The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, annexed to the new German Empire in 1871, had been heavily fortified by France in the two preceding centuries. Under German imperial government—Alsace-Lorraine was “Reich” territory, coming directly under the administration of Berlin—the fortifications of Metz and Thionville on the River Moselle and of Strasbourg on the Rhine had been expensively modernised. Those cities were the gateways from France to Germany. Schlieffen presumed that the French high command would shrink from planning to attack them.
