Schlieffen Plan

1)The Schlieffen Plan was created because Germany was trying to avoid fighting which two European countries at the same time?

1) Germany created the Schlieffen Plan because it wanted to avoid fighting France and Russia at the same time.

2)Why would fighting these two countries at the same time have been a problem for Germany?

2) Fighting both France and Russia at the same time would have been a problem for Germany because its military forces would have been split between two fronts at the same time, one in Eastern Europe and the other in Western Europe.

3)How, specifically, was the plan going to enable Germany to avoid fighting both countries at the same time?

3) The plan called for Germany to use 90% of its armed forces to defeat France, the weaker country, in a short amount of time, by invading through Belgium on the Western Front. Following its victory there, Germany would use its modernized railroad system to transfer many of these soldiers to the Eastern Front to fight against and defeat Russia, the stronger country.

4)What different assumption did von Schlieffen make about each Triple Entente country, when he created this plan?

4) Germany assumed that Russia would take 6 weeks to mobilize its army and be ready to begin fighting. Germany assumed that France was weaker than Russia, and could be defeated quickly at the beginning of the war. Germany assumed that Great Britain would be unwilling to fight on France's side, once that country was being defeated by the German invasion.

5)What action did Russia's army take in August of 1914 that ran counter to von Schlieffen's assumptions?

5) Russia took only 10 days to mobilize its army in August of 1914, and Russia created more of a threat on the Eastern Front than Schlieffen had expected.

6)How did Germany respond to the action taken by Russia's army?

6) Germany declared war on Russia and on France in early August, a few days after Russia began to mobilize its army. (Timeline)

7)How did Belgium's 1839 Treaty influence both the creation of the Schlieffen Plan and the success of the German invasion in August of 1914?

7) Schlieffen planned on Great Britain not supporting Belgium during an invasion on the Western Front, but Great Britain did fight to help Belgium. This made Germany's invasion less successful on the Western Front.