306 Chapter Eightmilitary intelligence. But from 1893, when it was first devised, until
1914, when it was acted upon, the basic idea never altered. The fact
that Belgium’s neutrality was guaranteed by an international treaty to
which Prussia had been a signatory in 1839 did not seem important to
the German planners. It might assure Great Britain’s belligerency^ for
the independence of Belgium (against France) was a long-standing
British commitment. But after the entente between France and Brit
ain (1904) was supplemented by a similar arrangement with Russia
(1907), the Germans assumed that the British would link up with their
enemies in the event of war—sooner or later, if not at the outset. To
precipitate the confrontation by invading Belgium seemed worth the
price, if by that means a quick, crushing victory over France could be
assured.^80
A more important consequence of the meticulous detail with which
the German plan of attack was worked out between 1893 and 1914
was that once the order for mobilization had been issued, there was no
drawing back. Everything had to go like clockwork. Any effort to
interfere would jam the works at once and substitute paralyzing con
fusion for the smooth shuffling of men and supplies dictated by the
plan. Hence, subordination of military action to political consider
ations, which Bismarck had already found difficult in 1866 and
1870–71,^81 became completely impossible. No one, not even the
kaiser, could change the plan once war had been decided on. Similar
rigidities also arose in France, Russia, and Austria, though the lesser
prestige of the army in those lands made political interference, even
in moments of crisis, more nearly conceivable than was the case in
Germany.
The irrationality of rational, professionalized planning could not
have been made more patently manifest. Indeed, the uncanny, som-
nambulent lockstep with which the major powers of Europe marched
to war in August 1914 aptly symbolized the central dilemma of our
age—the dissonance of the whole introduced, or enormously exacer
bated, by a closer harmony and superior organization of its separate
parts.
- On the Schlieffen plan, see Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth
(London, 1958). - Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (New York, 1964), pp. 193–