The Final Crisis 885Franco-Prussian War of 1870—1871. German troops would march through
the flat terrain of Belgium and the Netherlands, and turn south once the
last soldier on the northern flank had brushed his sleeve against the Eng
lish Channel. A pincer movement southward would encircle Paris from the
northwest, and then turn to trap the French armies that had moved into
Alsace-Lorraine. France would surrender. Schlieffen and his successors
recognized that the plan would probably bring Great Britain into the war
because that nation would never accept the violation of Belgian neutrality
and the possible presence of an enemy power just across the Channel. But
German commanders believed that the war on the continent would be over
before the superior British navy could make a difference and that the small,
volunteer British army posed little immediate threat. Then there would still
be time to ship enough of the victorious army to the east to defeat the Rus
sians as they rolled slowly toward Germany. This was the solution to Bis
marck’s nightmare, a simultaneous war on two fronts.
The French high command had its own plan for war. “Plan XVII’’ called
for a rapid attack by two French armies into Alsace-Lorraine, as the Ger
mans expected. With the bulk of the German army tied up by French and
British troops in Belgium, and, at worst, northern France, the way to Berlin
would be open. The French army was itching to redeem itself. Unlike Ger
many, which had to contemplate fighting a war on two fronts, the French
army enjoyed the advantage of being able to focus its full attention on Ger
many. Marshal Joseph Joffre (1852-1931) had overseen French plans for
the war. (When asked in 1911 if he thought about war, he replied, “Yes, I
think about it all the time. We shall have a war, I will make it, and I will
win it.”) To the French high command, elany or patriotic energy, was
expected to bring victory: “The French army ... no longer knows any other
law than the offense,” announced one of Joffre’s disciples; “[we need only]
to charge the enemy to destroy him.” The French plan counted on the
Russian army attacking Germany from the east by the sixteenth day of
mobilization.
The British government suggested that, following Russian mobilization,
the other powers help arrange a peaceful solution. Britain was unwilling
to back Russia, a move that at this point might have made both Austria
Hungary and Germany consider backing down. The German government
still assumed that the British would remain neutral in a war between France
and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The Russian government continued to believe that its resolute support
for Serbia might well be enough to force Austria-Hungary to reconsider.
Austria-Hungary and Germany were laboring under the same kind of illu
sion about Russia. Both believed that a show of unconditional support—
Germany’s “blank check” to Austria-Hungary—would force Russia to pull
back. Yet Germany’s aggressive support for its ally, combined with the belli
cose prodding of the Russian government by the French ambassador, had
just the opposite effect.