German military history had previously been influenced by Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred von Schlieffen and von Moltke the Elder, who were proponents of maneuver, mass, and envelopment.

To further block German-Polish diplomatic talks, Ribbentrop had the German Ambassador to Poland, Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, recalled, and refused to see the Polish Ambassador, Józef Lipski.

Bismarck, Roon and Moltke took charge at a time when relations among the Great Powers — Great Britain, France, Austria and Russia — had been shattered by the Crimean War of 1854 – 55 and the Italian War of 1859.

At the end, France had to surrender Alsace and part of Lorraine, because Moltke and his generals insisted that it was needed as a defensive barrier.

Moltke had originally planned to keep Bazaine's army on the Saar River until he could attack it with the 2nd Army in front and the 1st Army on its left flank, while the 3rd Army closed towards the rear.

Ludendorff also learned at this point that von Moltke had decided to take three corps and a cavalry division from the Western front and redeploy them to East Prussia.

John Wheeler-Bennett wrote in 1967: " To such a nadir of supine degradation had come the child of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and Moltke.

After the war he disowned all responsibility for the offensive: " If old von Moltke thought that I had planned that offensive he would have turned over in his grave.

Moltke had accordingly favoured limited operations against France and a major effort against Russia.

Further, van Creveld points out that while Schlieffen had assigned five corps for the investment of Antwerp, Moltke made do with only two.

Schlieffen had been willing to sacrifice some German territory in the short run to decisively destroy the French Army but Moltke refused to run the same risk and shifted some divisions from the right flank to the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine.

Moltke also had ideological opposition to the proposed passage of the invading armies through the neutral Netherlands, deciding instead to send his armies only through Belgium and Luxembourg.

Contrarily, Captain Douglas Cohn argues that the plan may have worked if Moltke had followed Schlieffen's original plan instead of modifying it.

He argues that had Moltke not depleted the right flank on the Western Front, Kluck's 1st German Army would not have been forced away from the sea, the British Expeditionary Force ( BEF ) would have been overwhelmed, and the French armies would have been trapped between Paris and France's eastern frontiers.

Fromkin continues by putting much of the genesis of the plan, as finally enacted, on Moltke, who had seen the memorandum and believed it to be a fully operational plan which he then proceeded to expand upon.

Peter Hoffmann's biography of Hitler assassination conspirator Claus Graf von Stauffenberg (" Stauffenberg, A Family History ," 1992 ) indicates that after the failure of Stauffenberg's bomb plot in July 1944, Gisevius went into hiding until January 23, 1945, when he escaped to Switzerland by using a passport that had belonged to Carl Deichmann, a brother-in-law of German Count Helmuth James von Moltke, who was a specialist in international law serving in the legal branch of the Foreign Countries Group of the OKW ( Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, " Supreme Command of the Armed Forces ").

These included Trott but also members who had not been part of the Plot, such as Moltke, Yorck and Delp.

She was the widow of Helmuth James von Moltke, who had opposed National Socialism and was executed by the Nazis.

Ducrot ordered the retreat that Moltke had expected, but was overruled almost immediately by General de Wimpffen, who threw his forces against the Saxons at La Moncelle.

Although these officers subsequently alternated between regimental and staff duties, they could be relied upon to think and act exactly as von Moltke had taught them when they became the Chiefs of Staff of major formations.

In the victories which the Prussian Army was to gain against Austrian Empire and France, von Moltke needed only to issue brief directives to the main formations, leaving the staffs at the subordinate headquarters to implement the details according to the doctrines and methods he had laid down, while the Supreme Commands of his opponents became bogged down in a mountain of paperwork and trivia as they tried to control the entire army from a single overworked headquarters.

Although he maintained an icy formal demeanour, von Moltke the Elder had been a flexible and innovative thinker in many fields.

For a year Moltke had charge of a cadet school at Frankfurt an der Oder, then he was for three years employed on the military survey in Silesia and Posen.

In eighteen months he had finished nine volumes out of twelve, but the publisher failed to produce the book and Moltke never received more than 25 marks.

" Although Moltke did improve the Plan somewhat in this respect, it was not methodical advanced planning which enabled the German advance to succeed, but " furious improvisation " That the Army achieved as much as it did, at a time when the standing orders could only be said to have caused no actual harm, is remarkable indeed.

Otto von Bismark, Albrecht Graf von Roon, Helmut von Moltke, the three leaders of Prussia in the 1860s

The concept of expanding naval power, inevitably at the cost of not expanding other forces, was opposed by the three successive heads of the German armed forces, Waldersee, Schlieffen and Moltke between 1888 and 1914.

Leaving the Prussian First and Second Armies besieging Metz, Moltke formed the Army of the Meuse under the Crown Prince of Saxony by detaching three corps from them, and took this army and the Prussian Third Army northward, where they caught up with the French at Beaumont on 30 August.

Moltke divided his forces into three groups: one to detain the French where they were, another to race forward and catch them if they retreated, and a third ( the smallest force ) to hold the river bank.

Otto von Bismark | Bismarck, Albrecht Graf von Roon | Roon, Moltke, the three leaders of Prussia in the 1860s

Wilhelm II, informed of the growing story, responded by requiring the resignation of three of fifteen prominent aristocrats, Hohenau, Lynar, and Moltke, listed as homosexual by the Berlin vice squad ; however, the actual list, not shown to Wilhelm II, contained several hundred names.

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke before the People's Court in 1945In Berlin von Moltke ’ s husband had a circle of acquaintances who opposed Nazism and who met frequently there, but on three occasions met at Kreisau.

Von Moltke met with three German Chancellors in connection with her life's work, Helmut Kohl in 1998 to introduce him to the Kreisau International Youth Center built in Krzyżowa, Gerhard Schroeder in 2004 at a wreath-laying ceremony to honor Nazi resisters, and Angela Merkel in 2007 at a commemoration of the birth centenary of her husband, Helmuth von Moltke.

In addition to exploiting railroads and highways for manoeuvre, Moltke also exploited the telegraph for control of large armies.

) Rather than sweeping around them and enveloping the French armies and Paris itself from the east, Moltke opted to directly attack their reinforced positions around Nancy which ended in an unmitigated failure.

On 22 June, Prussia's Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, ordered both armies under his command to Jitschin ( Jičín ) near the Austrian positions, a daring maneuver undertaken to limit the war's duration despite the risk of one army being overtaken en route.

Moltke ordered the Crown Prince Frederick to join forces with the other two armies at the point where the Austrians were assembled, but the telegraph lines to the Second Army's positions were out, necessitating the dispatch of two mounted officers at midnight to ride the twenty miles ' distance in time.

Moltke had two Prussian armies about 100 miles apart.

Moltke again planned and led the Prussian armies in the Franco-Prussian War ( 1870 – 71 ), which paved the way for the creation of the Prussian-led German Empire in 1871.

But these unexpected victories did not disconcert Moltke, who carried out his intended advance to Pont-Mousson, crossed the Moselle with the first and second armies, then faced north and wheeled round, so that the effect of the battle of Gravelotte was to drive Bazaine into the fortress of Metz and cut him off from Paris.

The Schlieffen School disagrees, and argues that Moltke lost control of the invading armies during the month of August and thus was unable to react when the First Battle of the Marne developed in September.

While Moltke had lost effective touch with his field commanders, German operational doctrine had always stressed personal initiative on the part of subordinate officers, more so than in other armies.

The German armies quickly reached Paris, and on September 15 Moltke issued orders for the investment of the city.

Moltke was also worried that insufficient winter supplies were reaching the German armies investing the city, as diseases such as tuberculosis were breaking out amongst the besieging soldiers.

Moltke was pressing on with the concentration of the Prussian armies.