Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are thrilled
to have you with us today. Really excited for
this one. Yeah. If you're the kind of person
who hates information overload. But you absolutely
love that sudden aha moment. Exactly. When all
the pieces of a complex puzzle finally snap together,
well, you're in exactly the right place. Because
today we're looking at what might be the ultimate
architectural blueprint for disaster. Plan seven.
Yeah. You probably already know the tragic outcome
of 1914, the sheer scale of the First World War.
Most people do. Right. But today we are looking
at the math, the ego, and really the lethal assumptions
that built the French mobilization strategy right
before the conflict. It's a fascinating look
at how things go wrong. Our mission today for
this deep dive is to explore a phenomenon that
happens in military history, in business and,
you know, even in our personal lives. We're going
to look at how a meticulously crafted, mathematically
precise strategy can completely unravel the second
it collides with reality. It's essentially a
master class in systemic failure. It really is.
It shows the danger of rigid assumptions and
the very real human cost of stubbornness. Okay,
let's untack this. To really grasp why Plan 70
fails so spectacularly, we have to start by looking
at the psychological landscape of the French
military. Right, the mindset. Exactly. We need
to rewind the clock a few decades to the Franco
-Prussian War, so that's 1870 to 1871. And France
didn't just lose that war. No, they suffered
a devastating, humiliating defeat. They lost
territory, specifically the Alsace -Lorraine
region, and the national psyche was just deeply
scarred by this. So the immediate reaction of
the French military high command in the years
that followed was, as you might expect, highly
defensive. Highly. The overarching goal was simple.
Never get caught off guard like that again. And
the physical manifestation of that trauma was
staggering. Between 1874 and 1880, a general
named Sarreira Riviere oversaw the construction
of this colossal defensive network. It's an incredible
piece of engineering. We are talking about pouring
concrete over their historical scars. They built
two massive lines of fortresses, one stretched
65 kilometers from Belfort to Epinal. Massive.
And another equally long line ran from Tulle
to Verdun. And these weren't just a few guard
towers. This was a monumental feat of engineering
set about 40 kilometers back from the new border
with Germany. But the true brilliance of the
Surrey de Rivière system wasn't just in the concrete.
No. No, it was in the empty space. OK, explain
that. The architects of this system designed
a very deliberate strategic trap. Between those
heavily fortified zones of Epinal and Tulle,
they intentionally left a 70 kilometer wide gap.
Completely unfortified. Wow. This was known as
the true of the charm or the charm gap. It's
like building an incredibly elaborate funnel.
Exactly. Yeah. The logic was that if Germany
attacked again, they would naturally avoid the
massive fortresses and take the path of least
resistance. They would funnel their armies right
into this open gap where the French forces would
be waiting on other flank to crush them. And
for a while, the French had the intelligence
to back up this kind of grand planning. There's
this incredible. almost cinematic spy thriller
detail from our source. Oh, from 1904? Yeah.
In 1904, a German informant known to history
only by the highly dramatic code name Le Vengeur.
The Avenger? Right. The Avenger actually sold
a copy of the German concentration plan to French
intelligence. And that intelligence windfall
was a huge turning point. It gave the French
unprecedented insight into German mobilization
methods. Which changed everything. It did. And
that combined with the completion of their fortress
lines and the expansion of their railway network,
started to shift the French mindset. Throughout
the 1870s and 1880s, their plans like Plan X
were purely defensive. Right. But as they built
up their infrastructure, and crucially, as they
secured a major military alliance with the Russian
Empire in 1892, that mindset morphed. They moved
from a purely defensive posture to a defensive
offensive strategy. Meaning they felt strong
enough to take a punch and immediately hit back.
Precisely. They started to believe they could
absorb a German attack and then immediately launch
a massive counter -offensive. By the time they
were drafting plans XV and XXX, they were actively
factoring in a potential German invasion through
neutral Belgium. Okay. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, it is a classic organizational
trap. How so? The acquisition of new tools. In
this case, impenetrable fortresses, high -speed
railways, and a powerful Russian ally often makes
organizations dangerously overconfident. They
stop planning for survival and start planning
for total dominance, often ignoring new operational
risks. Which brings us to the years right before
the war, roughly 1911 to 1914. And this is where
we meet a man who basically predicted the future,
but was completely ignored. General Victor Constant
Michel. Yes. General Michel is a fascinating
figure because he saw past the institutional
arrogance. He looked at the terrain in eastern
Belgium. He analyzed the recent German railway
expansions near the border, and he realized the
Germans weren't just going to clip the corner
of Belgium. They were going all in. He predicted
they would make their main offensive effort straight
through central Belgium. But to counter a front
that massive, he needed more men, right? Yes,
a lot more. Michel begged the military council
to fundamentally restructure the French army.
He proposed integrating reserve units directly
into the active army so they would have enough
manpower to cover a much longer defensive front
stretching all the way to the coast. And how
did the military elite handle this highly accurate
data -driven prediction? They ousted him. Just
like that. The military council rejected his
ideas entirely in 1911 and he was forced to resign.
You have to understand the culture of the French
military elite at the time. His proposal to integrate
reserves was culturally unacceptable. Because
they look down on them. Exactly. They viewed
reserve troops as poorly trained, older men who
fundamentally lacked the aggressive spirit required
for frontline combat. Furthermore, adopting a
defensive posture across the entire Belgian border
went against the growing institutional appetite
for an aggressive offensive first strategy. So
out goes the Prophet Michel and in comes Joseph
Joffre. Joffrey takes over, consolidates a massive
amount of power by combining the roles of Vice
President of the Council and Chief of Staff.
He made himself very powerful very quickly. And
he starts tweaking the existing framework. He
does move some troops closer to the Belgian border,
pulling them away from the Italian border, but
he remains absolutely fixated on launching an
immediate offensive. He does. But wait. If Joffrey
knew the Germans might come through Belgium,
why wouldn't he just march the French army into
Belgium first, set up defenses, dig in and wait
for them? Because military strategy never exists
in a vacuum. It is always tethered to politics.
France desperately needed the United Kingdom
as an ally in the coming conflict. Right, the
British alliance. But British foreign policy
was heavily invested in maintaining Belgian neutrality.
If France preemptively violated Belgian sovereignty,
even for a massive tactical advantage, they risked
alienating the British entirely. So their hands
were tied. Politically, yes. The reality dictated
that the French army could only enter Belgium
after the Germans had already done so. They had
to maintain the moral high ground to secure that
international alliance. Let me put this in perspective
for you. Imagine a modern business scenario where
you know exactly what your major competitor is
about to do. You see them developing a product
that will completely disrupt your market. A nightmare
scenario for any business. Right. But because
of complex legal constraints or massive public
relations risks, your legal team tells you that
you absolutely cannot launch your counter product
until the competitor officially releases theirs.
So you just have to wait. You are forced to surrender
the first movie advantage and wait to react,
even though you know it puts you at a severe
tactical disadvantage. That is the exact geopolitical
situation Joffrey was navigating. That's a great
way to frame it. And in trying to thread that
needle between political constraints and his
own burning desire for an aggressive offensive,
Joffrey oversaw the finalization of the strategy
we are examining today. Plan A7. Here's where
it gets really interesting. Because Plan 7, which
was finalized on May 1st, 1914, wasn't actually
a war plan at all. No, it wasn't. When we hear
Plan 7, we tend to imagine a step -by -step playbook.
A detailed manual of exactly where every soldier
goes, what hill they take, and who they attack.
But that's a massive misconception. Plan Seventh
was merely a scheme of mobilization and concentration.
We should probably define what concentration
means in this context because it's a monumental
logistical undertaking. Go for it. Concentration
is the process of taking millions of mobilized
men, putting them on thousands of trains, running
those trains on a flawlessly timed schedule,
unloading them as specific railheads near the
border, and organizing them into cohesive fighting
armies. It's all logistics. Plan 7th was essentially
a gigantic, highly complex railway schedule.
It was a deployment mechanism. So it just gets
them to the starting line. Exactly. Once they
were at the border, the plan left an enormous
amount of operational control entirely up to
Jaffray. It lacked step -by -step battle instructions.
However, it did have a very clear overarching
philosophy. It was driven by an absolute commitment
to taking the fight to the enemy. To give you
a sense of that philosophy, there is a specific
instruction written by the commander in chief
directly in the source material. It reads, whatever
the circumstances, it is the commander in chief's
intention to advance with all forces united to
the attack of the German armies. It's uncompromising.
It is so absolute, whatever the circumstances.
That phrase is the crux of the issue. It betrays
a dangerous inflexibility. Yeah. The mechanics
of the plan dictated two main operations. One
force on the right, concentrating in the wooded
district of the Vosgesheys and the Moselle River
below Toul. The second force on the left, operating
north of the Verdun -Mentz line. Okay, so they're
positioned for a dual threat. Right. They were
positioned to attack either side of the fortified
German areas or push north into Belgium. But
the entire concentration of forces relied on
several fatal assumptions made by Joffre. Let's
talk about those blind spots. First, Joffre assumed
that even if Germany did go through Belgium,
they wouldn't push very far west. He thought
they'd just brush through the eastern edge. Which
was wrong? Second, and this is the big one, because
the French military elite disdained their own
reserve troops, Jaffer assumed the Germans felt
the exact same way. He assumed Germany would
never integrate reserve battalions into their
frontline offensive units. Another massive miscalculation.
But why would Jaffer just assume the German high
command shared his exact same cultural bias?
Was it just arrogance? It was classic mirror
imaging. When you are so entrenched in your own
institutional dogma, you project those beliefs
onto your adversary. By assuming the Germans
would only use active -duty troops, Jaffer dramatically
underestimated the total number of soldiers the
Germans could actually put in the field. He thought
they'd run out of men. He believed that if the
Germans extended their right wing wide into Belgium,
they would simply run out of active troops and
have to thin out their center. He thought a wide
German sweep would actually create a vulnerability,
a weak center, that the French could smash right
through. It's entirely based on what he wanted
to happen. Exactly. He built his entire strategy
on how he expected the enemy to behave, based
on his own cultural biases, rather than preparing
for their maximum possible capability. And in
August 1914, those pristine chalkboard assumptions
collided head on with reality. On August 7, France
began implementing Plan 7. The train started
rolling. But at the exact same time, Germany
initiated their own strategy known as Aufmarsch
II. And we should clarify that an Aufmarsch is
simply the German equivalent of a deployment
or mobilization directive. Off March the 2nd
involved massing a staggering 80 % of the German
forces in the West to smash through Belgium,
while leaving 20 % in the East to defend against
Russia. So as the Germans are pouring into Belgium,
the French trigger five distinct offensives that
collectively became known as the Battle of the
Frontiers. It's crucial to understand the external
pressures Jauffre was facing right at this moment.
The Russian alliance. Yes. The Franco -Russian
alliance, which had given France so much confidence
decades earlier, now forced Jauffre's hand. To
relieve pressure on Russia in the east, the alliance
dictated that France had to attack Germany as
quickly as possible to draw German divisions
westward. So he was trapped by his own alliance.
Joffrey really had no choice but to launch an
immediate offensive into Alsace and Lorraine,
regardless of whether the tactical situation
on the ground favored it. And the tactical situation
was a complete nightmare. They were marching
blind. The French formations were ordered to
advance, but they did so with negligible reconnaissance.
They literally didn't know what was in front
of them. Furthermore, they launched these massive
infantry charges without proper artillery support.
The lack of reconnaissance combined with the
rigid adherence to the offensive resulted in
horrific scenarios. Tell them about the Ardennes.
On August 22 in the Ardennes region, French columns
were advancing through thick, heavy fog. Because
they hadn't scouted ahead and because their orders
were to constantly push forward, they stumbled
blindly right into heavily defended German positions.
The command and control just broke down entirely.
You have thousands of men stepping out of the
fog into a wall of lead. The result was catastrophic.
The French forces were decimated by modern defensive
firepower. They were charging with bayonets against
deeply entrenched machine guns and heavy artillery.
Within just a few days of launching the battle
of the frontiers, the French armies were definitively
defeated and forced to retreat right back to
their starting positions. A total collapse of
the offensive. Yes. But it is vital to acknowledge
Joffrey's actions in the immediate aftermath.
While his offensive plan failed miserably, he
did not completely panic or freeze. He adapted.
He fell back on the one thing that actually worked.
The logistics. He utilized the French railway
network. the very same network built to implement
Plan 7 to rapidly shift his retreating armies.
He pulled battered troops from the east, loaded
them onto trains, and moved them to the west,
regrouping behind the river Marne. He managed
to stabilize the line just enough. And that rapid
redeployment is what ultimately led to the First
Battle of the Marne in early September, where
the French, alongside the British Expeditionary
Force, finally halted the faltering German advance.
But the cost. But the cost of that initial collision
was just unspeakable. What's fascinating here
is how leadership reacts to a failure of this
magnitude. When an overarching strategy crumbles
so violently, human nature often defaults to
self -preservation and finger -pointing. Jaffray
is the textbook example of that. When his grand
offensives failed, he didn't blame his rigid
plan. He didn't blame his faulty assumptions
about German reserves. No. He blamed his subordinates.
He claimed that the French infantry lacked offensive
spirit. He basically said the men just didn't
push hard enough. Which historians thoroughly
reject? Robert A. Doughty famously called Joffre's
excuse, pure balderdash. Pure balderdash. I love
that phrasing. It is accurate. And we have the
ground level observation of General Pierre Ruffet
made right in the middle of the disaster on August
23. Ruffey noted the tragic reality. The infantry
had been ordered to attack without any artillery
preparation whatsoever. So it wasn't a lack of
bravery. Quite the opposite. The tragic irony
is that many of the immense French casualties
came from an excess of offensive vigor. They
followed their orders. They threw themselves
bravely against deeply entrenched German units.
But spirit cannot overcome a barrage of artillery.
It's heartbreaking. To understand the reality
of this history, we have to look at the staggering
numbers. Winston Churchill, referencing records
from 1920, noted the casualty statistics for
the French army between August 5 and September
5, 1914. In just that one month, the French suffered
329 ,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. 329
,000 in a month. And to put a finer point on
it, on August 22 alone, the day of that heavy
fog in the Ardennes, 27 ,000 Frenchmen were killed
in a single day. That is just deeply sobering.
It's hard to even wrap your mind around a systemic
failure that results in 27 ,000 deaths in a single
afternoon. It is. But to provide a fully impartial
analysis of the history here, we must also recognize
that the French were not the only ones suffering
from the friction between grand plans and harsh
reality. Right. The Germans made huge mistakes,
too. The German strategist, Helmut von Moltke
the Younger, also made critical errors that cost
his side dearly. Historian Terry Holmes points
out that Moltke fundamentally botched the execution
of his own strategy. How so? He tried to execute
the sweeping, massive offensive movements of
a theoretical plan known as off -march -dissexive.
which required deploying the entire German army
against France. But he tried to do it using the
troop deployments of off March the 2nd, where,
as we mentioned, only 80 % of the army was in
the West. So he was trying to execute a 100 %
plan with an 80 % force. Exactly. And because
he lacked the necessary troop strength to complete
that massive sweep around Paris, the German right
wing became stretched, exposed, and vulnerable.
Which gave the French an opening. That vulnerability
is ultimately what allowed Jaffray and the Allies
to strike back at the Marne. Both sides were
completely blinded by the rigidity of their pre
-war plans. Both leadership structures failed
to adapt quickly enough when the reality on the
ground did not match their tabletop war games.
So what does this all mean? When we look at Planix
7th, we see what happens when you build an airtight,
mathematically beautiful strategy based entirely
on how you want your competitor to act, rather
than looking objectively at how they might act.
It's a fatal flaw. The French assumed the Germans
wouldn't use reserves because they themselves
hated using reserves. They assumed a wide push
through Belgium would weaken the German center
because that's how it worked on their chalkboards.
It shows us that when you build a strategy that
requires your opponent to behave exactly as you
wish them to, you are scripting a disaster. That
is the core vulnerability of rigid planning.
But this raises an important question, one that
extends far beyond military history. What's that?
We just explored how rigid assumptions and immense
institutional overconfidence led directly to
the catastrophe of August 1914. But consider
what happens next. When an institution, a company,
or a society experiences a systemic failure of
this magnitude, a trauma that costs hundreds
of thousands of casualties in a single month,
how long does the institutional memory of that
trauma last? That's a great point. Decades later.
to the resulting caution and the absolute terror
of repeating those same mistakes eventually become
just as dangerous and just as paralyzing as the
original overconfidence. That is a phenomenal
question to chew on and it perfectly highlights
why examining these systemic failures is so incredibly
valuable today. Thank you so much for joining
us on this custom deep drive. We hope this exploration
provided you with some of those aha moments and
a fresh perspective on the architecture of strategy,
ego, and failure. Keep questioning your assumptions
and keep diving deep into the topics that fascinate
you.