Help WIth History, I have two queston to you.?

Question

Can you help me please? How did the creation of military plans help draw the nations of Europe into world war one? AH, I you opinion what should todays's national and military leaders have learned from the military plans that helped initiate WW1 OR World War one? Can you explain to me please.

Answer 1

All the treaties and alliances between European powers is what led to WWI being as large of a scale as it was. Orginally it would;ve been the Autro-Hungairan Empire trying to assert its authority over Serbia, but all the Alliances brought into the war Germany, Russia, Italy, Britain, and France. This is the exact reason George Washington warned the U.S. to avoid foreing wars nad entanglements. These treaties brought parties into the war that didnt belong there.

Answer 2

Some have said the mobilization plans and train schedules developed by Germany prior to WWI made it impossible to stop the war once the mobilization had begun. As I understand it, the problem was that stopping the process would make it impossible to restart it successfully, and therefore Germany would become very vulnerable if they stopped.

Answer 3

The problem was one of national communications.

Each of the different nations mobilized their armed forces. Mobilization is when you call up reservist troops, start purchasing more weapons, generally get your country ready for war.

The problem is, there is very little, if any, difference between a DEFENSIVE mobilization and an OFFENSIVE mobilization. If country A mobilizes, well their neighbors can't tell if they are mobilizing to attack them, or if they are mobilizing to be ready in case of an attack. They HAVE to mobilize their army so that "just in case" the enemy decides to attack them they will be ready. Defensive actions on the part of each of the nations are seen as possible offensive actions by each of the neighbors, which requires the other nations to take defensive action that moves both nations that much closer to war.

So Austria-Hungary mobilzed to invade Serbia. Russia mobilized to protect Serbia, more as a diplomatic sign to show the Austrians they were serious than anything else.

Well Germany sees that Russia is mobilizing, they have to mobilize... they don't want to wind up getting suprise attacked without their army fully mobilized.

This means France had to mobilize, because they were afraid of an attack from Germany.

This started a clock ticking in Germany, because the German General Staff knew that they couldn't win a fight against both France and Russia at the same time. Their war plan called for them to knock out France quickly, and then take the troops from the French front in the West and ship them over to the Russian front in the East. This meant that they had to knock out France before Russia was finished mobilizing.

So after Russia mobilized, it all became more or less automatic. In order to protect themselves, each of the nations HAD to take the next step towards war, lest they be caught with their pants down by a fully mobilized enemy.

Back during the Kennedy Administration a book called "The Guns of August" about how this all happened (it was by Barbra Tuchman IIRC) came out, and it was pretty much required reading by everyone in Defense Circles. People wanted to learn from the past in order to prevent it from happening again. Everybody saw the paralel of "Russia puts their nuclear missles on alert, so the USA puts its missles on alert, which makes the Russians afraid that if they don't launch first they will loose their missiles to an American first strike, so...."

Nobody wanted to be in the position of having to launch first in order to keep from being victim to a first strike.

Accordingly several actions were taken.

One is the "hotline" between Washington D.C. and Moscow. Originally it was a teletype, now I think it is a video link. Either way both national leaders can talk to each other directly and discuss what is going on, what actions each side is taking, why they are taking that action, and what their next action will be.

Secondly is the establishment of the "nuclear triad". Both sides have ground based missiles, which are basicly first strike weapons, and bombers and submarine missiles, which are second strike weapons. The beauty of the submarine baised missiles is that each submarine can carry up to a hundred or so nuclear weapons, and they are so well hidden that the other side can't possibly be certian that they could get ALL of the other sides subs. This is a real incentive not to try such a first strike.

This means that even if the USSR were to hit the USA with a devistating first strike that took out all our bombers, land based missiles, and most of our submarines, if even ONE of our subs survived we would still have enough power left to plaster the USSR.

This means we couldn't be put in the position of having to launch first in order to keep from being victim to a first strike. President Bush's anti-missile defence is another step in this direction, as were the earlier ABM systems outside Moscow and our Safeguard System (before it was retired).

Lastly the presence of spy satilites has radically changed the equation. Like I said, in 1914 there really was no way to tell the difference between a DEFENSIVE mobilization and an OFFENSIVE mobilization. Now with spy sats sending back pictures of what the other guy is doing, you have a much clearer picture of exactly what they are and aren't doing. Both sides know this and can tell a lot more about what the other guy is doing. Both sides know they are being watched and can take actions, or avoid actions, that might frighten the other side.

So now we have better information on what the other side is doing, better communications with the other side, and we have set up the systems that even if the worst happens and we are all caught by a devistating first strike, we can still hit back with enough force to knock the other guy back to the stone age. This gives the military planners more confidence, and removes an important incentive to escalate.

This was enough to prevent any of the many crises of the Cold War from turning into WW3, so I guess you could say we learned our history lessons pretty well.