The Guns of August: The First Days of the War

Attitude on the Eve of the War

Once war was declared, the attitude was enthusiastic as crowds of young men in all of the nations involved in the war enlisted to fight. Huge crowds swarmed enlistment offices as young men signed up to go off to the front. Both sides believed that the war would be over within six months and that if they didn’t hurry, these young men would miss the opportunity to join in the “great adventure.” The general attitude was that the war was like an enormous sporting event and everyone wanted to prove their bravery.

1. Why were so many young men eager to enlist to fight?

2. What did the nations of World War I expect about the length of the war?

Schlieffen Plan

Once war was declared, the Germans began to implement the Schlieffen Plan. German mobilized a defense of its eastern frontier with Russia, while focusing the bulk of its forces against France. The Germans hoped to be able to quickly knock France out of the war and then turn all of its forces against the Russians. While the Russian army was huge, the Germans were confident that their superior weaponry would allow them to defeat the Russians.

1. Describe the Schlieffen Plan.

2. Given the size of the Russian army, how did the Germans expect to be able to defeat them?

German forces, hoping to avoid the French’s defensive positions, made a terrible calculation: they would invade France by passing through Belgium. Belgium was officially neutral and hoped to remain out of the war. However, the German military felt that being able to swing their forces around the French forces and attack them from behind would allow them a tremendous battlefield advantage. Cut off from their supply base, French forces would be at the mercy of the German invader.

3. Why did the Germans feel that they had to pass through Belgium?

4. How did the German Army hope to defeat the French?

The Germans asked the Belgians if they could march through Belgian territory, but Belgium’s king refused. The Germans, regardless, launched an invasion of Belgium, expecting to knock out the Belgian defenders, sweep through France, and end the war. However, the Belgian Army proved surprisingly tough and launched a desperate fighting retreat across the country, which slowed the German advance by several days. The French, seeing the fighting in Belgium, soon realized the German plan and moved to counter the German advance.

5. How did the Belgians manage to “save” the French military?

The British, whose government was unsure whether to get involved in the fighting, were furious over the attack on neutral Belgium and declared war. Part of this was predicated on the principle of protecting a weaker nation, but another part of a matter of alarm: the British military believed that the Belgian Army would be capable of holding out of 6 months. However, after 20 days, all of Belgium had been occupied by German forces.

6. Why did Britain get involved in the war?

Expectations about the abilities of the Belgian Army

Germany

Britain

The Belgian Army was forced out of Belgium entirely, where it joined up with the French army in fighting the German attack. The French expected to blunt the Germans easily, but were shocked by the size and ferocity of the German forces. French and Belgian forces were pushed steadily back and it appeared that the Germans were poised to win the war.

Soon the German Army was within 30 miles of Paris. However, several events culminated to blunt the German attack. First, the British Expeditionary Army had landed and had managed to reinforce the beleaguered French army. Second, an ingenious young French General seized all of Paris’s taxi cabs and pressed them into service, rushing additional reinforcements to the front. This even was known as the Taxis of the Marne.

7. How close did the Germans get to Paris?

8. What two events helped to blunt the German attack?

The Battle of the Marne

The Germans expected to overrun Paris and knock France out of the war. However, the British-French-Belgian force made a stand at the Marne River, just north of Paris, at what is known as the First Battle of the Marne. The Germans advance was suddenly stopped and a daring nighttime offensive launched by the Allies soon had the Germans in retreat.

The Germans, while off-balance, had only been temporarily bloodied and soon recovered. They launched their own counteroffensive at the Allied advance and the resulting battle was tremendously bloody. Soldiers on both sides soon took to digging trenches to evade the enemy’s artillery and machine guns, preventing either side from being able to successfully force the other back.

9. Why did the soldiers at the Battle of the Marne take to digging trenches?

By the time the Battle of the Marne was done, 500,000 soldiers on both sides were dead and those that survived were huddling in their trenches. Both the Germans and the Allies began to rush additional reinforcements and weapons to the front to reinforce their trenches in the hopes of being able to overwhelm their enemy. Soon, millions of soldiers on each side would be facing one another across a complex system of trenches that stretched from the Swiss border to the Atlantic Ocean.

10. What was the immediate outcome of the Battle of the Marne?

11. How many died in the Battle of the Marne?

The Battle of the Marne, while having saved Paris from capture, ended any possibility of a quick victory for either side. The Germans, having lost the initiative that the surprise attack through Belgium had provided, found their forces bogged down in Northern France. French and British forces (supported by the small but eager Belgian army) were arrayed against them, with all of vast resources that their enormous overseas empires backing them.

The Allies found their forces similarly hemmed in, with an enormous German force entrenched in Northern France. The Germans were well-supplied, well-trained, and ready to press the attack.

The trenches would not significantly move for 4 years.

12. What was the long term outcome from the Battle of the Marne?

The Eastern Front

The Russian Army soon moved to attack the Germans. While their army was very large, Russia itself was poorly developed and it became difficult to get troops to the front due to poor roads and insufficient railroads. However, the Russians soon moved a large force into eastern Germany, intent on helping their French allies.

13. Why did it take so long for Russian forces to get involved in the fighting?

The Russian forces moved steadily forward, while the Germans fell back in the face of the larger enemy force. The Russian Army, 485,000 men strong moved steadily against the much smaller 173,000 man German Army.At Tannenburg, however, the Germans launched a surprise attack on the Russians, inflicting a crushing defeat on the invader. At the Battle of Tannenburg, one entire Russian army was destroyed and another mauled badly and forced to retreat.

14. What was the outcome of the Battle of Tannenburg?

British Marshal Sir Edmund Ironside regarded the battle as the “…greatest defeated suffered by any of the combatants during the war.” Russian confidence was badly shaken by the defeat. It would take the Russians another year before attempting any additional offensives against the German lines. And so, in the East as in the West, the war settled into a stalemate.

15. How did the events on the Eastern Front mirror those of the Western Front?

French and Russian war planners had long expected that by forcing the Germans to fight on two fronts (one on the German-French border and another on the German-Russian border), the Germans would be unable to resist. This concept was known as a Two Front War. However, the backwardness of the Russian forces and the competent efficiency of the Germans proved that the Germans could, in fact, fend off both sides, at least for a while.

16. What advantage did the French and Russian war planners bring to bear against the Germans?

17. How effective was this advantage?

18. What was wrong with the French and Russian war plan?

Guns of August Vocabulary

Attitude on the Eve of the War- _______________________________________________________________

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Schlieffen Plan- ___________________________________________________________________________

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Invasion of Belgium- _______________________________________________________________________

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Taxis of the Marne- ________________________________________________________________________

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First Battle of the Marne-

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Battle of Tanneburg- _______________________________________________________________________

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Two Front War -

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