Germany
Helmuth von Moltke the Younger
1848–1916 Chief of the German General Staff, 1906–1914
The nephew of the Moltke who won the wars of unification, the younger Moltke was a cultivated, anxious man who had never wanted the job and said so. He inherited Schlieffen's plan for a vast wheel through Belgium and modified it, strengthening the left wing and respecting Dutch neutrality, so that the right wing became too weak for the task. Directing a huge army from Luxembourg, with poor communications, he failed to control his generals, panicked at the Russian invasion of East Prussia and sent two corps east, and lost his nerve at the Marne. He was replaced by Falkenhayn on 14 September, though this was kept secret for weeks. He died in 1916, a broken man.