[pepsionice]

I tend to agree with the Hapsburg analogy. Course, it doesn’t help that from 1905 on....the Kaiser was fully developing his war strategy and this merely served as a trigger to run his ‘short-term war’. All the way through the end of 1914....the top level of the German government felt it’d all be over by the summer of 1915, and it would be chiefly mounted against Russia. They guessed wrong on almost every single detail.

[nathanbedford]

The Imperial German war plan, the von Schliefen plan, had to do with the centuries long central European fear of fighting a two front war. The alliance between France and Russia which occurred after the departure of Bismarck, only made those fears in Germany more acute. The French bitterness over there humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and the loss of Alsace Lorraine led them to a very aggressive diplomatic posture respecting Germany. The Russian bear had always coveted a warm water port on the Black See and was ceaselessly intriguing in the Balkans. The Russian aggressiveness and intrusiveness into the Balkans was rightly regarded by the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerens as a threat.

Germany knew that it must avoid a prolonged two front war and its war plans were designed to quickly knock out France so it could turn its full might against Russia. That plan narrowly failed but the Germans were not alone in their hope, if not their belief, that a short war was to be expected. Every single major belligerent, France, Austria, and England, believed almost universally that a short war would ensue.

Indeed, there were very few who thought otherwise except a Pole civilian, a businessman, who wrote presciently about the extent and nature of the first world war but generally the heads of state, the diplomats, and for the most part, the generals all believed that the war would be short, won by a preponderance of force brought first to bear.

War guilt for the First World War cannot exclusively be placed on German hands. The Serbs condoned terrorism to achieve their ends of a greater separatist Serbia. The Austrians wanted a quick and brutal war to discipline the Serbs and preserve the Empire. The Germans wanted a place of primacy which their population and economy had earned and, if a war were to be fought with France and Russia, Germany wanted to fight it on its terms. France wanted to avenge 1871, regain Alsace Lorraine, and humiliate Germany. England entered the war ostensibly to rescue beleaguered Belgium but also because it had a centuries old policy of aligning itself against the greatest continental power to preserve a so-called balance of power. England's intervention into the war guaranteed its spread into a world war.

Vladimir Putin should be seen as a reversion to Stalin, Trotsky, Lenin, and, yes, Ivan the Terrible. Ukraine was once part of Poland and even parts of it belonged to Prussia. These quarrels are ancient but the belligerence is now exclusively on one side, Russia. It is not fair to say that all of the guilt for The First World War is exclusively on the side of The Central Powers. I do not mean to intimate that you have placed blame exclusively on the Kaiser, I merely want to state my version.

[arthurus]

Old martial maxim is that once the shooting starts all the carefully formulated plans vaporize.