"New Schlieffen Plan Book" Topic

So I'm watching a program on C-SPAN3 on a talk by Holger Herwig about his book "The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World".

During the Q&A he was ask about the Schlieffen Plan. He told of an amazing find in East Germany. There were over 3000 German military documents that the Russians had locked away. When the East Germans took over they also locked them away. They finally came to light when the two Germanies re-united.

This new book, containing new information gleaned from those lost archives, shows the development of the Plan from 1893-1914. The book includes fold-out maps.

The book is available in cloth cover or PDF for $75.00 USD (they are having a Holiday sale of 20% off). Follow the link below:

link

Ah yes, that one's on my Amazon list

Terence Zuber published a review of the book for The Journal of Military History:

The Schlieffen Plan: International Perspectives on the German Strategy for World War I H. Ehlert, M. Epkenhans, G. Gross (eds). University Press of Kentucky, 2014. 528 pp, 10 b/w photos, 14 maps. $75.00 USD

This is the English translation of Der Schlieffenplan. Analysen und Dokumente (Schöningh, 2006), a collection of essays following the 2004 Potsdam Schlieffen Plan conference, held, as Epkenhans notes in the Introduction (p. 9), "to discuss Zuber's Schlieffen plan thesis" [that there never was a "Schlieffen plan"].
Lieutenant-colonel Gerhard Gross had telephoned me in the spring of 2004 to ask me to participate in a Schlieffen Plan debate. On the first day papers would be presented concerning the Schlieffen Plan, and on the second day there would be a general debate.
When I arrived in Potsdam in the fall of 2004 I found that, instead of a debate, Epkenhans had set up an ambush. I would present first, then Annika Mombauer and Robert Foley would present papers in favor of the Schlieffen plan. Gross, who was supposed to be the impartial moderator, also presented a paper in favor of the Schlieffen Plan. There was a 45-minute question period, but no debate. The German press had been invited in order to announce that the existence of the Schlieffen plan had been proven.
In the Introduction (p. 9), Epkenhans says that his intent for the conference was to "perhaps convince him [Zuber] to modify them [my arguments that there never was a "Schlieffen plan"], in order to establish a basis for debate" . Epkenhans never communicated this intent to me. There is no mention of the possibility that Gross, Foley or Mombauer might "modify their arguments", and Epkenhans obviously was not interested in conducting a debate.
There was a "Schlieffen Plan" debate, but it took place under the guidance of Sir Hew Strachan in War in History. In the fifteen years since the debate began in 1999, there have been seventeen debate articles. Eight of these articles, including those by Foley, Mombauer and Gross, appeared after 2006: The Schlieffen Plan: International Perspectives is therefore badly out-of-date. A summary of all but the last of the articles is available on my website, terencezuber.com.
Moreover, the War in History debate includes five articles by my most effective opponent by far, Terence Holmes. When Gross told me of the Potsdam conference, I insisted that he invite Holmes to present a paper. Gross did not do so, which means that there is a fatal flaw in The Schlieffen Plan: International Perspectives.
The rest of the book (eight articles) concerned presentations extraneous to the Schlieffen Plan in particular or German war planning in general. Far from being, as the cover announces, a collection of "international perspectives on the German Strategy for World War I", two-thirds of the book has nothing to do with German strategy.
Stefan Schmidt expanded his "Plan XVII" article into his 2009 book Frankreichs Aussenpolitik in der Julikriese (French Foreign Policy in the July Crisis). Schmidt's research and analysis are brilliant, and he established a groundbreaking reevaluation of French actions during the month preceding the Great War. Once again, The Schlieffen Plan: International Perspectives is seriously out-of-date.
Hew Strachan's conclusions concerning the baleful effects of British strategy and that "in 1914 the BEF suffered a shattering defeat" are also groundbreaking.
There is a long article on the extremely unlikely possibility of a German invasion of Switzerland, and another on Belgian strategy, which maintains that unspecified "circumstances" forced the Belgians to adopt the deployment they did, which explains nothing, and that the Belgians expected the Germans to win, which would have come as a surprise to King Albert's influential aide, Major Galet, who stated that the Germans were hopelessly outnumbered.
Robert Bruce says on the back book cover that: "This book allows German scholars to have their say on this uniquely German topic and thus provides a new and significant perspective on the campaign in the west and the German plans for war". Only one of the four participants in the "Schlieffen Plan" portion of the book, Gross, was German. The only serious discussion of the 1914 campaign was provided by Dieter Storz's excellent article on the battle of Alsace-Lorraine.
The only important addition to the "Schlieffen Plan" debate to come out of the Potsdam conference was the discovery of document RH61/v.96 in the German Army archive, a summary of the German deployment plans from 1893/94 to 1914/15, which, as Terence Holmes has conclusively demonstrated, shows that the German army never had the force strtucture necessary to execute the "Schlieffen Plan". This is the final nail in the coffin of the "Schlieffen Plan" myth.
The text for RH61/v.96 is printed in last 185 pages of The Schlieffen Plan: International Perspectives. The 2006 German edition also printed the west front deployment maps (but not the east front maps – Epkenhans is trying to prove there was a "Schlieffen Plan"). The Schlieffen Plan: International Perspectives does not print any of the deployment maps, making the plans incomprehensible. Nor is there any analysis of the plans, because conducting one would necessarily lead to the acknowledgment that the "Schlieffen plan" never existed.
In any case, four years ago I published a summary of RH61/v.96 in The Real German War Plan 1904-1914 (History Press), including the west and east-front deployment maps, Schlieffen's last war games in 1905, the German intelligence estimates, as well as giving the context for the plans and an analysis of them. I also provided the French plans, as well as a summary of Moltke's planning during the Marne campaign. Nowhere in any of this is there a trace of the "Schlieffen plan" to be seen.

Ponder on,

JAS