Mobilization-3-Planning
The war plan was amended and issued by the Chief of the General Staff on a biannual basis. For example, planning for 1904-1905 took effect from 1 April 1904 to 31 March 1905. Broad guidance was issued to the Army commanders in a document known as the Aufmarschanweisung. This was an initial direction with no real stipulations about what to do after enemy contact. The General Inspectors (General-Inspekteure) of the army inspections had wartime roles as commanders of field armies (Armee-Oberbefehlshaber). Upon mobilization they and their chiefs of general staff received sealed envelopes containing secret deployment orders. These orders would include the order of battle of their armies, deployment areas, reporting lines, some general directives about railroad deployment and logistics, together with a concept of operations covering the first days of hostilities. During the first days of mobilization Chief of the General Staff called the newly appointed Army Commanders together with their Chiefs of General Staffs army by army to his office to explain and discuss further details of the deployment order and of the goals of the coming operations. For example, the Commander of the First Army together with his Chief of General Staff had their appointment with Moltke on 2 August. Based on these briefings, the commanders and their chiefs went back to their staff quarters to draw up initial operations plans, while their troops were mobilized and transported to the deployment areas.
Planning for mobilization was done in annual cycles known as mobilization years. The mobilization year (Mobilmachungsjahr) commenced 1 April and lasted until 31 March. The General Staff prepared their mobilization orders for the army corps, army inspections, and railroad line commanders (among others) for the mobilization year 1914-15 in March 1914. From April 1913, Germany had only a single strategic plan to be implemented in case of war; a plan that left seven of eight numbered armies in the west and only one in the east to support Austria. Based on these orders, the chiefs of staff and the Ia officers had to implement the changes into their own mobilization calendar (Mobilmachungskalender). Because of the large expansion of the Army in the mobilization years 1913-14 and 1914-15, this meant a huge amount of work. All of the new reserve formations and reservists of active formations had to be staffed with reserve personnel in co-operation with the Bezirks-Kommandos. They had to be fed, accommodated, armed, fitted out with uniforms, and finally, moved by train to their assembly areas.
The assembly areas had to be prepared. There had to be sufficient accommodation—usually one family house or small farmhouse was assumed sufficient per Gruppe. This meant about three to four houses per platoon were required, about 10 per company, etc. Medical officers had to check the hygiene standards of the villages, farmhouses, water wells, etc., in the assembly areas. Hundreds of thousands of men in an often very remote countryside along the western border had to be fed. If assembly areas were changed, railroad connections had to be changed, and if necessary, new railroad head stations had to be built. This would explain why small Eifel villages had such extensive track layouts and unloading ramps.
Train transportation had to be arranged. There was a mobilization railroad timetable that overruled the civilian timetable during the two weeks of mobilization. The planners had to take into account the capacity and speed of the mobilization trains. Because the trains were moved at slow speeds, food, water, and coffee had to be prepared at many railroad stations to feed the soldiers coming through. The sheer quantity of planning is mind-boggling. To cover the 20 days of initial mobilization, 20,800 trains of 50 cars each were planned down to the minute; they transported 2.07 million men, 118,000 horses, and 400,000 tons of assorted supplies. All of these preparations meant a lot of detailed planning work, particularly for the Ia officers. Because the mobilization calendar was top secret, there were strict limitations on its handling. In practice this meant that the Ia had to do all the work by himself; he could not delegate it to NCOs or men.