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Only Austria and England had the mblance of a mor re n for coming involved in the conflict Ru ia's general mobili tion and Ger­ many's launching of the hlieffen Plan were th un tified actions which guaranteed that all of Eu would volv in the war. As for the French, though they pretended to an inn ent rty, they were ea­ ger for the war cau they lieved that they would at last able to re­ g n Al ce and Lorraine. The French even deli rately pulled ck fron­ tier tr ps ten kilometers to make the Germans ap ar more clearly the a e
Though th sides enthusiastically pr laimed that theirs w the moral ition, no side had the right to make that cl World War I had no moral basis or juts ification for its nnin
The hlieffen Plan Fai
The Germans nt an ultimatum to l an King Al rt II asking him to rmit pa ge of German tr ps through l um without resistance. Al rt id ab lutely no and the lgians r isted heroically. ough they were no match for the German army, they fought much harder than the Germans had ex cted e Germans were slowed down and the hlieffen Plan timetable was thrown off. But the Germans were deter­ mined to crush lgian resistance. Priests and other h tages were shot; a Zeppelin m d Liege, killing nine civilian a ton siege gun with shells a yadr long was brought up to su ue a l an fort When they couldn't fight the army any more, the lgians engaged in guerrilla warfare, es ­ cially cutting telephone and telegraph line Finally on August 20 Bru ls was cupied
Meanwhile the French had not come to the aid of the l ans. In­ stead, they had their own plan: Plan 17, which involved taking Al ce and Lro raine and breaking through to the Rhine. The French plan was totally unrealistic, and from August 20-24 they fought four battles at the me time (Lorraine, Ardennes, Charleroi, Mons) and were wi d out in all of them.
On the eastern front, Germany was able to intercept all Ru ian mes­ ges, which were nt either with a very simple c e or no c e at all ­ cause me of the headquarters didn't have the key. The Ru ians al suf­ fered from constant shortages of f and ammunition Neverthele the Ru ians were mehow able to mobilize in two weeks instead of the six expected by the hlieffen Plan. Therefore Von Moltke, the German
commander-in hief, pulled out two corps from the weste front and nt