The Schlieffen Plan

No one knows anything...jeeze.

babyblue is mostly right, and I only have a few minor additions to that. Alsace-Lorraine indeed was that region (part of Germany back then, now mostly French). The plan relied mostly on Belgium neutrality and the slowness of the Russians.

Britain had promised to defend Belgium's neutrality, but the Germans thought that Britain never would do that, so part of the plan was to attack through Belgium (and Luxembourg as far as I'm concerned). Surprise the French troops, and take over Paris in a few weeks. Then the German army would attack Russia, as the German commanders had calculated that it would take two months for Russia to mobilize it's troops. As Kaiser Willhelm (was that his name, I'm not sure..) said: Paris for lunch, and St. Petersbourg for dinner.

The plan was done some years, ten I think, earlier. And it was the only war plan that Germany had for the First World War. And as it failed, Germany was in trouble.

The French also had a plan, something like Plan 17 (does anybody remember the name?), but it failed: French troops were to run and attack deep into the German territory. The result was that many hundred thousand French soldiers died in a really short time in the few first weeks of the war. Okey, this didn't have anything to do with the Schliefen Plan