Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 82

strong points, and extremely mobile forces that could be
transferred across robust internal lines of communication. These forces would engage the French with combined arms maneuver on a continental scale, enveloping
and destroying the Western armies by cutting them off
from their capitals and lines of supply.2 With this accomplished, the French government would be forced to agree
to peace terms, and the German army could turn its
attention to the east.
Articulated in terms of the theoretical framework
presented above, the 1914 German theory of warfare
would read: Given the need to fight a two-front war at a
numerical disadvantage, the German army will combine
rapid mobilization, concentrated heavy cannon, and
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strategic mobility to engage in combined arms maneuver to envelop the French army.3 When the French
army is cut off from its capital and its lines of communication, it will surrender, which will lead the French to
conclude a separate peace.
The plan generated by this theory failed to destroy the
French army. In the “Miracle on the Marne,” the French
Sixth Army, famously reinforced by soldiers brought
to the front by Parisian taxicabs, attacked the German
right wing, and ended the threat of encirclement by the
attacking Germans. Over the next two years, the opposing armies created a trench line of increasing depth
and complexity that stretched across Europe. Clinging
to their former theories of warfare, both sides sought to
July-August 2016  MILITARY REVIEW