Juries and their place in society :: essays research papers

The first months of war resounded with the collision of the war plans pored over for decades by the oecumenic staffs of Europe. The original German plan for a two-front war, drafted by Helmuth von Moltke the elder, had c whollyed for taking the offensive against Russia and standing on the defensive in the rugged Rhineland. The plan showed military circumspection and complemented the stabilizing diplomacy of Bismarck. alone Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, presided over the German military in the era of Kaiser Williams Weltpolitik and adopted a more ambitious and risky course. His plan, conceived in 1891 and accomplished by 1905, envisioned a massive offensive in the west to knock out the compact French forces in six weeks, whereupon the army could vex eastward to confront the plodding Russians. But a quick decision could be achieved in France only by a vast enveloping action. The omnipotent right wing of the German army must descend from the north and pass through the neutral Low Countries. This would virtu completelyy ensure British intervention. But Schlieffen expected British aid to be too little and too late. In sum, the Schlieffen Plan represented a pristine militarism the belief that all factors could be accounted for in advance, that execution could be flawless, that pure force could resolve all political problems including those thrown up by the plan itself. In the event, the Germans realized all of the political costs of the Schlieffen Plan and few of the military benefits.Like the Germans, the French had discarded a more sensible plan in favour of the one implemented. French intelligence had learned of the grand lines of the Schlieffen Plan and its inclusion of reserve troops in the initial assault. General Victor Michel therefore called in 1911 for a pulley action in Belgium in addition to an offensive into Alsace-Lorraine. But this required twice the active troops currently available. France would either have to give up the Belgian screen or the offensive. The new chief of staff, J.-J.-C. Joffre, refused to believe that Germany would deploy reserve corps in immediate combat and gave up the screen.By October 1914 all the plans had unraveled. After the German defeat in the Battle of the Marne, the Western Front stabilized into an uninterrupted line for 466 miles from Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast south to Bapaume, hence southeast past Soissons, Verdun, Nancy, and so to the Swiss frontier.