Sister Russia and Our British Cousin. The Trouble with Allies

   "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom"  ~Lao Tzu   

    If you are going to war against a country larger and more powerful than you, you will need allies. At least one, preferably more. In 1914, no one was more aware of this than France. Germany and its satellites were at least 20% larger than France and its population was half again as large. France's primary ally, really its only confirmed ally, was Russia.
  Russia, however, was a constant cause of trepidation to France because it refused to confirm just how much it would thrown in with France when war began. Russia wasn't intending to be malicious with its vacillation, it had its own problems to deal with, and its sheer size and distance from Germany made the way it could wage war different than France.  If Germany started a two-front war, France was immediately in the cross-hairs. It would be the first thing Germany went for.  Russia was so far away that by the time they reached even the borders of Germany, France could have fallen. Russia's distance from Germany allowed it to wait a few days to mobilize. It was also large enough that it could endure a initial (relatively) small loss of territory to the Germans while calling up their reserves.
   Size and distance aside, Russia also had its own problems at home without having to worry about its comparatively small ally. They had just come through a humiliating defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. That war, considered the "first great war of the 20th Century" was an imperial dispute between Russia and Japan over Manchuria and Korea. After that, Russia had a minor revolution in 1905.If Germany had implemented its Schlieffen plan in 1906, it probably could have wiped out both France and Russia.  But by 1909, Russia was starting to pull itself together again and work out its own mobilization schedules in the event of another war.  Indeed, the mistakes Russia learned from in 1904 helped it to defeat Germany in 1917. After much waffling, Russia surprised everyone by throwing in its lot with France in 1913.      There is still speculation today as to why Russia seemed to have a sudden change of heart. One possibility is that Russia had an Austrian double agent that sold them the secrets of Austria's war plans. Another is that Russia finally got over its defeat by Japan and was militarily and economically to the point where it could start expanding again.  Or perhaps Russia just realized that if France fell, it could not stand alone against the combined force of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Whatever the cause, the idea of having Russia coming at them from behind while they attacked France certainly gave Germany pause.
    Germany was not without its own ally problems. Germany's main ally was its smaller associate to the south Austria-Hungary.  Austria-Hungary vacillated on whether it would or would not help Germany in the next war.  While Austria-Hungary was more interested in taking on Serbia, Germany intended to throw Austria at Poland to keep back the advancing Russian army while they dealt with France. It was not until summer of 1914 that Austria-Hungary finally agreed to engage Russia, and only if Germany guaranteed they would grant them a portion of the German forces to assist.
    Russia aside, the one thing Germany did not consider was Britain getting involved. France couldn't really count on Britain either, because Britain had strongly implied that they did not want to get involved with anyone else's problems.  Britain had an advantage that the rest of Europe did not have, isolation.  They were separated from everyone else by water, while the rest of the countries were separated by a river or mountain range at best, at worst, just a line on a map.  While the rest of Europe had to worry if a conflict elsewhere would spill over into their land, Britain could stay out or choose to get involved, and with whom.  Britannia also had the largest and most powerful navy in the world, although Germany was fast catching up with them. Indeed, if conflict did start, that is how Britain at first planned to engage Germany, by putting its impressive British Navy against the German High Seas Fleet.   Over time, however, the British government and military came to realize that if Germany was the aggressor, the decisive point of battle would lie in France, and it was there they would have to go.  They came to an agreement in 1911, and France added Britain into their battle plans, while Britain went to work determining the fastest way to send soldiers over the Channel. France and Britain had never really gotten along, in the past they went to war against each other as often as not, but this time they would operate on a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy. Stop the enemy from invading you before he invades us both.
     Everyone had been making plans and stockpiling weapons and men for years. Planning moves and counter moves, trying to anticipate the other side's reaction to their advance.  The board was set.  All that was needed now was the opening move.

Deutschland Uber La Marseillaise: The German-French Hostility

"From the lands where the sun rises to western shores, people are crying and wailing ... the Franks, the Romans, all Christians, are stung with mourning and great worry ... the young and old, glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their Caesar ... the world laments the death of Charles ... O Christ, you who govern the heavenly host, grant a peaceful place to Charles in your kingdom. Alas for miserable me."

Anonymous Monk at the monastery of Bobbio, on the death of Charlemagne

With all this talk about Germany wanting to war with France and France wanting to war with Germany, I really have not clarified why these two neighboring countries wanted to destroy each other so terribly.  Allow me to pause here and explain, at least in part, why they were both spoiling for such a war.  It is not an easy story, for it is a very complicated tale, with many causes and many players. One could spend literally a lifetime studying and writing about the enmity between these two countries. I shall endeavour to put it in a very large nutshell.
    As with most things in Europe, it begins with Rome. Julius Caesar in his On The Gallic War comments on he rivalry and cultural differences between the Gauls, living in what is now France, and the Germanic tribes in present day Germany. The Gauls were a Celtic people who inhabited a territory bounded by the Rhine river on the East, the Atlantic Ocean on the West and North, and the Pyrenees Mountains and Mediterranean Sea to the South. This still corresponds to the borders of modern day France.Once the Gauls were conquered by Julius Caesar, they became thoroughly Roman. Roman citizenship, running water, baths, forums, circuses, speaking Latin and so on. 
   The neighbors across the Rhine were a different story. They were not Celts and they had no interest whatsoever in being Roman. They were the barbarian Germanic tribes. We don't really know what they called themselves, Julius Caesar calls them Germani because that is what the Gauls called them. Rome tried to conquer them too, but after losing three legions to the Germans in the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Romans pretty much gave up and went home.  In fact, this battle all but ended any further Roman expansion into northern Europe. The hero of this battle was the chieftain of the Cherusci tribe of Germans named Arminius, Armin, or Hermann, depending on what language you are speaking. Remember him and remember Teutoburg Forest, they will be important later. 
   So we have the Roman Gauls and the very un-Roman Germans living on opposite sides of a river. This is why French is considered a "Romance" language while German is not. French has a lot of Latin in it while German has hardly any Latin in it at all, save for a few words. After Rome fell, what is now France and most of Germany was united under the Franks. Though they gave their name to France (i.e. Francia), they were actually a Germanic people who spoke a language that was more German than Latin Gaulish.  Clovis I was the first king of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes. He was of the Merovingian Dynasty and is still considered the first king of France. His name, Chlodowig in its original Frankish form,  would later be transformed to Louis in French and Ludwig in German. The Merovingians were later overthrown by the Carolingian Dynasty, founded by Charles Martel, whose grandson would be the most famous Frankish king and one of the most legendary monarchs of all Europe: Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne.   Charlemagne united all the Franks in Francia and all the German Franks, he conquered south to take northern Italy and west to unite all the territories that would later make up Germany and parts of Austria and Hungary.  Being a Christian, he went to war with the Muslims in Spain and put Pope Leo III under his protection after the Romans tried to put out Leo's eyes and tear out his tongue.  On Christmas Day A.D. 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperator Romanorum "Emperor of the Romans", declaring the Frankish king the rightful heir to Old Rome. This was a slap in the face to the Byzantine Emperors in Constantinople, who considered themselves the continuation of the Roman Empire.  
   The crowning of Charlemagne founded the Holy Roman Empire, whose ever-changing borders over time would contain all of Germany, most of Austria and Hungary, northern Italy, all of Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and parts of Poland and France. When Charlemagne died, he was succeeded by his son Louis who only kept the empire intact in his lifetime. Upon Louis' death, two of his sons divided the kingdom between them into two territories that became later the countries of France and Germany. 
  So, after some nice Christian and Roman unity, it's time to start hating each other again. France, throughout the middle ages into the modern era sought to maintain the borders it had since it was Gaulish Rome as described above, but France was the main nation that went on Crusades, fought wars against the Spanish and the British and owned England itself for a time. France was sophisticated and outward looking. Germany sort of kept to itself and ignored everyone. (Beware the loners, they're usually not quiet so much as plotting.) Also, France was united into a single country.  Germany, or the Holy Roman Empire as it was known, was a collection of smaller territories ruled by lesser kings under a greater emperor. It stayed this way until the early 19th century when Germans started thinking about unification. They were finally driven to unify in 1870 with the Franco-Prussian war. The Franco-Prussian War starts with Napoleon. 
     The Napoleonic Wars are well known enough that they do not need to be discussed here. Let's just say that the German States were very angry with France for the way it had run over them on its way to Russia and Poland. To prevent such a thing happening again, Prussia, the largest and most powerful of the German states, began uniting the norther German territories. This suddenly upset the balance of power in Europe, and Napoleon III, Emperor of France, demanded compensations in Belguim and the left bank of the Rhine, including two little territories largely full of German-speakers known as Alsace-Lorraine. Otto von Bismark, the Prussian Chancellor refused, and turned around started to unify the southern German states with the new northern state, creating modern Germany.  This is where Arminius and Teutoburg come back in. After the Napoleonic Wars, Germans began writing plays and songs about Arminius and his defeat of the French Romans. This even was looked back to as a key point of German identity. 
   France did not want Germany to unify because it would make a country larger and more powerful than itself. France attacked Germany and newly unified Germany responded. They responded by marching all the way to Paris and laying siege to it, intending to starve the French into submission. Finally, an armistice was signed in 1871, less than a year after the war started. Flush with victory, Germany demanded Alsace-Lorraine from France and built a monument to Arminius in Teutoburg Forest, with his statue glowering toward France. 
  So on top of everything that had gone before, the final bone of contention between these two countries was this. France felt threatened by unified Germany, newly unified Germany wanted to start taking back some of the territory it had as the Holy Roman Empire (and didn't want France attacking it again) and France wanted Alsace and Lorraine back. They couldn't wait to start going at each other again. In August 1914 they were only to glad to start going at each other again. 

The Great Game

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; When far away, we must make him believe we are near."
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    Aside from making war, there is another occupation that armies have which is no less important, making plans. Without plans, there is no way to win a war. Alexander the Great planned how to invade Persia, Hannibal planned how to cross the Alps (with his notorious elephants and boulder dissolving vinegar) to take over Rome. Philip II of Spain planned to sail the Spanish Armada to England in 1588, only to have to tables turned on him. Napoleon made war plans almost every year of his conquering career. The North planned how to defeat the South in the American Civil War and so on.
    All of these plans, indeed pretty much any war plans since men began the art of war, were made "on the hoof" when war was either impending or already ongoing. That would change by 1870, with the advent of the new European railway systems which made it possible for armies to move thousands of men long distances ten times faster than they could travel by foot. The railroads also made it easier to supply armies, since food and other goods could be shipped to troops by rail, rather than having to rely on what could be begged, borrowed, bought, or stolen from the surrounding countryside.  The trouble with railroads is, they have to be efficiently timed or nothing will ever go anywhere.  The French army learned this the hard way during the Franco-Prussian war, when empty train cars left sitting on the track blocked the arrival of full trains for miles. Because of this, armies became fixated on ensuring that trains were kept to a strict timetable in war as well as peacetime. The best place to do this was staff colleges.
   Staff colleges were an invention of the latter Nineteenth Century. As mentioned before, soldier-making had become an industrial staple of most European countries, and since armies and navies need officers, staff colleges were set up to train privileged young men to be such. The first staff college was, not surprisingly, founded  by the Germans the same day the University of Berlin was founded. At first, the attendants of these schools were trained to be minions, but later on they were taught to think like generals, play war games, study military tactics, and write solutions to strategic problems. Germany was the founder of the staff college/war college and its models were soon coped throughout Europe. Their tactics were copied and their manuals translated into English, French, and other languages. The best graduates were appointed to general staffs and set to arranging mobilization schedules, writing wartime railway timetables, and finding solutions to every possible outcome of a situation.  Nineteenth century warfare had been turned from something done on an as-needed basis to an intricate art, a trade craft.  An obsessive, giant chess game with the map of Europe as the playing board.  The opening move was designated Mobilization Day ( M-Tag as it was known by the Germans) and everything following was a rigorous schedule of what soldiers and supplies should be placed where and when however many days after M-Tag until they reached the battlefield and the war was won.

The Schlieffen Plan

   As in chess, there are always strategies, and this new art of war was no exception. Generals and their staffs would write out various plans of deployment based on the situation and how they expected their opponents to respond.  These deployment plans, once complete, were pigeon-holed to be pulled out later as needed. The most famous of these is still known even to casual students of history, the Schlieffen Plan.
The Schlieffen Plan was named for its author, Field Marshall Alfred von Schlieffen, and was in short, a plan of how Germany was to crush France once one of them declared war on the other. The Plan was this, nearly the whole German army in a line, hinged at the Swiss border and stretching nearly to the North Sea, would march forward in a large arc across Belguim, Brussles, and finally across Flanders to the French border. The were scheduled to reach the French border by 21 days after M-tag. On the 31st day after M-tag, the German line would run along the Somme and Meuse rivers and the right wing would turn south, enveloping Paris in a pincer-like movement,  driving the French army toward the left wing that was advancing from Alsace-Lorraine. Thus in a gigantic claw, 400 miles in circumference and 200 miles wide, France would essentially be decapitated as her army was crushed.
   This plan would continually be plagued by problems, how long would it take supplies to get to the front, how hard would resistance through Belgium be, and so on. Schlieffen would continue to tinker with his plan obsessively until he died in 1912. His colleagues and successors would also continue to tinker with it. He and the other Germans were unaware that the French had a very similar plan in their war plan index. Known as Plans XIV-XVI, they were all variations on the same theme, to send all of the French forces along the French frontier to block Germany from entering France. It was a mirror of Schleiffen's masterwork, and plagued by the same problems; troop movements, supplies, ect.  If both of these plans had been implemented as written, there would have been gridlock in Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine that may just still be going on today. Fortunately these two armies mobilized in slightly modified versions of their dress rehearsals.
   France had a smaller population and therefore a smaller army than Germany, but remedied this in part by the Conscription Law of 1905, which imposed two years of military service for all young Frenchmen. Germany responded in kind in 1911 with a three year law for all young German men. Thus the world ran back and forth for thirty odd years, laws were changed, battle plans were written, rewritten, and indexed up until zero hour. This is what the staff colleges of Europe did during peace time. It is really no surprise that everyone wanted to go to war so desperately, the were all probably bored. One can only play the world's biggest chess game for so long.
   Oddly enough, there were no diplomatic equivalents of military staff colleges. They cataloged ways to make war, but not ways to make peace. Oxford University had established its professorship of Modern History in the eighteenth century to educate future diplomats, but up to 1914, the British Foreign Office was still choosing its entrants from honorary attaches; that is, young men whose fathers were friends of ambassadors. ("It's not what you know, it's who you know" is at least two hundred years old. It is not a new thing.) Diplomacy was therefore, mostly taught in embassies. European diplomats ante-Great War were a truly international class, they all knew each other as acquaintances or friends and all spoke French as a common language. And they all shared the belief that it was their main job was to avoid war.
    They had done so in the past.  At times when it looked like Europe was on the verge of war they all had enough confidence in each others abilities, a common standard of conduct, and desired above all else to prevent conflict. It was not the fault of the diplomats in 1914 that war finally consumed the world, why did they fail? I am not quite sure of that answer, I am still determining the threads of action and consequence.  The nearest I have come to so far, is that the conscripted young men, the professional soldiers, and the professional officers of the staff colleges were so well taught and well trained that they shouted down the diplomats. And the diplomats, whose very un-industrial trade was neglected, were at last out of their depth.