To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [2]
—JEFF SHAARA
JUNE 2004
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, EUROPE HAS ENJOYED nearly three decades of peace. But the complacency of its people masks a dark shadow growing beneath the various governments that maintain an uneasy hold on their relationships with their neighbors. The Franco-Prussian War in 1871 was an overwhelming victory for Germany, and a crushing humiliation for France, a result of centuries of bitter feuding between two distinctly different cultures. With their victory, the Germans take control of the regions of Alsace and Lorraine, which lie along their mutual border. As sorely as the French feel the loss of that territory, there is a final humiliation that plants an even more bitter seed. To celebrate their victory, the Germans stage a triumphant march of their soldiers down the Champs-Élysées, through the core of Paris—a symbolic assault on French pride that only deepens the unhealing wounds of the war.
In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II rules a country whose pride is in its military. The great beloved heroes of the German Empire are its soldiers, most notably Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck begins to emphasize German preparedness for a war he believes to be inevitable. For him, “a generation that has taken a beating is always followed by a generation that deals one.” His philosophy spreads through German military consciousness, hardening into a firm belief that France is most certainly planning to take its revenge on Germany by starting another war. Most German militarists accept completely the notion that in order to prevent such a potential catastrophe, Germany must strike first. The most pressing question is not why, but how.
The strategy is named for its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, the German military’s chief of staff. The Schlieffen Plan calls for a preemptive strike into France that flows first across Belgium, and slices into France from the North, a massive unstoppable wave that will wrap around and consume Paris. Von Schlieffen discounts any problems dealing with France’s ally, Russia, nor does the plan consider any real threat from a French counterattack through Alsace-Lorraine. As designed, the Schlieffen Plan would deploy nearly all of Germany’s available troop strength, and drive them so rapidly to their objective that no reaction from France or its allies will come quickly enough to prevent Germany’s rapid victory. The war would be over virtually as soon as it begins.
But von Schlieffen does not carry out his own plan. He retires from service in 1906, and dies in 1913. Germany’s military planning falls into the hands of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, the nephew of one of Germany’s great heroes of the Franco-Prussian War. The younger von Moltke is not the leader his uncle was, however, and he immediately begins to find fault with certain elements of the Schlieffen Plan. Von Moltke lacks the confidence of so many of his predecessors, and his cautious nature causes him to amend the plan so that a significant percentage of Germany’s strike force is stripped away and placed defensively along the Alsace-Lorraine border. But neither von Moltke nor the kaiser has the confidence to order the final go-ahead. They require some spark, some specific incentive to justify the order. It comes in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on July 28, 1914.
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, parades through the city, accompanied by his wife, Sophie. The archduke is keenly aware that throughout the Balkans there is considerable unrest and anger at Austria and its rulers, fueled by centuries-old feuds between the various ethnic factions in the region, most notably the Serbs. His vain and lavish show for the crowds in Sarajevo is obviously dangerous. But the archduke ignores his advisers and insists that the adoring crowds justify any danger. It is a catastrophic error in judgment. Both the archduke and his wife are gunned down by a Serbian nationalist. The outcry in Austria is predictable, and the Austrian military sees the opportunity to eliminate