Failure of the Schlieffen Plan

Failure of the Schlieffen Plan This has been a question discussed many times. Well, one problem that was

certain was that there were too many assumptions in the actual plan.

There were assumptions such as "Russia will take six weeks to

mobilise." This was probably true at the time, for Russia had just

fought a war against Japan, and had lost. This meant that the armies

were weakened, and demoralised. However, this was in 1904. When the

plan was carried out, the Russian army had been greatly improved, as

had the railway services in Russia, thus ensuring a faster

mobilisation (10 days or so instead). Another assumption that

Schlieffen made was that Belgium would remain neutral, as would

Britain. This, however, also proved incorrect. The Belgians put up

some resistance, thus bringing Britain into the war, due to the

Belgian - European alliance many years before. This contradicted