15.3: The Early War

Apprehension and enthusiasm marked the start of the war. Before the war was even declared, 30,000 young men and women marched in Berlin, 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 free will. Anti-ware protests abruptly stopped. Many felt that the war would resolve nationalistic rivalries once and for all. Indeed, it was widely thought in France and Germany that the war would be over by Christmas.

In the early 20th century, war was an ideal of bravery and honor that many young men longed for as a way to prove themselves, prove their loyalty, and 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 performance in past wars. As a result, many saw a new war as a chance to settle accounts. France could get even for the Franco-Prussian War. Germany could prove it was the most powerful nation in Europe. Russia could 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,” which called for a rapid advance into France, knocking the country out of the war in six weeks. Subsequently, German troops would be whisked back east via railroads in time to engage Russia. (The generals believed that it would take the Russians at least that long to mobilize their armies.)

Figure 7.3.1: The Schlieffen Plan, in theory. In reality, 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 leading up to the war, and German planners had expected Belgium to surrender swiftly. Instead, Belgian soldiers fiercely resisted the German invasion. In turn, German troops deliberately massacred civilians and destroyed towns. Thousands of Belgian refugees fled to Britain. The bloodshed shocked the sensibilities of the French and British reading public. As a result, Britain swiftly declared war on Germany.

Within a few weeks, the Schlieffen Plan came to a halt as a result of a fierce French counter-attack. Simultaneously, the Russians surprised everyone by mobilizing their forces much more quickly than expected, attacking both Germany and Austria in the east. By the autumn of 1914, the scale of battles grew to exceed anything had ever seen. Soldiers on all sides encountered for the first time the sheer destructive power of modern weaponry. To shield themselves from the clouds of bullets coming out of machine guns, soldiers dove into the craters created by artillery shells. In the process, trench warfare was invented.

Leading up to the war, enormous new battleships (known as dreadnoughts), high-explosive artillery shells, and machine guns had been invented. As the death toll mounted, the human (and financial) costs associated with modern warfare shattered the image of national strength. At the same time, some generals stuck to outdated tactics such as sending calvary in bright uniforms into hopeless charges, ordering offensives that were doomed to fail, and calling up every soldier available on reserve.

That Christmas, in a well-remembered symbolic moment, a brief and unauthorized truce was held on the Western Front. French and German soldiers climbed out of their respective trenches and meet in the “no man’s land” between the lines. Never again in the war would a moment of voluntary peace re-emerge. While they did not know it at the time, the soldiers faced four more years of carnage to come.