The Realm of Historic Triviality

The plan was to encircle the French army by going through Belgium and Luxembourg into Northern France, then turning back towards Alsace-Lorraine in a pincer movement around Paris and forcing a surrender. 'Cept Belgium and Luxembourg were neutral and told Germany where to get off, at which point they stormed in anyway. We Brits demanded they got out and when they refused declared War on Germany and Russia and France followed suit and "bobs your uncle" - First world War. And this all happened in the growing crisis after the Austrian heir Franz Ferdinand got himself assasinated by the serbs in Sarajevo.

Sounds almost as good as Iraq.

Told you British BFES schools were good for history - well who started what anyway. :)
 
Aunty Em said:
The plan was to encircle the French army by going through Belgium and Luxembourg into Northern France, then turning back towards Alsace-Lorraine in a pincer movement around Paris and forcing a surrender. 'Cept Belgium and Luxembourg were neutral and told Germany where to get off, at which point they stormed in anyway. We Brits demanded they got out and when they refused declared War on germany and Russia and France followed suit and "bobs your uncle" - First world War. And this all happened in the growing crisis after the Austrian heir Franz Ferdinand got himself assasinated by the serbs in sarajevo.
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Umm... I believe you guys had already declared war before they marched into Belgium. At any rate, I'm pretty sure that France had, and England had an Expeditionary Force in France for the purpose of helping them against the Germans. I think it went something like this:

A Serb shot the Archduke of Austria.
Austria declared war on Serbia.
Russia declared war on Austria.
Germany declared war on Russia.
The French declared war on Germany.
Germany declared war on France.
Britain declared war on Germany.

And then a few years later, the US declared war on Germany too and went over and kicked butt. ;)
 
I might have got the timeline muddled but the plan was to go through Belgium because the Franco-German border was so heavily fortified by the French. I believe the Germans wanted to knock out France quickly before Russia mobilised. Unfortunately for them things didn't turn out as planned.
 
yep, the great french fortifications were deemed invulnerable, but not from being gone round :D

the war was a result of a combination of long standing and transient alliances that had held some semblenbce of peace for a number of years. the decision by germany to pact with austria over russia were the effective seeds of conflict. many in europe foresaw the conflict and even welcomed it as cathartic.

the declaration of war from britain preceded actual conflict, although the german army were already well into belgium before the bef met them in combat three weeks later. the german army had met some small resistance from the belgian army and swept them asside. the early german advances were strong and reached into france before being fought back. the bef had its chance to cause great damage to a weakened and stretched german advance later but instead dug in and then began the 'race for the sea' in an attempt to outflank each other.
 
ris said:
yep, the great french fortifications were deemed invulnerable, but not from being gone round :D
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Belgium also had fortifications. In the end, neither theirs nor the French ones were capable of withstanding the heavy guns of the Germans.

I recently read The Myth of the Great War by John Mosier. It's a stern indictment of the way the Allied leaders conducted the war, and it gives the US a great deal of credit for winning the war. I don't know how much of it to believe, but it was an interesting read. Tonight while at Walden's I bought John Keegan's The First World War. I expect he'll have a somewhat different perspective.
 
ris said:
...the decision by germany to pact with austria over russia were the effective seeds of conflict...
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They decided that way because they feared the german Austrians would invade Germany after the Austrian-Hungarian Empire's downfall. WW1 was always my favourite to study :)
BTW, Count Alfred Von Schlieffen built the Schlieffen Plan. I don't know who to give credit for: Ards or Aunty. One of you, kick the next question...
 
AlladinSane said:
BTW, Count Alfred Von Schlieffen built the Schlieffen Plan. I don't know who to give credit for: Ards or Aunty. One of you, kick the next question...
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She was first. :)
 
OK.

In 1918 an new Reform Act gave all men over 21 and some women in the UK the right to vote. How old did the women have to be to do so? And when was the vote finally extended to include all women over 21?
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Aunty Em said:
It's social history. I thought most people were familiar with the sufragettes.
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We had our own suffrage here though too, Aunty. Ours didn't come around til 1920, though.
 
PuterTutor said:
We had our own suffrage here though too, Aunty. Ours didn't come around til 1920, though.
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Oh, we were suffering until suffrage,
Not a woman here could vote,
no matter what age,
Then the nineteenth amendment struck
down the restrictive rule.
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