19.3: The Early War

Apprehension mixed with enthusiasm at the onset of war among civilians and soldiers. Many felt that the war would resolve nationalistic rivalries, and almost no one anticipated a lengthy war. Wilhelm II anticipated “a jolly little war”, and it was widely thought in France and Germany that the war would be over by Christmas. Indeed, 30,000 young men and women marched in Berlin before the war was even declared, singing patriotic songs and gathering at the feet of statues of German and Prussian heroes. Everywhere, thousands of young men enlisted in the military of their own volition. Anti-war protests were minimal and mostly organized by the socialist parties in the name of socialist internationalism.

Whereas pre-war socialists had argued vociferously that the working class of each country was a single, united class regardless of national differences, that internationalist rhetoric largely vanished once the war began. Wanting to be seen as patriots (whether French, German, or British), the major socialist parties voted to authorize the war and supported the sale of war bonds. In turn, the radical left of the socialist parties soon broke off and formed new parties that continued to oppose the war. These new parties were typically called “communists”, whereas the old ones remained “socialists.”

For many people, the war represented a cathartic release. War was an ideal of bravery and honor that many young men in Europe in 1914 longed for as a way to prove themselves, to prove their loyalty, and to purge their boredom and uncertainty about the future. A whole generation had absorbed tales of glory on the battlefield, of the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the conquests overseas. Depending on their nationality, they were either ashamed and angry or fiercely proud of their country’s past performances. As a result, many men saw a new war as a chance to settle accounts, to prove once and for all that they were citizens a great power, and to shame their opponents into conceding defeat. France would get even for the Franco-Prussian War. Germany would prove it was the most powerful nation in Europe. Russia would prove that it was a powerful modern nation - and so on.

The war began with the German invasion of France through Belgium. German tactics centered on the “Schlieffen Plan,” named after its author, Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen. The Schlieffen Plan called for a rapid advance into France to knock the French forces out of the war within six weeks. Subsequently, German troops would be whisked back east via railroads in time to engage Russia, as it was believed that it would take the Russians at least that long to mobilize their armies. In addition to rapid mobilization, the German military was to defeat the French military more quickly than the Prussian forces had forty years earlier in the Franco-Prussian War.

Figure 19.3.1: The Schlieffen Plan, in theory. While it met with initial success, French and British troops succeeded in counter-attacking and pushing back the German advance.

Belgium was a neutral country, and German planners had expected the country to surrender swiftly as German troops advanced rapidly toward France. Instead, Belgian soldiers fiercely resisted the German invasion. In retaliation, German troops deliberately massacred civilians, destroyed towns, and raped Belgian women. Thousands of Belgian refugees fled to Britain, where they were welcomed and housed. The bloodshed shocked the sensibilities of the French and British reading public and emphasized the fact that the war might go very differently than many had first imagined. Britain swiftly declared war on Germany.

After a few weeks, the Schlieffen Plan ground to a halt. A fierce French counter-attack stopped the Germans in Belgium and Northeastern France in late September. Simultaneously, Russia mobilized its forces much more quickly than expected, attacking both Germany and Austria in the east in late August. In the autumn of 1914, the scale of battles grew to exceed anything Europe had witnessed since the Napoleonic Wars. To their shock and horror, soldiers on all sides encountered the sheer destructive power of modern weaponry for the first time. To shield themselves from the clouds of bullets belched out by machine guns, desperate soldiers dove into the craters created by artillery shells. In the process, trench warfare was invented.

Enormous new battleships known as dreadnoughts, high-explosive artillery shells, and machine guns were far more lethal than anything created before. Unfortunately, human bodies were pitifully weak by comparison. As the death toll mounted, modern warfare's human and financial costs shattered the image of national strength that politicians and generals continued to cling to. Those generals stuck to favored and outdated tactics, sending cavalry in bright uniforms to their deaths in hopeless charges, ordering offensives that were doomed to fail, and calling up every soldier available on reserve.

In a well-remembered symbolic moment, at Christmas, a brief and unauthorized truce was held on the Western Front when French and German soldiers climbed out of their respective trenches and meet in the “no man’s land” between the lines, with a German barber offering shaves and haircuts to all comers. By then, both sides were well aware that the conceit that the war would “be over by Christmas” had been a ridiculous fantasy. Never again in the war would a moment of voluntary peace re-emerge. While they did not know it then, the soldiers faced four more years of carnage.