conscious that the Iron Chancellor, towards the end of his life, had urged that Germany should stop fighting. Goltz said scornfully that it was easy for Bismarck to take that line, after winning three earlier wars. Bethmann became a prime mover in pushing through parliament the huge 1913 Army Bill, which dramatically increased the nation’s military strength.
Meanwhile, Moltke was only the foremost of Germany’s leading soldiers who, during the nineteen months between the December 1912 War Council and the August 1914 outbreak of war, displayed a keen appetitefor a European showdown. In May of the latter year, army quartermaster-general Gen. Count Georg von Waldersee wrote a memorandum which expressed optimism about Germany’s immediate strategic prospects, coupled to gloom about the longer term: ‘Germany has no reason to expect to be attacked in the near future, but … it not only has no reason whatever to avoid a conflict, but also, more than that, the chances of achieving a speedy victory in a major European war are today still very favourable for Germany and for the Triple Alliance as well. Soon, however, this will no longer be the case.’ There is vastly more documentary evidence to support the case that German leaders were willing for war in 1914 than exists to sustain any of the alternative scenarios proposed in recent years.
The Triple Entente had in common with the Triple Alliance the fact that only two of its parties were firmly committed to fight together. It represented an expression of goodwill and possible – but by no means assured – military collaboration: something more than that between France and Russia, something less on the part of Britain. The Russians always knew that they must fight any war from the exposed salient of Poland, vulnerable in the north and west to Germany, in the south to the Hapsburg Empire. The race to deploy forces following mobilisation was in the Russians’ eyes a race to save Poland; their first priority was to secure its borders.
Back in 1900 they had made a decision to launch simultaneous offensives against the Germans in East Prussia, against the Austrians in Galicia. Though they wavered about this in 1905, by 1912 they had renewed the commitment, and sustained it thereafter: they were much attracted to the notion of conquering Hapsburg Galicia, and thus acquiring a strong new mountain frontier on the Carpathians. They had two alternative schemes. The first, ‘Plan G’, covered the unlikely contingency that Germany deployed the bulk of its army in the East. The second, implemented in 1914, was ‘Plan A’. This required two armies to drive into East Prussia as a preliminary to an invasion of Germany proper. Meanwhile a further three armies were to launch the main thrust against the Austrians, driving them back to the Carpathians.
France proposed to implement against Germany its‘Plan XVII’. This had been refined by Joffre, but was far less detailed than Moltke’s arrangements. Where Schlieffen sketched a design for a grand invasion of France, the French General Staff merely schemed operations against the German army, though these assumed a subsequent advance into the Kaiser’s realm. Plan XVII principally addressed the logistics for concentrating forces behind the frontier, and contained no timetable for operations, nor commitment to explicit territorial objectives. Much more important than the plan were the ethos and doctrine promoted with messianic fervour by the chief of staff. ‘The French Army,’ declared its 1913 Regulations, the work of Joffre, ‘returning to its traditions, henceforth knows no law but the offensive.’ Berlin’s best source in Paris, ‘Agent 17’, an Austrian boulevardier named Baron Schluga von Tastenfeld who acquired much of his information by mingling at the grand salons, informed Moltke – correctly – that Joffre was likely to make his main effort in the Ardennes, at the centre of the front.
France’s chief of staff was
Meanwhile, Moltke was only the foremost of Germany’s leading soldiers who, during the nineteen months between the December 1912 War Council and the August 1914 outbreak of war, displayed a keen appetitefor a European showdown. In May of the latter year, army quartermaster-general Gen. Count Georg von Waldersee wrote a memorandum which expressed optimism about Germany’s immediate strategic prospects, coupled to gloom about the longer term: ‘Germany has no reason to expect to be attacked in the near future, but … it not only has no reason whatever to avoid a conflict, but also, more than that, the chances of achieving a speedy victory in a major European war are today still very favourable for Germany and for the Triple Alliance as well. Soon, however, this will no longer be the case.’ There is vastly more documentary evidence to support the case that German leaders were willing for war in 1914 than exists to sustain any of the alternative scenarios proposed in recent years.
The Triple Entente had in common with the Triple Alliance the fact that only two of its parties were firmly committed to fight together. It represented an expression of goodwill and possible – but by no means assured – military collaboration: something more than that between France and Russia, something less on the part of Britain. The Russians always knew that they must fight any war from the exposed salient of Poland, vulnerable in the north and west to Germany, in the south to the Hapsburg Empire. The race to deploy forces following mobilisation was in the Russians’ eyes a race to save Poland; their first priority was to secure its borders.
Back in 1900 they had made a decision to launch simultaneous offensives against the Germans in East Prussia, against the Austrians in Galicia. Though they wavered about this in 1905, by 1912 they had renewed the commitment, and sustained it thereafter: they were much attracted to the notion of conquering Hapsburg Galicia, and thus acquiring a strong new mountain frontier on the Carpathians. They had two alternative schemes. The first, ‘Plan G’, covered the unlikely contingency that Germany deployed the bulk of its army in the East. The second, implemented in 1914, was ‘Plan A’. This required two armies to drive into East Prussia as a preliminary to an invasion of Germany proper. Meanwhile a further three armies were to launch the main thrust against the Austrians, driving them back to the Carpathians.
France proposed to implement against Germany its‘Plan XVII’. This had been refined by Joffre, but was far less detailed than Moltke’s arrangements. Where Schlieffen sketched a design for a grand invasion of France, the French General Staff merely schemed operations against the German army, though these assumed a subsequent advance into the Kaiser’s realm. Plan XVII principally addressed the logistics for concentrating forces behind the frontier, and contained no timetable for operations, nor commitment to explicit territorial objectives. Much more important than the plan were the ethos and doctrine promoted with messianic fervour by the chief of staff. ‘The French Army,’ declared its 1913 Regulations, the work of Joffre, ‘returning to its traditions, henceforth knows no law but the offensive.’ Berlin’s best source in Paris, ‘Agent 17’, an Austrian boulevardier named Baron Schluga von Tastenfeld who acquired much of his information by mingling at the grand salons, informed Moltke – correctly – that Joffre was likely to make his main effort in the Ardennes, at the centre of the front.
France’s chief of staff was
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