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During this period just before the war, groupthink played an especially prominent role in shaping French arrogance. Members of the Supreme War Council supported each other in their commitment to ignoring not only General Michel's warning but the fact that obvious military preparations had been made by Germany, as called for by their Schlieffen Plan, along the Belgian frontier—not in Alsace Lorraine, where the French had massed their troops. Their reliance on simplistic slogans about French élan and illusions about France's invulnerability bolstered their decision to adopt an unrealistic military plan (Plan XVII) to launch a frontal assault against Germany's most heavily fortified western border.
This plan was flawed not only in that it all but ignored the possibility of a German sweep through Belgium, but also because it was based on misleading intelligence. By counting only active German divisions and ignoring reserves, the French underestimated by half the defensive strength opposite the Lorraine gap and thus actually planned their attack with numbers equal to those of the well fortified enemy. The key to this miscalculation was the fixed belief that the Germans would not deploy their reserves to the front lines. Evidence to the contrary, which began seeping through to the French General Staff in 1913, was, of course, ignored. Hence, when the war began and the Schlieffen plan was put into effect, the French were caught totally unprepared. They had to pull back and regroup, and when, with British assistance, they finally managed to stand off the Germans at the battle of the Marne (September 6-10, 1914), the war became a stalemate. The entire German army would have been annihilated had the battle begun just one day earlier, which it would have, had the British been as dedicated to creative action as they were to proper attire. Unfortunately for millions of men, General Joseph-Simon Gallieni, the military governor of Paris who conceived the plan for the battle, was a bespectacled, untidy, shaggy chap with black buttoned boots and yellow leggings. No British officer would be seen talking to such a "Damned comedian", and because of the delay thus caused in allied communications, the master stroke fell a day late, and the war dragged on for four years. In 1917, when it was clear to the German High Command that victory on land was impossible, unrestricted submarine attacks were resumed in the hope that England could be starved out of the war before America could intervene effectively. In a fit of optimism, the German admirals claimed that within about four months England would crumble, so the possibility of American involvement was not denied but was discounted: There simply would not be enough time for Yank forces to play a decisive role in the land war before England had to sue for peace.
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