To date, historians have scarcely dealt with Germany’s assessments of Belgium. This is all the more surprising when one considers the importance of the kingdom in German war planning. Unlike his predecessors, in the event of Schlieffen to march through the neutral kingdom of Belgium and thus to violate international law, which he knew must have serious political consequences? And to what extent did the assessment of the Belgian army play a role in this strategy? The following explanations seek to answer these questions and to illustrate the motives of Schlieffen’s successor Helmuth von Moltke (the younger), who mostly followed his predecessor’s plans. Was the Belgian army “an unimportant obstacle” from the German point of view? And was this assessment still valid after the Belgian government had undertaken massive reforms of the army in 1909 and 1913? These are the questions that this essay will address.