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 indeed massed three armies in the area — the Prussian First Army with 50, 000 men, commanded by General Karl Von Steinmetz opposite Saarlouis, the Prussian Second Army with 134, 000 men commanded by Prince Friedrich Karl opposite the line Forbach – Spicheren, and the Prussian Third Army with 120, 000 men commanded by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, poised to cross the border at Wissembourg.

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.

Concurrently, von Moltke pushed for reassessment and self-improvement of Prussian military units to maintain tactical superiority relative to other nations ' units, introducing his concept of Auftragstaktik or mission-oriented tactics, to promote initiative as a well-defined leadership doctrine at all levels of command, written into every Prussian tactical manual published after the Franco-Prussian War:

By the next day, on 2 September, Napoleon III ordered the white flag to be run up and surrendered himself and the entire Army of Châlons to Moltke and the Prussian King.

A disciple of Carl von Clausewitz, whose theory of war was more an effort to grasp its essential nature, rather than of Jomini, who expounded a system of rules, Moltke regarded strategy as a practical art of adapting means to ends, and had developed the methods of Napoleon in accordance with altered conditions of his age.

Encirclement has been used throughout the centuries by military leaders, including generals such as Alexander the Great, Khalid bin Waleed, Hannibal, Sun Tzu, Shaka Zulu, Wallenstein, Napoleon, Moltke, Heinz Guderian, von Rundstedt, von Manstein, Zhukov, and Patton.

Werner's more important works include The Capitulation of Sedan, Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles, Moltke before Paris, Moltke at Versailles, The Meeting of Bismarck and Napoleon III, Christ and the Tribute Money, William I visiting the Tombs, The Congress of Berlin, and some decorations executed in mosaic for the Berlin Victory Column.

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.

On 18 August, the battle began when at 08: 00 Moltke ordered the First and Second Armies to advance against the French positions.

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.

Military conspiratorial groups exchanged ideas with civilian, political and intellectual resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis ( which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau ) and in other secret circles.

The Schlieffen Plan was created by Count Alfred von Schlieffen and modified by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after Schlieffen's retirement ; it was Moltke who actually implemented the plan at the outset of World War I.

* Moltke decided to pull significant numbers of troops away from the main force entering France from the north, in order to fortify the forces in Alsace-Lorraine, and the forces at the Russian border.

" 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.

Moltke balked at the weakness of the Alsatian " hinge " region, fearing that the massive strength of the right-wing's hammer would allow the French to breakthrough the relatively sparsely manned left-wing " anvil ".

Standing at the gates was a powerful force of 200, 000 Prussian soldiers under the command of General Helmuth von Moltke.

The German battlecruisers Moltke and Von der Tann left the Jade at 14: 10 and began a cautious search for other ships.

1995, June 26 – Banner of Peace was presented to G. fon Moltke, deputy of secretary for political questions at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

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.

Backed by the Chief of the general staff Helmuth von Moltke, Caprivi achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and distinguished himself at the Battle of Mars-la-Tour, the Siege of Metz and the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande, receiving the military order Pour le Mérite.

The von Moltke main house at Kreisau

* Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff at the outbreak of World War I. Nephew of Moltke the Elder.

The Meuse Army and the Prussian Third Army, commanded by Field-Marshal Helmuth von Moltke and accompanied by Prussian King Wilhelm I and Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, cornered MacMahon's army at Sedan in a massive encirclement battle.

Leaving the Prussian First and Second Armies besieging Metz, Moltke took the Prussian Third Army and the Army of the Meuse northward where they caught up with the French at Beaumont-en-Argonne on 30 August.

His expertise with torpedoes led to his being invited to Germany in June 1869 for the founding ceremony of a new naval base at Wilhelmshaven, where he met King William I of Prussia ( soon to become German emperor ), Bismarck and Moltke.