Helmuth von Moltke the Younger is a difficult character to uncover, but one essential to understanding the panoply of forces that produced WWI.¹ Moltke died in 1916, providing him little opportunity to defend his tenure. His widow had intended to publish an exculpatory collection of evidence of the chaos of German war planning before 1914. However, by then it was 1919, and the documents were deemed harmful to Germany’s attempt to avoid the blame for the war and so not published. This would prove fateful; the documents would be destroyed in World War II.

Moltke therefore proved an ideal scapegoat for the “Schlieffen School”. For the Schlieffen School (mostly officers trained by Schlieffen), the Schlieffen Plan was a true recipe for victory bungled by incompetent execution. However, recent scholarship has shown a more nuanced picture. While Schlieffen did not fully approve of his successor, Moltke was a faithful student of Schlieffen’s concepts. The modifications he made to the plan were not because of a difference in opinion, but of circumstance. Following Schlieffen’s retirement, the French army became more aggressive, necessitating a stronger defense of the Rhine. Likewise, Russian strength and mobilization speed increased, necessitating a greater force allocated to the East. Moltke was also more realistic about the logistical limitations of the all-important right wing of the German offensive. While Schlieffen (allegedly with his dying breath) insisted “keep the right wing strong”, there were simply only so many divisions that could practically advance there. Moltke did his best to adapt the Schlieffen Plan to these changing circumstances, though with mounting fear that the strength of the Entente had placed victory beyond Germany’s strength.

Despite awareness of the long odds, officers continued to press for preventative war in succeeding European crises.³ The term “preventative war” did not mean “preempting the attack of hostile powers” but rather to initiate a war while the strategic balance was most favorable for Germany. While, as mentioned, they had their doubts about the surety of victory, they believed the odds would only get worse. The Schlieffen Plan had been designed for a one-front war against France (in 1905, the year of Schlieffen’s retirement, Russia was in the throes of revolution). Though adapted in later years, the plan remained tenable only so long as Germany had the chance to defeat France before Russian mobilization was completed. As the Russian army expanded and its rail system modernized, the General Staff saw the Schlieffen Plan nearing its expiration date.

The General Staff saw no alternative to Schlieffen’s concept because of its axiomatic focus on total victory. The kind of limited victory that the Elder Moltke had settled for in his later war plans had never entered the vocabulary of the General Staff. As such, the General Staff pressed strongly for war (which it believed was inevitable) to break out before the balance of power swung further against Germany.

The only alternative to this would have been to frankly state the perilous situation in which Germany stood militarily and admit that total military victory was out of reach and German diplomacy would need to be reoriented around this fact. Not only would this course of action been antithetical to the proud traditions of the officer corps, but it would also have been viewed as unacceptably political. What’s more, the Kaiser would have likely viewed such behavior as cowardly if not outright insubordinate. Once again, the Kaiser’s power over personnel decisions meant uncomfortable topics were not broached for fear of instant dismissal.

It is not entirely unjust to accuse German leaders of cowardice or careerism in avoiding these conversations. However, they — like so many who serve under capricious or incompetent heads of state — justified their silence and continued service under the logic of harm reduction. If they resigned (or clashed with the Kaiser leading to their dismissal) they knew they would be replaced by someone more compliant. The Kaiser’s power over personnel meant they understood clearly that they had no leverage.

The Chiefs of the General Staff, for all their influence, were incentivized to focus on the areas of their exclusive responsibility. Nevertheless, the younger Moltke was not passive in his efforts for war. He resumed contact with the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, assuring it of German support should Austria choose war in a crisis. As aforementioned, when crises came to Europe (some instigated by the German foreign ministry) he pressed the chancellor and Kaiser for a preventative war. Both, to their credit, while willing to risk war, would not choose it.

Perhaps most decisively, Moltke and his deputy, Erich von Ludendorff,⁴ made the decision to hinge the operational plan on an attack on the Belgian city of Liège (hosting a critical rail juncture) before the neutral country could mobilize.⁵ This modification was made because Moltke desired to avoid violating Dutch neutrality (as Schlieffen had called for). He wisely understood Germany could afford no more enemies and that invading the Netherlands would mean increasing the distance the German right wing would have to cover to gain the French flank, decreasing the odds of success. What’s more, Moltke hoped that Dutch neutrality would allow it to act as a “windpipe” in the event of a long war and a British blockade. However, avoiding Dutch territory complicated German logistics, necessitating the swift seizure of Liège to allow the offensive to meet its strict timetables.

This was a strictly operational decision, made on technical grounds. As such, neither the chancellor nor the Kaiser were informed of this detail of the plan (operational plans were kept strictly secret, with the prior year’s being systematically burned). However, as perceptive readers may have noticed, the need for a coup de main against a neutral country before it mobilized severely limited German strategic flexibility. There was only one deployment plan for war in the West (and only one at all after 1913). In a crisis, Germany was therefore bound to attack before the Belgians manned Liège’s fortifications. Yet this all-important point-of-no-return was unknown to the Kaiser, chancellor, and foreign minister. The General Staff had effectively stripped the Kaiser and civilian leaders of their “right to be wrong”.

Thus, the General Staff had drastically increased the likelihood of war in that the point-of-no-return was kept obscured from those who would be responsible for bring Germany to the brink. As would occur in 1914 during the July Crisis, the Kaiser and his minister could not understand why Moltke was pressing so strongly for war. As historian Annika Mombauer puts it, “Only Moltke knew that every hour counted”.⁶ The General Staff had — intentionally or not — engineered a situation in which political leadership would have to choose war or abandon its only operational plan. While political leadership was reticent to take this step (especially without the details of the plan) contributing to Moltke’s nervous breakdown, the General Staff ultimately got the war it so desired at the next crisis Germany found itself in. If the coup de main on Liège had been devised as a ploy to force political leadership to engage in a preventative war, it had succeeded.

Ultimately, the predominance of the military over German policy — both foreign and domestic — created an environment in which civilian leaders like Bethmann Hollweg were sidelined, and aggressive military strategies took precedence. This imbalance of prestige, coupled with the narrow, fatalistic worldview of military leaders, contributed to Germany’s march toward war, with little room to acknowledge alternative diplomatic or strategic approaches.

Kiran Pfitzner and Secretary of Defense Rock, “The Kaiser and His Men: Civil-Military Relations in Wilhelmine Germany”, Dead Carl and You, 2024-10-02.

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1. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder was his uncle.
2. Mombauer, Moltke, 109.
3. Better known for other work.
4. Mombauer, 96.
5. Mombauer, 219.
6. Rosinski, “Scharnhorst to Schlieffen”, 99.