A) It's not WEB-INF\classes, it's WEB-INF/classes. A true WAR is a ZIP file, not a directory and you use DOS pathname separators at your peril, since
Java would much rather interpret them as escape character.
B) You DO realize that if you don't put resources under WEB-INF, anyone who wants to can potentially retrieve them by URL (and in fact, WILL be able to, by default). Which is a potential security exploit.
C) What benefit is kludging up a custom classpath going to gain you here anyway?
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.