Альфред фон Шлифен: Жизнь и военная карьера

German field marshal

Graf Alfred von Schlieffen, generally called Count Schlieffen (; 28 February 1833 – 4 January 1913) was a German field marshal and strategist who served as chief of the Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906. His name lived on in the 1905–06 "Schlieffen Plan", then Aufmarsch I, a deployment plan and operational guide for a decisive initial offensive operation/campaign in a two front war against the French Third Republic.

Born in Prussia, Germany, on 28 February 1833, the son of a Prussian Army officer, he was part of an old Prussian noble family, the Schlieffen family. He lived with his father, Major Magnus von Schlieffen, on their estate in Silesia, which he left to go to school in 1842. The young Schlieffen had shown no interest in joining the military and so he did not attend the traditional Prussian cadet academies. Instead, he studied at the University of Berlin. While he was studying law, he enlisted in the army in 1853 for his one year of compulsory military service. Then, instead of joining the reserves, he was chosen as an officer candidate. He thus started a long military career, working his way up through the officer ranks, eventually completing 53 years of service. In 1868, fifteen years into his military career, Schlieffen married his cousin Countess Anna Schlieffen. They had one healthy child (Elisabeth Auguste Marie Ernestine Gräfin von Schlieffen, 13 September 1869 – 23 September 1943), but after the birth of a second (Marie, who became a nun), his wife died. Schlieffen then focused all of his attention on his military work.

On the recommendation of his commanders, Schlieffen was admitted to the General War School in 1858 at the age of 25, much earlier than others. He graduated in 1861 with high honours, which guaranteed him a role as a General Staff officer. In 1862, he was assigned to the Topographic Bureau of the General Staff, providing him with geographical knowledge and a respect for the tactical and strategic value of terrain and weather that would serve him well throughout his career, particularly in the war games he conducted and in the devising of various war plans including the famous Schlieffen Plan. In 1865 he was transferred to the German General Staff proper, though his role was initially a minor one. He first saw active war service as a staff officer with the Prussian Cavalry Corps at the Battle of Königgrätz of 1866, during the Austro Prussian War. The tactical "battle of encirclement" conducted there was from that point forward a constant feature of his tactical doctrine, even as his strategic doctrine consistently favoured the counter offensive due to both his understanding of terrain and his respect for von Clausewitz's assessment of the constantly diminishing strength of the offensive. During the Franco Prussian War, he commanded a small force in the Loire Valley in what was one of the most difficult campaigns fought by the Prussian Army. In France, Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, promoted him to Major and head of the military history division. After years working alongside Helmuth von Moltke and Alfred von Waldersee, on 4 December 1886 he was promoted to Major General, and shortly afterwards, with the retirement of Moltke, became Waldersee's Deputy Chief of Staff. Not long after this he became Quartermeistergeneral, then Lieutenant General on 4 December 1888, and eventually General of the Cavalry on 27 January 1893. In 1904, on the occasion of the Herero rebellion in German South West Africa (present day Namibia), Chief of the General Staff Schlieffen was supportive of Lothar von Trotha's genocidal policies against the Herero and Namaqua peoples, saying "The race war, once commenced, can only be ended by annihilation or the complete enslavement of one party". He agreed in principle with Trotha's notorious Vernichtungsbefehl ("extermination order") of 2 October 1904, even justifying the many cases of killing of Herero women by the Germans, writing "If women have been shot, then one must remember that women have not only participated in the fighting, they have also been the main originators of the cruel and horrible martyrdom that our wounded have often been subjected to, and that the sight of these victims provoked the comrades to forgivable fury." Only after the intervention of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow and the fear that Germany's international image will be stained did Schlieffen agree, in December 1904, to repeal Trotha's orders to kill on the spot unarmed and surrendering Hereros.

Schlieffen was perhaps the best known contemporary strategist of his time, but he was criticised for his "narrow minded military scholasticism." Schlieffen's operational theories were to have a profound impact on the development of manoeuvre warfare in the 20th century, largely through his seminal treatise, Cannae, which concerned the decidedly un modern 216 BCE Battle of Cannae in which Hannibal defeated the Romans. His treatise had two main purposes. First, it was to clarify, in writing, Schlieffen's concepts of manoeuvre, particularly the manoeuvre of encirclement, along with other fundamentals of warfare. Second, it was to be an instrument for the Staff, the War Academy, and for the Army all together. His theories were studied exhaustively, especially in the higher army academies of the United States and Europe after the First World War. American military thinkers thought so highly of him that his principal literary legacy, Cannae, was translated at Fort Leavenworth and distributed within the US Army and to the academic community. Along with the great militarist man that Schlieffen is famous for being, there are also underlying traits about Schlieffen that often go untold. As we know, Schlieffen was a strategist. Unlike the Chief of Staff, Waldersee, Schlieffen avoided political affairs and instead was actively involved in the tasks of the General Staff, including the preparation of war plans and the readiness of the German Army for war. He focused much of his attention on planning. He devoted time to training, military education and the adaptation of modern technology for the use of military purposes and strategic planning. It was evident that Schlieffen was very much involved in preparing and planning for future combat. He considered one of his primary tasks was to prepare the young officers to act responsibly in planning manoeuvres but also to direct these movements after the planning had taken place. With regards to Schlieffen's tactics, General Walter Bedell Smith, chief of staff to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in the Second World War, pointed out that General Dwight Eisenhower and many of his staff officers, products of these academies, "were imbued with the idea of this type of wide, bold maneuver for decisive results." General Erich Ludendorff, a disciple of Schlieffen who applied his teachings of encirclement in the Battle of Tannenberg, once famously christened Schlieffen as "one of the greatest soldiers ever." Long after his death, the German General Staff officers of the interwar period and the Second World War, particularly General Hans von Seeckt, recognised an intellectual debt to Schlieffen theories during the development of the Blitzkrieg doctrine. The original plan for the 1940 German invasion of France was based on the Schlieffen Plan. Adolf Hitler, however, is said to have deprecated Schlieffen's memory, going so far as to command that Schlieffen's name never be uttered in his presence and to admonish Walter Scherff, official chronicler of the Wehrmacht, to omit Schlieffen's name from any histories he might write.

"A man is born, and not made, a strategist. "—Schlieffen
"To win, we must endeavour to be the stronger of the two at the point of impact. Our only hope of this lies in making our own choice of operations, not in waiting passively for whatever the enemy chooses for us." — Schlieffen