Professional Custom Accounting: Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906.

Professional Custom Accounting: Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906.

· Alfred von Schlieffen was a German field marshal and strategist who served as Chief of the Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906.

· Throughout his career, he developed several war plans for defensive, offensive, and counter-offensive campaigns, particularly with the French.

· The offensive campaign against France developed in 1905-06, later termed the “Schleiffen Plan,” focused on a brute force attack with sufficient soldiers.

· When Schlieffen retired, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger took over a Commander-in-Chief of the German army and at the outbreak of WWI, deployed a modified version of Schlieffen’s plan against the latter’s advice, which failed to achieve the decisive victory it promised.

· Various historians have contended that Moltke the Younger’s failure to follow the blueprint rather than German strategic miscalculation condemned the belligerents to four years of attrition warfare.