War, Peace, and International Relations. An Introduction to Strategic History

and the strategic dilemma of having too few means to achieve the political ends
demanded.
This discussion may have given the impression that Germany could not have won
World War I. That impression is intended, but it needs to be modified by the Clause-
witzian thought that ‘war is the realm of chance’. Nothing is certain about the course and
outcome of a war, even when the dice seem to be loaded, as in this case, clearly in favour
of one side. Germany lacked the means and, it transpired, the skill to force a decisive
military victory in the years when it took major offensive action, 1914 and 191 8. But
military errors by the Allies or a failure of political nerve in the face of domestic
war-weariness could have delivered conclusive success to Berlin.
To repeat, the dominant problem of 1914–1 8 was political, not military. The policy-
makers of both sides, and the societies for which they spoke, demanded a military
outcome that the armies either could not deliver, or could deliver only at exorbitant cost.
Military victory was certain to be pyrrhic. Now the narrative must move on to examine
the political and strategic consequences of this protracted attritional catastrophe.

Questions

1. Why did the Schlieffen–Moltke Plan fail in 1914?


2. How did land warfare in 1918 differ from its practice in 1914?


3. How might Germany have won the war?


4. Was there any practicable alternative to a strategy of attrition?

96 War, peace and international relations

Key points

1. It took both sides three years to understand how to wage modern warfare.
   It took them at least another six months before they were able to put their new
   doctrine of combined-arms warfare into effective practice.


2. When the Schlieffen–Moltke Plan failed in August–September 1914, the
   Germans were caught without the insurance of a ‘Plan B’. They did not know
   how to win the war.


3. The Germans had to take the offensive in 191 8 , before the US Army arrived in
   overwhelming numbers. To remain on the defensive would mean to accept
   defeat. They failed in good part because Ludendorff was no strategist.


4. The dominant weapon of the war was artillery. It was the key to solving ‘the
   tactical crisis’, and it caused 70 per cent of the casualties.


5. The fundamental problem in the conduct of the war was that governments
   demanded of their armies what those armies could not deliver.


6. The only way in which the war could be won by the Allies was by attrition.