in dismounted fighting, artillery, machine guns and Jaeger battalions whose training emphasized marksmanship, skirmishing, and endurance demonstrated a flexibility in the August fighting that was often nullified by their limited strength. Had Schlieffen’s allocation of cavalry divisions been implemented, opportunities would have been enhanced to surprise and confuse in those first weeks.
Third, the opposition was not exactly characterized by effectiveness. The Belgian cavalry division was a force of civilians in comic-opera uniforms. The French cavalry was not accustomed to dismount and walk; the stench of Sordet’s saddle-galled horses could be smelled before the troopers were seen. The British cavalry was the best of the lot, but shortcomings of command and control arguably brought it to the edge of disintegration in the war’s first weeks. The Allied armies were vulnerable in other categories as well. Belgium’s six divisions brought numbers to the field, but little in the way of effectiveness. The French left flank would have depended heavily on reservists in whom their own army had little confidence The BEF was still finding its feet—literally. Confederate General James Longstreet once described green troops as “as sensitive about the flanks as a virgin.” Might German cavalry—employed properly and in strength—have contributed heavily to a catastrophic pattern of order–counterorder–disorder?
The intention of this work has been to present not alternate history but alternate contingencies—contingencies that, while possessing their own risks and shortcomings, offered better German results than those experienced in 1914. In any case, neither the immediate nor the ultimate outcome of the guns of August could have been worse for the Second Reich—or for Europe and the world.