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Alfred von Schlieffen, (born February 28, 1833, Berlin—died January 4, 1913, Berlin), German officer and head of the general staff who developed the plan of attack (Schlieffen Plan) that the German armies used, with significant modifications, at the outbreak of World War I.

The Schlieffen Plan ( German: Schlieffen-Plan, pronounced [ʃliːfən plaːn]) is a name given after the First World War to German war plans, due to the influence of Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen and his thinking on an invasion of France and Belgium, which began on 4 August 1914.

Schlieffen Plan, battle plan first proposed in 1905 by Alfred, Graf (count) von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff, that was designed to allow Germany to wage a successful two-front war. The plan was heavily modified by Schlieffen’s successor, Helmuth von Moltke , prior to and during its implementation in World War I .

On January 4, 1913, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, the architect of Germany’s plan of attack on France, died in bed of natural causes at the age of 79—thus missing, by just 19 months, the flawed ...

German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, mastermind of an aggressive German military strategy that will soon be used, in modified form, at the start of the Great War, dies on this day in 1913...

– Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, chief of the German General Staff, 1905. Schlieffen and His Plan. The French-Russian alliance had raised the prospect that Germany might face a war on two fronts.

SCHLIEFFEN PLAN. The so-called Schlieffen Plan, Germany's infamous military deployment plan of the early twentieth century, took its name from Count Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1905.

Germany’s difficult strategic situation had been evident since the early 1900s. With the German economy unlikely to last in a long war, Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen – Chief of Staff of the German Army - set out a new strategy aimed at a quick victory. It would become known as the Schlieffen plan.