World War I

F

Mobilization Orders

After the assassination, Austria-Hungary sent an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, making demands calculated to humiliate the Serbs so they would reject the ultimatum. The demands included creating a joint Austro-Serbian commission to investigate the murder and ordering the Serbian government to condemn any propaganda against Austria-Hungary. Urged by both Britain and Russia, Serbia accepted most of the demands with a few minor reservations. Austria-Hungary declared the Serbian reply to be unsatisfactory. On July 26, the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, proposed a conference to address the dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. However, Austria-Hungary refused to allow foreign powers to decide a matter of national honor, and Germany supported its ally. On July 28 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, after ordering a partial mobilization of its armed forces.

A chain reaction followed. The military machinery took charge in the empires of Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany. Although all three rulers hesitated at the brink of the abyss, they all yielded at last to the stern demands of so-called military necessity. The tsar ordered partial mobilization on July 29. Then, faced with a German ultimatum and the known Russian time lag, Russia went on to full mobilization on July 31. Austria-Hungary took the same action on July 31, before news of the Russian order had reached Vienna. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and William II set in motion the Schlieffen Plan.

Acting in accord with the Schlieffen Plan, ten German divisions were sent east to maintain a defensive posture against the Russian army. Meanwhile most of the remaining divisions were concentrated into the right wing of the German army in the west. This wing was to march through Belgium and envelop the French army, and in a vast wheeling movement, sweep into Paris from the north. The Germans expected to profit from the element of surprise and from what they believed to be the superior firepower of their own forces.

France, faced with immediate danger from Germany, had no choice except to resist or surrender. It indignantly rejected Germany's demand for ironclad assurances that France would remain neutral in the forthcoming conflict between Germany and France's ally Russia. Germany declared war on France on August 3. King Albert I of Belgium defied a German ultimatum demanding free passage through his country for the German army. However, he was faithful to the obligations of Belgium's pledged neutrality. Only when German troops actually invaded Belgium, early on August 4, did Albert send an appeal for help to the guarantor powers, including Britain.

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His action imposed a moral burden upon Britain to honor its pledge. Although the British Cabinet and House of Commons had hesitated to become involved in a war on the continent, they now warned Germany that Britain would defend Belgian neutrality, by force of arms if necessary, if Germany did not withdraw. At midnight on August 4, the British ultimatum expired, and Britain was at war with Germany. By that time the “rape of Belgium” was not the only, or even the main, reason Britain was determined to intervene. The British government opted for war because it feared that Germany would decimate France and dominate the rest of Europe.

VI

Phase One: Bid for Quick Victory

A

Western Front, 1914

In 1914 the northern and eastern frontier of France was about 600 km (400 mi) long. It ran from northwest to southeast, with roughly 300 km (200 mi) facing Belgium and 300 km (200 mi) facing Germany. A formidable system of permanent fortifications defended the eastern, or German, half of the frontier. The French war plan in 1914, known as Plan XVII, called for a headlong French offensive into Alsace and Lorraine, in which it was imagined that French élan (fighting spirit) would carry the offensive.

However, the frontier facing Belgium was virtually unfortified. French planners did not believe that the Germans could bring enough troops into action to make a strong attack through Belgium and simultaneously attack the French fortress system. The fortresses of 1914 in both France and Belgium consisted of a circle of detached masonry forts built around a city or town. The intervals between the forts could be protected by crossfire from soldiers in the forts and could also be covered by fieldworks occupied by infantry. The forts themselves had been built mainly underground except for the turrets, or cupolas, in which guns of 3-inch to 8-inch bore were positioned on revolving mounts.

Belgium had two strong fortresses of this type in Liège and Namur. These fortresses covered the roads and railways that a German army attacking France through Belgium would need to use. As a result, the first German move had to be a quick knockout of Liège, in eastern Belgium. Liège guarded a narrow gap between the thickly wooded Ardennes region and was the junction from which four main highways led westward.

When the Germans began their assault on Belgium and France, they used some 1.5 million men, or about 20 to 25 percent more men than the highest French estimate. Of these men, almost 1,160,000 were assigned to the five field armies of the enormously strong German right wing, which was destined to drive into France by way of Belgium. The remaining 345,000 troops in the German Sixth and Seventh armies were to advance toward the French fortress system in the east.

A

1

Commanders

The commander of the German forces was Colonel General Helmuth von Moltke, who as the chief of the general staff automatically became commander in chief in wartime. Moltke had been an ardent proponent of war during the assassination crisis. However, his leadership on the battlefield in the opening stage of the conflict left much to be desired.

The French commander was General Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre, who had served a considerable amount of time in France's colonies. Joffre was France's foremost champion of the offensive, believing that the speed and morale of an advancing infantry was the key to victory. However, he ignored the effects of firepower from modern weapons and sent his troops in their traditional uniforms of blue coats and red trousers to face German machine guns and rapid-firing artillery. The results were devastating.

A

2

Invasion of Belgium

On August 4, 1914, the Germans invaded Belgium. They encountered spirited Belgian resistance at and near Liège and suffered heavy losses in repeated attempts to storm the forts. However, the Germans had secretly built a number of heavy cannons that fired 931-kg (2,052-lb) shells and were the most powerful siege artillery to appear in Europe at the time. Forged in the Krupp munitions factories, the terrifying new weapon was dubbed “Big Bertha” after Gustav Krupp's wife. After the Germans dragged the huge guns into position, they knocked out the forts by August 16. The gray-uniformed tide of German troops swept on past Liège and fanned out into the wide plains to the west.

King Albert I of Belgium had wanted all six divisions of the Belgian field army concentrated to defend Liège to the last. If this had happened, the Germans would have had to overcome this resistance before they could have brought their big guns within range of the forts, and a serious delay might have resulted. However, Albert did not have time to enforce his commands on a reluctant staff, and as a result, the resistance of Liège served to delay the Germans only slightly. The Belgian field army withdrew into the fortified camp of Antwerp, where two German corps besieged it while the main German advance flowed past toward the open French frontier.

A

3

Battle of the Frontiers

The first bloody encounters between Germany and France occurred in the last two weeks of August 1914, in a series of engagements known as the Battle of the Frontiers. On August 14 the French launched an offensive on its eastern border into Lorraine. The French First and Second armies had some initial success but a counterattack by the German Sixth and Seventh armies threw them back across the frontier on August 20. Losing 140,000 men in six days, the French army fell back toward Paris in disarray, with the Germans in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile, to the northwest the German Fourth and Fifth armies were moving slowly forward into the Ardennes forest. To the west of them the right wing, made up of the German First, Second, and Third armies, was still wheeling around to deliver the decisive blow. The French launched a series of desperate counterattacks against the advancing German forces as they crossed the Belgian frontier into France. These counterattacks cost the French enormous losses, and still the Germans forged on.

On the French line, the French Fifth Army held the extreme west, extending to the Sambre River. To the west of the French Fifth was the newly arrived British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Both the French and British forces began to feel the pressure of the advancing German right wing. The outer element of the advancing force was the German First Army, and next in line was the German Second Army. The German Third Army linked these two wheeling armies with the rest of the German troops. From August 20 through 23, there was bloody and rather confused fighting along the frontiers, notably at Charleroi and Mons and in the Ardennes. The Allied armies then retreated toward the Marne River northeast of Paris.

The Battle of the Frontiers ended the French hope of driving deep into Alsace and Lorraine in order to advance into the center of Germany. Moltke's headquarters considered the battle a decisive German victory. Joffre, on the other hand, knew that his armies had been badly mauled but were still full of fight. He energetically set to work to collect troops from his right and center in order to gather a new army, the Sixth, for a counterattack against the German right wing. Joffre planned to fight in the shelter of the fortifications of Paris. The French government had fled Paris, which was preparing to defend itself against the Germans.

Meanwhile, the German Second Army was checked for 36 hours by a violent French counterattack in the Battle of Guise, while the German First Army pressed forward eagerly. This opened a gap between the German First and Second armies, eventually exposing part of the First Army to attack by the French Sixth Army in the Paris area.

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