The young Schlieffen had shown no interest in joining the military and so he did not attend the traditional Prussian cadet academies.

He thus started a long military career, working his way up through the officer ranks, eventually completing 53 years of service.

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.

[5] In France, Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, promoted him to Major and head of the military history division.

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".

"[8] 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.

[4] His last words are said to have been, "Remember: keep the right wing very strong" (in reference to the main strategic manoeuvre of Aufmarsch I West), but the tale is believed to be apocryphal and to have originated decades after his death.

Upon mobilisation, large numbers of reservists would be assigned to replacement battalions (Ersatzbataillone), while waiting to join the field army.

[10] From June 1891, Schlieffen proposed to form Ersatzbataillone into brigades in the field army but the units were not effective forces.

[10] Schlieffen thought that even this hypothetical 96-division German army would probably not be able to defeat France, These preparations [encircling Paris] can be made any way that you like: it will soon become clear that we will be too weak to continue the operation in this direction.

[11]Without twelve Ersatz divisions on the right flank (in 1914 the German army had six which operated in Lorraine), outflanking Paris was impossible.

When war came, the German government ought to declare full mobilisation in East Prussia, owing to its vulnerability to Russian cavalry raids.

Germany's smaller forces relative to the Franco-Russian Entente meant that an offensive posture against one or both was basically suicidal.

[18]Schlieffen also recognised the need for offensive planning, however, as failing to do so would limit the German Army's capabilities if the situation called for them.

[19] To complement this unsophisticated manoeuvre and improve its chances of success he deemed it necessary to outflank the fortress line to the north and focus on destroying it from north–south starting at Verdun.

This plan was based on the hypothesis of an isolated Franco-German war which would not involve Russia and called for Germany to attack France.

The rough draft of this plan was so crude as not to consider questions of supply at all and be vague on the actual number of troops involved, but theorised that Germany would need to raise at least another 100,000 professional troops and 100,000 "ersatz" militiamen (the latter being within Germany's capabilities even in 1905) in addition to being able to count on Austro-Hungarian and Italian forces being deployed to German Alsace-Lorraine to defend it.

Whenever we come across that formula we have to take note of the context, which frequently reveals that Schlieffen is talking about a counter-attack in the framework of a defensive strategy [italics ours].

Schlieffen seems to have tried to impress upon Moltke that an offensive strategy against France could work only for isolated Franco-German war, as German forces would otherwise be too weak to implement it.

[28] 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.