1. The Battle Plan of France and Russia
The French war plan, Plan 17, which was shelved in 1914, precisely suggested the implementation of what Schlieffen did not think the French would do, and to give Germany a "great gift" to Germany. It planned to cross the Franco-German border rashly, march into Lorraine and march on the Rhine. According to Schlieffen's judgment, this is the most unfavorable for France. For just as France, which from the 1880s began spending time and a great deal of money to improve and expand the fortresses defending French territory, Germany did the same. The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were incorporated into Germany in 1871, and the French had spent the previous two centuries building fortifications there. Alsace-Lorraine was the territory of the "Empire" and was under the direct administration of Berlin, and during the German Imperial government, the Moral Fortress of Metz and Thionville on the banks of the Moselle River and the Moral Fortress of Steassburg on the Rhine underwent costly modernization. These cities were the gateway from France to Germany. Schlieffen estimated that the French high command would not dare to plan an attack on them.
After the Franco-Prussian War, France ceded Alsace and Lorraine
At a time when the "Big Memorandum" was in preparation, Schlieffen's speculation was accurate. French Plan No. 14, completed in 1898, asserted that in the event of war with Germany, France would take a defensive position on the common border. Because of the disparity in numbers, an attack by France was considered impossible. The unchanged 40 million French population cannot compete with the already rapidly growing Population of Germany, which is already as many as 50 million. In addition, Germany, the French supreme commander,d'état, feared the ability to rapidly expand its army in times of crisis by recruiting reservists, an capability that had been demonstrated. The French reserve system had failed in 1870. The French generals of 1898 did not believe that the system could be better in the future. Plan 14 did not assign any role to unrelated reserve units, and in Plan 15 of 1903 assigned minor roles.
French army in 1914
The conundrum of the reserves plagued French military thinking during the first decade of the 20th century. While the German generals racked their brains to solve the conundrum of how to get a large number of troops to the chosen place of operation as quickly as possible, the French were fretting over how to find enough soldiers. The Conscription Law of 1905 imposed two years of military service on all young French people without any exemptions, in a slightly slower way of expanding the size of the "active" or peacetime army; it did make France's peacetime army larger than the germans planned to deploy to Belgium. It again brought up the problem of the reserves. When the front line expanded, the Germans, which were large enough in peacetime to overwhelm the common border, still needed to absorb reserves quickly. The second draft of Plan 15 of 1907 allowed the French army to assemble in southern Belgium; two years later, Plan 16 expanded the build-up, although the new build-up depended on the absorption of reserve troops, and the High Command did not know how to obtain them carefully. By 1911, fear of a large-scale German offensive through Belgium reinforced by a large reserve had become increasingly urgent, and a new French chief of staff, Victor Michel, had made a proposal to part ways from plans Nos. 14 to 17: all possible reserve forces were mixed with active duty forces, and all troops would be mobilized for deployment along the entire French border from Switzerland to the North Sea. Although Michel himself may not have known it, his plan was a true reflection of the Schlieffen Plan; he even proposed an invasion of northern Belgium, which coincided with Schlieffen's "powerful right wing"; it is impossible to guess what the outcome would be, but it would never have been worse than the outcome of the very different French war plan of 1914. Unfortunately, Michelle was an unsociable soldier, a "republican" general who was not pleased with his colleagues. He was soon stripped of his post by the new right-wing government. Plan 17, which came into effect in April 1913, ran counter to his plan. The mix of reserve and active duty forces was shelved. Until the deployment in the North Sea was weakened, leaving only the French 5th Army on the left flank, from southern Belgium to deal with the danger of German advance through northern Belgium. Above all, operations on the common border were designed to be offensive. "Whatever the situation", Plan 17 argued, "the commander-in-chief's intention was to attack the Germans with all the troops advancing." This meant that the French would invade Lorraine, which was exactly what Schlieffen suspected the French would not do.
The outbreak of war in 1914 was the implementation of The Schlieffen Plan (red) and Plan 17 (blue) by the German and French armies, respectively.
Plan 17 was created by Michelle's successor, Joseph Xiafei, and it was not without reason. One reason was that the intelligence services had never been able to determine whether the Germans would really take such a strategically questionable and diplomatically condemned risk as crossing northern Belgium; given that all contemporary countries were tightly secretive about war plans, it was not easy to obtain such information, but at this time it was also due to the short-sightedness of the French Bureau II (Intelligence Service) for refusing to confirm the clues of the intelligence. Another reason was the anxiety caused by Germany's response to France's two-year military service law of 1905, which in 1911-1913 greatly increased the size of its peacetime military. These measures, as well as Germany's known ability to mobilize reserve units, made the maximum use of peacetime troops before either side was able to use reserve forces as the first option of the French. That meant attacking, attacking the point they could easily find and the Germans had to defend, which was crossing the Franco-German common border. In addition, in response to the German conscription bill of 1911-1913, France issued another bill to extend the length of service to three years; the Three-Year Law of 1913, although it could not reduce Germany's growing advantage over France's army size, did expand the size of the French army in peacetime, which naturally reduced the size of the reserve and thus strengthened the argument that the war should be immediately attacked. The last reason for the adoption of Plan 17 was the development of relations between France and its allies, with frequent secret meetings between the British and French General Staffs from 1905 onwards. By 1911 a firm consensus had been reached that a British expeditionary force would land on the French left flank in the event that Germany undermined the Anglo-French-Prussian Treaty of 1839, which guaranteed Belgian neutrality. If that consensus fails to solve the "Belgian conundrum", it will at least be alleviated. The two countries also want more: if threatened by Germany, they want Belgium to allow one or both to enter its territory. Both were categorically rejected by the Belgian General Staff – a rejection of France as a supplementary reason for its plan No. 17 – but France could take comfort in Belgium's commitment to support. Although the two countries did not sign any formal treaties, the French generals were informed that "when [their] staff officers agree on certain matters, action will follow." ”
Chief of the General Staff of the French Army, Joseph Xiafei
The French generals believed that at the beginning of the war against Germany, in order for Russia to provide France with the help it needed, it was necessary to take the offensive of Plan 17. This is true, because "French and Russian experts"—and the two are indeed allies—"it is not always possible to finalize a plan". Russia's strategic dilemma is similar to france's. Like France, it used its reserves in crises at a slower pace than Germany. Therefore, its initial operations were also initiated by active-duty forces. France's problem was simply the inability to determine a satisfactory plan to integrate the reserve and peacetime armies, and unlike France, the difficulties of strengthening the Russian army were more geographical than organizational. Delaying the deployment of the front line is the distance between the major population centers in Russia and their borders with Germany are too far away. However, such a distance is also an advantage for Russia, because in the danger of war, space is time. In the crisis of mobilization, Russia does not feel urgent. The initial loss of some territory at the time of the gathering of the army was acceptable, while France could not afford it. The French know this very well. Plan 17 therefore makes sense in a sense: it is designed to provoke a great war that will buy time on the Eastern Front; on the other hand, France feels compelled to prove to Russia at the outset that it is a life-and-death struggle that gave birth to Plan 17. The greater the scale and the faster the crisis, the greater the danger to France, the greater the threat to Russia that follows, and the greater the need for Russia to march quickly to help France.
The vast Tsarist Empire
Russia, however, had a reputation for procrastination, much to the chagrin of the French generals. Contrary to Britain, which, though not yet a formal ally, could arouse the confidence of France, Russian generals were sneaky and often inefficient, which was bad enough; worse, Russia evaded its obligations. Despite the constant pressure from France, Russia before 1911 refused to promise anything other than an offensive twenty days after the day of the ominous mobilization. In late 1910, when St. Petersburg withdrew some troops from Russian Poland and the Tsar and German Emperor met in Potsdam, such minimum expectations were shaken. Utterly horrified, Xiafei called new staff negotiations in August 1910, winning assurances from the Russian Minister of War, Sukhomlinov, that the Russian army would "take some offensive action on the sixteenth day with a view to containing at least five or six German troops that might be deployed on the Western Front." "This assurance is still only verbal. France does not have any paper guarantees of Russia's fulfillment of its promises, or even really any definite influence on what Russia wants to do.
Russian Minister of War Sukhomlinov
The Russians should not be blamed for everything. The first decade of this century was a troublesome decade for it, a domestic revolution that was defeated by Japan in the War against Japan in the Far East. War impoverished the country and defeated its armies in chaos. The years 1906-1909 were the years when the Schlieffen Plan might have worked, and during those years Russia most wanted to adopt a strategic defensive approach in the event of conflict, a gesture that would not help France at all. By 1909, Russia had recovered enough to write a mobilization plan, Mobilisation Schedule Number 18, which included at least one offensive clause, albeit after a pause in the reservist build-up and the determination of whether the main threat would come from Germany or Austria-Hungary. In June 1910, the Russian staff became more active. Mobilization Plan No. 19 recognized Germany as the main enemy; it still abandoned much of Russian Poland to the enemy. This prospect infuriated commanders in the western region, which had long been at war with austria-Hungary. What was feasible in action, what should be done according to Russia's traditional obligations to southeastern Europe, and which was required by the alliance with France, followed the debate among the generals about the relative weight of these things. The solution was a compromise, known as Plan 19's AmendmentS and G, which focused on austria-Hungary and G.
Russian battle plans
If the French had known about Amendment A, they would have been even more frightened. Fortunately for the French, in August 1912, the same month that the Russian General Staff completed the two amendments to Plan 19, they finally squeezed out the promise of Zhilinsky, the chief of the Russian General Staff: "fifteen days later", his army would attack the Germans with at least 80,000 men, half of the Russian military strength in peacetime. This was made clear in Article III of the Russian-French Military Pact of September 1913, "after the fifteenth day after mobilization" rather than "after the fifteenth day after mobilization.". There are many different interpretations of this Russian's sudden and wholehearted treatment of allies. One of them was that by 1913 the Russian army had largely recovered from the chaos of defeat at the hands of the Japanese; a new military expenditure plan, Sukhomlinov's "Great Programme", promised to actively improve and effectively expand the size of the army for a period of four years. Second, there are opinions that it is because of misleading intelligence. In 1913, Russia "had a spy in the right place," Austro-Hungarian Colonel Alfred Redl, who sold Russia a plan for the mobilization of the Austro-Hungarian army, which appeared to minimize the dangers anticipated in Amendment A. "The third explanation is the importance of the (French) allies ... If France is easily defeated by Germany, the Russians have little confidence against the allied forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary... Russia and France live and die together... Russia, on the other hand, should do everything in its power to fulfil its obligations, even launching an offensive on the fifteenth day after mobilization. Finally, there is the view that Russian generals suddenly turn a blind eye to the dangers of a defensive war that is offensive rather than selfish but safe. In this respect, however, the difference between Russia and France and Germany is only that it is determined to gamble too late.
A large number of Russian troops
2. Austro-Hungarian battle plans
If Russia from 1906 to 1914 panicked France because of prevarication and delay, Austria-Hungary also made its ally Germany feel the same way. Germany and Austria were enemies in the 1866 War, which established Germany's leadership in Central Europe and eliminated the dispute in 1882. However, the alliance treaties they signed did not include military provisions. German Chancellor Bismarck wisely escaped the danger of being drawn into the various domestic and foreign predicaments of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including long-standing grievances with the Ottoman Turks, the recently covered-up quarrel with Italy over the loss of Venice, and the serbian and Romanian vision of these two ethnic minority areas in the Habsburg territory, where their power was growing stronger and growing. However, the two general staffs informally explored their respective strategies; Austria learned that in the event of a two-front war, Germany intended to attack Russia by taking a defensive position against France; Germany was satisfied to learn that Austria-Hungary would attack Russian Poland. That's the end of the matter. After Schlieffen took office, the Austro-Hungarian staff found him "taciturn" and "unapproachable", and it was not until after his retirement in January 1909 that fruitful consultations began.
Map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I
Moltke Jr., chief of the German General Staff, knew what he wanted. The Schlieffen Project is still on hold. It required the Austro-Hungarian Empire to deploy against Russian Poland on the largest and fastest scale and as quickly as possible. In any case, negotiations began with his Austro-Hungarian counterpart, Conrald von Hotzendorf, and then came to mind in a two-front war not only with Russia, but also with its protector Serbia. There are other concerns. Italy is a reliable ally, and neither is Romania. Conrad saw an interconnected and unpredictable web, none of which was detrimental to austria-hungary. The worst could be a war provoked by Serbia against austria-Hungary, in which the focus of the Habsburg military forces was placed south of the Danube rather than northern Poland, which Russia might be involved in would have made a mistake in the direction of its military deployment. The solution he proposed was to divide the forces into three parts at the time of mobilization: minimalgruppe Balkan, a 10-division balkan group, to deploy to Serbia, 30 divisions of A-Staffel to the Polish theater, and 12 divisions of B as a "swing" force to enter the battlefield when one of the two needed.
The Chief of the General Staff of the Austrian Army, Conrad von Herzendorff
The plan offered Moltke little, and on January 20 he wrote proposing changes. To dispel Austro-Hungarian fears of disloyalty to Italy and Romania, he assured that the war on the Western Front would end before Russia was fully mobilized, and that Germany would send powerful troops to the Western Front; but he did not give a timetable, a flaw that worried Conrad because he had to draw up his own two-front war plan. On 26 January he warned Moltke that Germany could not expect the smallest Balkan swarm to go to Poland until fifty days after the mobilization. Can Germany guarantee support within forty days? If not, he had better take a defensive position in Poland and attack with all his might to destroy Serbia. The destruction of Serbia was what Conrad really longed for; like many German-speaking Austro-Hungarians, they hated this tiny Slavic kingdom, not only because it did not give proper respect to the informal dominion of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans, but also because it attracted disgruntled Serbs within the Habsburg Empire. Winning the victory over Serbia appears to be the safest way to solve a widespread problem between Austria-Hungary and other Slavic minorities.
Chief of the German General Staff Moltke Jr
Moltke gave assurances in some respects, but avoided addressing others. France could not have held Germany back for more than four weeks— and the Schlieffen Plan was estimated to be six weeks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not know the details of the plan — so for austria-Hungary an attack on Russian Poland was both very safe and absolutely necessary; and Germany would not betray it even if Austria were mired in a Serbian war; as for Serbia, "the question of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was naturally resolved." Conrad commented: "Indeed. But what should I do if I am trapped in Serbia and cannot escape? Because austria-Hungary had 60 to 100 more divisions than Serbia, and tradition held that only half of this advantage would be needed to win a victory, Conrad might be considered timid. Even if he sent only the smallest balkan group, the Serbs could not defeat him. Moltke's first concern was how to make Russia fight on two fronts as well—on the western polish front, where Germany would be weaker for the time being; on the southern Polish front, where he wanted Austria to be stronger—he masked the irritation caused by any conrad prevarication, and almost immediately wrote back promising to attack with Austria: "While the Austro-Hungarian Empire is on the offensive, I will not hesitate to launch an offensive in support." "It's a promise that should neither be made nor can be fulfilled." The Schlieffen Plan "stipulates without a doubt that the part of East Prussia left by the Germans should be defended when a large-scale western campaign is fought." He had apparently made this promise in good faith, and in any case, the letter of March 19, 1909, which had been made, assured understanding between the two allies for the years that followed. Conrad resigned in November 1910 because of his belligerence, and when he was reinstated a year later, he discovered that the issue was still inconclusive. In May 1914, when Conrad and Moltke held their last pre-war meeting in the resort of Carlsbad, the German Chief of the General Staff responded to Austro-Hungarian demands promising to increase troops on the Eastern Front, vaguely assuring: "I will do my best." We don't have any advantage over France. The shelved Schlieffen Project sketched a trajectory of a "strong right" in northern France, insisting on exactly the opposite; but it counted on the firmer will of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the weaker power of Russia.
Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina threatened Serbia
3. British battle plans
What Schlieffen didn't think about was that the British would be involved. His "big memorandum" mentions this possibility slightly. He discussed its importance in an appendix in February 1906, but speculated that the British were at most in Antwerp or the German North Sea coast. He was not worried that the British would join the French front at some point in order to prevent Germany from advancing through Belgium. Because the military dialogue, the outcome of the Entente cordiale in April 1904, did not begin until December 1905, and the "Great Memorandum" was completed this month, he could not predict that the British might do so. Moreover, despite the fact that discussions had begun with the French, the British were still undecided about what they should do if they sent their troops to the mainland. There was a real possibility of amphibious operations, and the Royal Navy supported the plan in order to force the German High Sea Fleet to engage it. On the other hand, it is a "decentralized strategy". The prevailing military atmosphere requires a more decisive "centralized strategy". The attacker in this decisive war will be Germany, it will be somewhere in France, and it will be so later. The British gradually agreed to the French proposal and sent an expeditionary force. In April 1906, the Imperial Defense Council drafted a plan to send troops directly to the Low Countries. Because Belgium did not want British troops to enter and France was unable to draw up a convincing war plan, there was no progress for the next five years. In 1911, when Xia fei was made chief of the French general staff and Henry Wilson was the commander of British military operations, everything changed. Xia Fei is awe-inspiring, and Wilson is full of energy. When they first met in Paris in November, Xia Fei revealed a summary of Plan 17. Because of the cost of the navy and the continued opposition of the British to conscription, which allowed it to maintain only six divisions on its own, the British Expeditionary Force would not be very large. Still, in August, Wilson had outlined to the Imperial Defense Commission how best to deploy. By forcing Germany to draw forces against it, the actions of the six divisions against the German right could upset the balance. "The more German troops are transferred from the decisive point," Wilson argues, "the more favorable it is to France and to us." He further studied the details of the plan, how to use the active assistance of the Navy to transport troops through the Straits as quickly and efficiently as possible, and after the naval support completed the rapid operation, it was able to concentrate its forces on inducing the German fleet to a decisive battle. Nevertheless, the UK remains cautious. Despite being an ardent French supporter, wilson refused to give any hint until August 1914 about where the expeditionary force would enter the war. It was only in November 1912 that France squeezed out some sort of commitment to a similar joint action from foreign minister Edouard Gray. The letter reads as follows: "If either Government has a serious reason to anticipate an unwarranted attack by a third-party force, or a situation that threatens the general peace, it should immediately consult with the other Government to discuss whether the two Governments should act to deter aggression and defend the peace." And, if so, negotiate what measures they should take together. If these measures involve joint action, the plan of the General Staff should be considered immediately, and then the two Governments decide on the extent to which they will implement it. Because of the dangers posed by the fading economic power and the growing german naval power, the principle of glorious isolation still made Britain hesitant to tie itself to an ally. Of course, Britain enjoyed the luxury of making choices that the continental nations did not have, and decided at will to "draw as much or as little as they wanted into war"; Bacon's summary of the superiority of naval power was still as correct in the 20th century as it was in the 16th century.
Commander of British military operations Henry Wilson
4. Towards tragedy
France and Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary, could not benefit from the protection of the seas. At best, they are separated by rivers and mountains, and at worst they have no substantial boundaries except the lines on the map, and their security lies in their armies. If an army does not attack as early as possible, it may be destroyed in the mobilization; even if the mobilization is completed but the attack is not launched afterwards, it will expose the bottom card and lose the advantage that the war plan has painstakingly sought to achieve. The danger was even more acute for Germany: if it failed to get the troops to attack as soon as they jumped off the train carrying the army at the drop-off point, the imbalance between the forces of the East and the West would be senselessly leaked, and more seriously, the build-up against Belgium would be exposed. The Schlieffen Plan would no longer be a secret, France would be given time to avoid the dangers of Plan 17, Russia would gain the impetus to invade East Prussia with overwhelming force, and Austria-Hungary would bear the burden of unwillingly and perhaps inevitably guaranteeing security in Central Europe.
Germans in World War I
Sixty years later, the suicidal adventures of nuclear war plans prompted the superpowers to seek such a medium by convening regular summits and installing "hotlines" between Moscow and Washington, even though the superpowers were ideologically divided, and there was no counterpart between European kings and emperors. Before 1914, it was technically impossible to provide regular and instant means of communication, but more important than this was the lack of an atmosphere of seeking expediency. This atmosphere is lacking not only in the diplomatic community, which clings to the rhythms of the old government, but even within the government. The Imperial Defence Council, which centralized heads of departments, diplomats and politicians, was a special case, but it was still imperfect; the Royal Navy asserted its own qualifications and retained its own advisory board. The French army's actions in the more expedient Superior War Council were similar. In Germany, Russia, and austria-Hungary, led by court governments, the monarch was nominally and substantively supreme commander, every organization of the military system was directly accountable to him, and communications were plagued by secrecy and jealousy. This system catastrophically achieved its extreme form in Germany, where,
There is no government process to amend ... An assessment of plans and policies focused on the emperor's own hands. Almost 50 people maliciously reported directly to him, but they did not have any procedures to discuss or coordinate with each other, or to share important and scattered information at their disposal. There are no definitive or regular meetings that exist for this purpose. Even information about the war plan is highly confidential and is only communicated to those who need to know; the Headquarters Staff, the War Department, the Military Cabinet, the Admiralty, the Naval General Staff, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs do not share information with each other.
Group photo of the emperors (kings) of the 9 European countries before World War I
It's like sixty years from now, the United States Strategic Air Command has the freedom to write its own nuclear war plans against the Soviet Union, without knowing the State Department, Navy, or Army, and to make decisions that would require the President of the United States to gather details of the plans throughout the government. A democratically elected president, produced from competition among sophisticated politicians, may in any case establish order for the system; a hereditary monarch who, after 1904, is less and less interested in the details of war is unlikely to do so. The real German emperor was like this; during the crisis of 1914, when he was the only candidate to terminate the ruthless Schlieffen Project, he found that he did not understand the machine that should have been controlled by him, and he panicked and allowed a paper to decide on the events.
Kaiser Wilhelm II
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