WWI_Bosnian_Crisis

WORLD WAR I
Unit Two, Lecture One: 1914

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Click here to read one student's analysis of the role played by the Von Schlieffen plan in the outbreak of WWI

Alfred von Schlieffen

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Tsar Nicholas II

British soldiers

The "guns of August" broke the peace in Europe, ending forty-two years of peace in Western Europe and setting a continent--indeed, the entire world--on a path to war. Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, diplomatic efforts to restrain the various European empires from engaging in war had ultimately failed as the mobilization plans of each nation churned forward uncontrolled by any civilian power.

The actual declaration of war came as a relief to many after so many months of tension. Army reserves mobilized to their units as jubilant civilians cheered them off on what everyone believed would be a short and swift war. Confidence in the technological advances of the past forty-two years, combined with the ambitious defensive works constructed by France and Germany in the interval since the last war, accounted for much of the confidence.

Both France and Germany had spent the years of peace planning for war. They based their plans on the knowledge gained from their previous confrontation, the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870-71. France constructed a heavy line of fortified defenses, the Maginot Line, along Germany's 1870 invasion route. Meanwhile, Germany's general staff had assembled a vast array of war plans to meet various scenarios, such as an invasion by Russia in the east or one by France in the west. One plan created by one of the first heads of the German General Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, called for a pre-emptive attach by Germany that passed through neutral Belgium in a sweeping maneuver that would outflank the Maginot Line and allow the German Army to capture Paris after forty days of armed conflict. This plan was to be used in the event that France and Russia both attacked Germany--a likely scenario, considering the alliance between the two. By capturing Paris quickly, Germany could knock France out of the war and concentrate its resources on the eastern (Russian) front, which it considered to be the most vulnerable. However, the Von Schlieffen plan contained a number of flaws (not least of which was the reliance upon Belgium surrendering at once, thereby allowing Germany's army right of passage to France) and remained on the "back shelf," largely forgotten, until 1914.

Germany's involvement in the war came as a direct result of its alliance with Austo-Hungary. Following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Austro-Hungary, the diplomatic corps of the Austro-Hungarians had refrained from taking action against Serbia until it received reassurance from Germany that its ally would stand united in the event of war. Such assurances were vital in light of Russia's assurances to the Serbs that their "Slavic brothers" would protect them.

At this point, a broader war involving the major European empires was not inevitable, yet decisions made by the monarchs of two empires allowed the crisis with Serbia to spin out of control. The first was the decision of a blustering Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to go on a planned vacation in the midst of the crisis. Although the Chancellor of Germany, Bettman-Hollweg, remained behind, only the Kaiser had the power to restrain the armed forces, and those forces, acting on previous orders from the Kaiser, were moving through the first stages of a general mobilization. The Kaiser's cousin, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, acting on the advice of ardent but militarily unwise advisors, ordered the Imperial Army to a general mobilization. This order set off a chain of like-minded responses in Germany and Austro-Hungary, and the military juggernauts moved ponderously forward.

Convinced that war with Russia was inevitable now, the current head of the German Army, General Helmut von Moltke, resurrected the Von Schlieffen Plan and set it into motion. Following Germany's declaration of war against France on August 3rd and Belgium's refusal to surrender, Germany invaded neutral Belgium. Surprisingly, the Belgians mounted a stiff resistance, slowing Germany's advance. This unanticipated event proved critical for three reasons: first, it threatened the precise timetables needed to move German troops and supplies to the front via railroads; second, it allowed the French to rush more troops to the Belgian border; and third, it gave the British government time to decide whether or not to send troops to aid France (it did). After six days, Belgium collapsed, but not before some German reserves, heady with their first taste of combat, looted, raped, and ransacked areas of Belgium. These early atrocities (the "Rape of Belgium") would do much to convince the British to commit to the war effort, and would appear time and again in the war propaganda of the Allied nations.

In the First Battle of the Marne, the French and English forces managed to halt the German advance and stage a counterattack that turned the Kaiser's army away from Paris. (Parisians nevertheless barricaded their streets in preparation for a "Hun Invasion.") Having failed to take Paris in forty days, the Germans retreated to the high ground and dug in--a series of well fortified trenches--and prepared to wait for victory on the eastern front. The French, unwilling to concede to the German presence on their soil for any length of time, dug some rudimentary trenches but did not prepare them as well as the Germans. Thus, German soldiers spent a good deal of their non-combat time in comfortable and dry surroundings. By contrast, the French (as well as the British) troops spent much of their time knee-deep in the mud, cold, wet, surrounded by rats and the rotting corpses of the dead.

Eventually, the trench lines of the Western Front would stretch from the North Sea on Belgium, southeastward through northern France, and all the way to the Swiss border: 475 linear miles, and many tens of thousands of miles of primary, secondary, service trenches, reserve trenches, etc., to service the front lines. From 1914 until the summer of 1918, these lines would hardly move, as millions died to gain yards, only to lose them again.

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Other sources: John Keegan, The First World War (New York, 2000).