Juries and their place in society :: essays research papers

The first months of war resounded with the collision of the war plans pored both everywhere for decades by the general staffs of Europe. The original German plan for a two-front war, drafted by Helmuth von Moltke the elder, had called for taking the offensive against Russia and standing on the defensive in the impoverished Rhineland. The plan showed army prudence and complemented the stabilizing diplomacy of Bismarck. scarce Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, presided over the German military in the era of Kaiser Williams Weltpolitik and adopted a more(prenominal) ambitious and risky course. His plan, conceived in 1891 and completed by 1905, envisioned a massive offensive in the west to knock out the undertake French forces in six weeks, whereupon the army could shift eastward to sojourn the plodding Russians. But a quick decision could be achieved in France only by a vast enveloping action. The powerful decently wing of the German army must descend from the north and sneak off through the neutral Low Countries. This would virtually ensure British intervention. But Schlieffen expected British aid to be as well as little and too late. In sum, the Schlieffen externalize represented a pristine militarism the belief that all factors could be accounted for in advance, that execution could be flawless, that pure force could finalize 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 parade in the initial assault. General higher-up Michel therefore called in 1911 for a blocking 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 silver 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. afterwards the German defeat in the Battle of the Marne, the Western Front modify into an uninterrupted line for 466 miles from Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast south to Bapaume, so southeast past Soissons, Verdun, Nancy, and so to the Swiss frontier.