What was the Schlieffen plan?

It was the German Plan to defeat the West flank quickly and then transport the troops to the East to take on Russia.

Unfortunately General Count Alfred von Schlieffen retired and modified by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after Schlieffen's retirement; it was Moltke who actually implemented the plan at the outset of World War I. In modified form, it was executed to near victory in the first month of the war.

Unfortunately it went belly up and ended up as 4 years of bloody trench warfare where millions were to die.

You can read about it here at the start of the entire entry @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan

H-Man

The Schlieffen Plan was Germany's war plan before WW1.

Russia and France were allies,which meant Germany would have to fight them both in the event of war against either.The Schlieffen Plan was designed to use the bulk of the German army to knock France out the war quickly - within 6 weeks - through outflanking the French army and capturing Paris by invading neutral Belgium to get into French territory before the French could block the advance.The German army could then be moved east to fight the Russians;it was believed that there would be no Russian attack on Germany for at least 2 months.

It was the only plan in the German play book when WWI broke out, and it was not really what was needed when the spark that started the war broke out. It was a plan for what Germany would do if faced with a two-front war against France and Russia, focusing on France first, due to the slow mobilization of the Russian army. Its merits and its shortcomings have long been debated by historians.