SAT 25 JUL 1914 –TUE 28 JUL 1914

The outbreak of war

For years before 1914, general staffs in Europe had prepared elaborate plans for mobilization in the event of war. During the nineteenth century, most states had adopted a system of conscripting men into the Army for a set, often fairly short, period of time, then sending them back to civilian life. These reservists were then recalled to the colours in time of emergency. This arrangement allowed armies to put vast numbers of men into the field. Germany’s field army of 82 infantry divisions included 31 reserve formations; the French had 73 divisions, 25 of which were composed of reservists.

The major exception was Britain, which relied on a long-service regular army backed up by a volunteer part-time Territorial Force, rather than on conscription. Shortly after the war began, the new Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener called for mobilization of volunteers for a new, mass army. This ensured that by 1916 Britain had an army comparable in size to its allies and enemies. But in August 1914, Britain could only put a mere six infantry divisions in the field – in addition, of course, to the might of the Royal Navy.

Rival Mobilization Strategies: Germany’s Gamble and France’s Plan XVII

The war plans of the Great Powers dictated that no time could be wasted between mobilizing and fighting. The German pre-war plan, developed under General Alfred Von Schlieffen, was designed to compensate for the fact that Germany would face a war on two fronts. Hurling the bulk of its forces westwards, and invading neutral Belgium to outflank the French frontier defences, Germany would defeat France in a matter of weeks. Its forces would then redeploy via the strategic railway system to face the Russian Army, which the Germans calculated would be slow to move. That infringement of Belgian territory was likely to bring the British into the war was discounted.

The operational concept was based on the idea of encirclement, a favourite German military gambit that served them well in the FrancoPrussian War of 1870–71 (and was to be repeated on numerous occasions in the Second World War). If the French advanced into Lorraine, so much the better; the German trap would close behind them. The Schlieffen Plan, hotly debated by historians in recent years, stands as an example of a gamble of breathtaking proportions. If it failed, Germany would be in deep trouble.

French Army

The French army pinned its hopes on Plan XVII, a strategy developed by the French general staff under the leadership of General Joseph Joffre. Plan XVII was founded on the concept of the all-out offensive, an aggressive military doctrine associated with Lieutenant General (later Marshal) Ferdinand Foch. Both Joffre and Foch were to go on to play extremely prominent roles during the First World War. On the outbreak of war, major French forces would surge into Lorraine to recapture the provinces lost to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, while others would advance farther to the north.

Coordinated Allied Strategy on the Western Front

Everywhere, the French would carry the war to the enemy. As the consequence of secret talks between the British and French staffs, it was decided that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), too small to carry out an independent strategy, would take its place on the left of the French Army, a decision reluctantly confirmed by an ad hoc war council of politicians and generals convened on the outbreak of war. The Belgian Army, less than 120,000 strong in 1914, could do little but resist the Germans mobilization as best they could until joined by Franco-British forces.

The French, British and German armies were armed with broadly similar weapons – bolt-action, magazine rifl es capable of rapid fire; modern, quick-fi ring artillery; and a limited number of machine guns. All retained considerable numbers of cavalry, armed with both fi rearms and swords, for reconnaissance and the charge. Every army also had a small number of primitive airplanes.

Early War Offensive Doctrines and their Tragic Consequences

General staffs had studied the most recent military campaigns, in South Africa (1899–1902) and Manchuria (1904–05), and had incorporated the perceived lessons into their thinking. None were unaware of the devastating power of modern weapons, or the diffi culty in overcoming fi xed fortifi cations. To strike fi rst and win quickly, before the front could congeal into trench warfare, seemed a logical extrapolation from recent wars; and the Russo-Japanese War apparently demonstrated that determined troops with high morale could overcome entrenched defenders, albeit at a heavy cost in casualties.

The French were the most extreme exponents of the cult of the offensive and the “moral battlefi eld”, in which heavy emphasis was placed on morale (the words being used interchangeably at this time), but these concepts also infl uenced the British and Germans. These pre-war doctrines were not entirely wrong, but undoubtedly contributed to the huge “butcher’s bill” in the early months of the war…

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