Von Kluck's Turn

Von Kluck commanded the German 1rst Army, which in the German line of attack through Belgium in August-September 1914 was the outermost army on the right flank. If you were to imagine that the Germans were imagining themselves to be playing a game of "crack the whip," Von Kluck plays the role of the whip. The skaters to his immediate left commanding the Second and Third Armies were Generals Von Bulow and Von Hausen respectively. Von Kluck, Von Bulow and Von Hausen constitute one of the great trios of generalship in military history. As another author will discuss in greater detail below, this trio was to, upon having passed through Belgium, sweep south, southwest directly towards Paris. The last man on the right was to "brush the English channel with his sleeve." The idea was to use the coast as a seal on the right flank so as to prevent the Right Wing from being outflanked. However, in an episode of trickery, General Lanrezac, commanding the French Fifth Army, drew Von Kluck's army in the critical days of the Plan Southeast towards the Aisne. Von Kluck mistakenly believed that he could outflank Lanrezac and, together with the 2nd and 3rd armies, mount an atatck on Paris in a south-easterly direction. The problem, however, was that the Germans, further and further from their supply lines and more exhausted with each day of the march, never caught Lanrezac who had dropped in toward Paris, where Major Gallieni and General Joffre had been orchestrating defensive preparations. The result was that the French Armies and the German Right Wing now stood more directly opposed to one another and prepared for a decisive action than the Schlieffen Plan had envisioned. This decisive battle would be The Battle of the Marne, which, as all the world knows, ended in a German retreat to its eventual fortified positions on the heights of the Aisne.