Love this three part essay. We’re curious about the comparison of 1914 to 1870 more than to 1815, both in armies and strategies. We’ve always understood 1870 as a dress rehearsal of sorts, with the German actors forgetting their lines, so to speak, by 1914.
If the Germans had allowed the French to exhaust themselves in offense around Lorraine--not an unreasonable expectation, given the French elan mindset and politics--surely that would have opened the Belgian flank for strong advances before the British arrived?
Going back to Napoleon and his propensity for dealing with his enemies one at a time, it seems like the Germans gave up on divide and conquer and doomed themselves to failure by taking on the world.
That’s a popular counterfactual among military historians. If the Germans had chosen that option, they couldn’t simply have rotated their deployment one hundred and eighty degrees. In reality, Germany allotted seven of its field armies to the west and one to East Prussia. But to stand on the defensive against France while taking the offensive against Russia would have demanded a much different distribution of forces, say three in the west, five in the east. Then there’s the question of objectives. The obvious Austro-German plan would have been to pinch off the Polish salient, with a secondary offensive in Galicia.
The question is whether such an offensive could be decisive. Moltke and Co. thought not, given Russia’s size and manpower reserves.
Love this three part essay. We’re curious about the comparison of 1914 to 1870 more than to 1815, both in armies and strategies. We’ve always understood 1870 as a dress rehearsal of sorts, with the German actors forgetting their lines, so to speak, by 1914.
If the Germans had allowed the French to exhaust themselves in offense around Lorraine--not an unreasonable expectation, given the French elan mindset and politics--surely that would have opened the Belgian flank for strong advances before the British arrived?
Going back to Napoleon and his propensity for dealing with his enemies one at a time, it seems like the Germans gave up on divide and conquer and doomed themselves to failure by taking on the world.
One wonders what would have happened if the Germans had gone on the defensive in the west and focused the bulk of their forces against Russia.
One benefit would have been to keep England out of the war (at least for a time).
But as you described, Germany was determined to crush France.
That’s a popular counterfactual among military historians. If the Germans had chosen that option, they couldn’t simply have rotated their deployment one hundred and eighty degrees. In reality, Germany allotted seven of its field armies to the west and one to East Prussia. But to stand on the defensive against France while taking the offensive against Russia would have demanded a much different distribution of forces, say three in the west, five in the east. Then there’s the question of objectives. The obvious Austro-German plan would have been to pinch off the Polish salient, with a secondary offensive in Galicia.
The question is whether such an offensive could be decisive. Moltke and Co. thought not, given Russia’s size and manpower reserves.