because in WWI commanders loved sending troops to die. In WWI tanks were a later thing, in WWI it was a lot of defensive warfare, and in WWI, the Germans didn't control all of France

But the eastern campaign was so interesting, with the storm trooper tactics being made, the huge amounts of men put into battle. The Battles of Somme, Verdun, Marne, Ypres (all of them) are very interesting to study. It was a time of innovation, with new poison gases being tested all the time, decorated ace fighter pilots (love the fokke-wulf. Forgive me for misspelling), the use of submarines, the first tanks. There were some great German military minds on the eastern front. then there was the ever-inept Austria-Hungary. Then there was the war extended to Africa and the colonies in Asia (which Japan took most of).

And ii know that those battles were on the western front. Masurian Lakes I believe was a great one of the Eastern front

The Eastern Front in WW1 is very underrepresented and was not characterised by trench warfare and was not a lot of defensive warfare. The army movements were quite fluid, due to the terrain, and the German experience there greatly helped when they formulated their plans in WW2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Emil_von_Lettow-Vorbeck

yeah, their plan in the west for WW2 was pretty much the exact same plan they used in WW1, except they had faster modes of transportation and france didn't have drawn-up war plans to the extent it did in WW1. that's another thing about the first world war - the extent to which every country had its mobilization plans drawn up was amazing

Largeham, just read that link. Never knew that guy existed. Quite an interesting story to tell

That's because most leaders new a war would erupt, it was just a matter of time. The French had been planning revenge ever since 1871, the Germans knew that, and the alliances plus the problems in the Balkans made it pretty obvious that eventually it would all burst.

A magnificent and completely ignored soldier.

Like the west didn't see war coming in the 1930s? They had time to prepare.

Goldfinger: The plan that von Manstein came up with in 1940 was only superficially the same as the Schlieffen plan.

Schlieffen wanted to bag up the French army by outflanking them on the right, and forcing them to surrender quickly, so the Germany army could then go East to fight off the Russians.(Its a hell of a lot more detailed, but that's the basic idea)

This did not go to according to plan

Manstein's plan was a bit more clever. Knowing that a frontal assault on the Maginot Line was militarily stupid, the French and the British expected a replay of the Schlieffen plan... a strong right wing wheeling into Belgium and possibly Holland. As a result, they were ready to march north into Belgium the moment the Germans attacked (Due to the Belgian King being a bit prickly, he refused to allow them in beforehand, and then screamed for help when they did). Guessing that that would be the Allied response, von Manstein proposed that the center-right of the German line be the strongest, to cut off the advancing Allied armies moving into the Low Countries on their left. This was discounted due to the heavily forested terrain in the Ardennes.

This worked quite well, with results we all should know about.

However, having said all that, the Schlieffen plan almost worked. The critical battle isn't what everyone talks about "The Battle of the Marne", which wasn't a single battle, but many engagements, most of which were nowhere near the river Marne.

The crucial one in my opinion was the battle on the right side of the battle, south of Verdun at Fort Troyon. There, the (I belive, I'm going off of memory here) Fifth and Sixth German armies attempted to pinch off the fortified position of Verdun in 1914(Its not mentioned much at the time due to wartime censorship... Verdun being a rather important symbol of France, and then overshadowed afterward by the Battle of Verdun in 1916.

The French soldiers refused to give up, and defended the fort and the Verdun position was not cut off (obviously). If the Germans had, they would have been able to spread their manpower more evenly and been able to at the very least secured a more defensible position that many miles south of where they had to... with Verdun in French hands, the entire German army was at the end of a tenuous supply chain, with an untenable defensive position. The OHL made the logical choice to retreat to save the army, and regroup for another round.

Denial or not wanting to see it or facing it because it's painful is not a logical response but, a human one.

I have to say I admire the principled stand of Italy in this war. Originally allied with the Central Powers, Italy refused to participate in the Austrian aggression which launched the war, since the pact only called for a defensive alliance. Italy then switched to the Entente, sustaining heavy losses in the mountains against the Austrians who had the high ground. They eventually got their revenge and put an end to the Hapsburg Empire with their breakthrough at Vittorio Veneto. The total abrogation of the Treaty of London of 1915 at the Versailles Conference I think played a big role in their becoming Fascist in the 1920s.

"But the eastern campaign was so interesting, with the storm trooper tactics being made, the huge amounts of men put into battle."

The Brusilov offensive was a masterpiece. If only the West had copied these tactics at the same time, the war would have ended right then and there.

@largeham : We already had a huge discution about the causes of WW1.
But saying the French prepare war since 1871 is a huge mistake. If you asked a frenchman if he would have go to war only to take revenge and Alsace back certainly said no.
But it is true that the WW1 take roots in 1871 since it is the fear of a french revenge that inspired Bismarck's diplomatic system to isolate France. (Since Russia and Austria can't stay friends because of the eastern question it was just a matter of time for Russia to join France even if the Russian czarist autocracy despised the third French Republic). The consequences of his politic : a system of alliance that transform the eastern question in a world war.

Hum.. in fact the causes are so various and complicated that it cannot be sum up on a forum.

The decisive facts about WW1 may be :
- France manage to resist the in 1914 when all german forces were focus there.
-British blocus ruin German economy and creat huge starvation.

PS : sorry I am a little werstern-centrist but I don't know a lot about eastern front but that Russia quikly lost many soldiers and were poorly equipped.

The Schlieffen Plan ultimately failed due to the speed of the Russian advance into East Prussia. The Schlieffen Plan expected it would take several weeks for the Russians to be mobilized to the point they could launch an offensive. However, they were wrong and were able to invade and gain significant territory in East Prussia causing the Junkers and other large land owners in East Prussia to put pressure on the military leadership to stop the invasion.

So at a critical point the right sweeping wing of the German offensive towards Paris is reduced by nearly 200,000 men, to go fight on the Eastern Front. Consequently the Germans are unable to encircle Paris and the troops "trapped" between the German armies.

The movement of those troops does prove to be a decisive factor in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes which eliminated several Russian armies and sets the stage for the future large gains made in the East.

No talk of the Brusilov offensive yet? :(

Maybe people prefer talking about WWII because we have clear lines between black and white, the aggressor and the defenders, fascist vs the democrats etc (hmm , ok the allied "morale damaging" bombing of german civilian centres was pretty grey) whereas in WW 1 we dont have these clear lines, it was all pretty messy and blame could be spread around pretty evenly. We also have the distaste of upper class officer class throwing away their peasant infantry soldiers. WWII had a more sense that the nation was involved while WWI was the upper class doing their usual chess board game across Europe but not realising that industrialization had changed the game completely

I would have thought that WWI would be a big topic of interest on this site.

The Schlieffen plan failed because it never could have worked; it called for impossible logistics on the right flank in an era of horse and foot powered armies. By the time of the battles of the Marne (1914 vintage), the German artillery batteries supporting von Kluck's army were limited to firing 6-10 shots per day. That might not have been enough to take Constantinople in 1453, let alone Paris in 1914.

"No talk of the Brusilov offensive yet? :("

Hey I mentioned it.

And people forget a lot of German thinking about Russia's capabilities stemmed from Russia's defeat during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. Had it not been for that, Germany would not have thought it would take so long for Russia to fully mobilize and get their act together.

Actually, Russia performed fairly well in the early part of the war. OK, Tannenberg was a debacle, but Russia's ability to move quickly surprised the Germans over and over again during the first phase of the war.

Agree Bob, they were able to take Galicia, prevented them from taking Warsaw, and diverted significant German forces to the Eastern front. By 1915 though the Russians were on the retreat. But in 1914 they put up a good fight as they did in 1916.

I studied Lettow-Vorbeck. Extremely interesting.

The Schlieffen Plan was never truly enacted as it was originially intended. Von Moltke (the younger), the German chief of staff, altered and undermined the original plan. The flanking movement was undermined when he shifted forces to the holding forces that would engage the French along the Rhine. The original plan was to allow the French to push into Germany as the flanking force circled towards Paris. The further the French army advanced the more difficulty it would be for them to recover once flanked. However, the Rhine area was becoming an important industrial area and Moltke was reticent about letting parts of it be overrun. The French were prepared to fall for the plan- some odd ideas that attacking with "elan" would overcome their numerical and material inferiority to the German army.

The Russian attack also played into the "Schflieffen/Moltke Plan's" failure. The Russians had created a zone with limited transportation access on its German border. Due to France's pleas for help, the Russians attacked through this zone despite being unprepared and knowing that supplies would be difficult in reaching them.

Putin33, I never really thought of Italy's alliance change as principled. Always seemed a bit mercenary to me as Italy had territorial ambitions towards some of the Hapsburg territories.

the whole thing about how, like, the russian revolution happened *during the war* has always interested me to some degree

The Schlieffen Plan was impossible as originally drawn up. Had it been used, it would have added 200,000 men to the already overburdened logistics of supplying the German right wing. How would they have traveled, given that the road network of northwestern France was already used to capacity getting the right wing to the Marne? They would have been bottlenecked in Champagne and Picardy, and made a bad supply situation utterly impossible. Full implementation of the Schlieffen plan would have been a debacle.

Italy warned Austria repeatedly that a punitive expedition in Serbia would invite Russian intervention. Austria replied that Russia was ill-equipped to do anything about the Balkans, as was evident from their debacle in the Japanese war. Italy claimed that Russia would not tolerate any type of aggression in the Balkans, and Austria insisted that German participation would limit any effectiveness of Russia. Italy warned that German participation would invite British intervention. British intervention was particularly troubling for Italy, because Italy did not believe it could survive a war in the Mediterranean against both the British and the French.

Italy's forewarnings turned out to be 100% correct. Public opinion in 1914 in Italy was against war, and Italy's neutrality appears genuine - especially since Italy was not consulted about the plan to go ahead with the attack on Serbia which did not endear her to an already untrustworthy Austria. It is true that Italy had territorial ambitions in Austria and did not trust Austria because of the latter's hostility to Italian unification. But I honestly do not believe that there was a pre-planned scheme to feign "neutrality" only to be bribed into war later. Italy did not believe Austria's actions were justified and that their behavior would irresponsibly lead to a European wide conflagration.

Sean, I don't know where you get the idea of "officers sending peasants out to die en masse" but WW1 had one of the highest officer casualty rates of any war. It effectively destroyed the nobility officer classes of every European nation - a factor in why the Monarchies of so many nations went down after the war

Being an officer at that time required money so most officers were members of the ruling elite. On the Western Front officers were required to lead the charge "Over the Top" and would often be the first casualty. You can read tons of accounts of soldiers witnessing their officers barely getting out of their own trench before they were shot by the other side.

The upper classes suffered a greater percentage of casualness than the working class soldiers.

That being said, the high command of most armies were callous at best to the futility of charges across no-man's land. It wasn't until the German's developed their squad-based shock troops that any real movement took place.