Page - 71 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Military Accords 71 consequence until the crisis of July 1914. Then, however, it suddenly became a major factor. Contact between the chiefs of the Austro-Hungarian and the German general staffs, Conrad and Moltke, remained superficial in spite of a certain rapprochement. On the one hand, neither of them was sufficiently well orientated regarding political events and, on the other hand, they cultivated the agreements in the context of a framework prescribed by the continental operational scenarios but not as a result of a truly strategic assessment or in faithful collaboration. Conrad, for example, knew nothing of the fact that Germany intended in the event of a war in the west to force Belgium to abandon its neutrality and allow troops to pass through its territory. The role of Great Britain, the repercussions of a potential Italian neutrality, the expansion of the war to extra-Eu- ropean territories  – none of these issues was ever seriously discussed. The only concrete indication of an exchange of information, which ultimately crystallised in the contact between the chiefs of the general staffs  – in, of all years, 1912, the year in which Conrad was briefly replaced by General Blasius Schemua  – were the somewhat more detailed considerations regarding the Schlieffen/Moltke Plan, i.e. the German operational plan against France, and analogous to this details on the deployment of Austro-Hungarian forces in the event of a war with Russia or in the Balkans. Since 1909 it had been assumed by Germany that Russia would intervene in a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. By virtue of the Franco-Russian agreement, this would in turn result in France entering the war. The moment would then have come for Germany to implement the Schlieffen Plan. Limited forces would be left in the east to guard East Prussia, whilst everything else would be concentrated in the west, in order to deploy with superior forces there and to crush the French in a lightning campaign. Moltke reckoned in 1909 that the implementation of the Schlieffen Plan would last only around four weeks. Later, six to eight weeks were mentioned.147 Then, however, the corps removed swiftly from the western front would be turned around in order to relieve the Austrians, who would until this point have had to stave off the Russians. Moltke attempted to reassure Conrad by claiming that the Russians would focus their operations against the German Empire in order to relieve the French. And Austria would have to manage this : to keep in check for three or four weeks an admittedly respectable Russian left flank, but one that did not attack with superior forces. Looking at the German strategic planning, it is clear that it was utterly one-dimensional. That was perhaps the good, old Prussian school, according to which  – adapted from Schar- nhorst  – only the simple things endured in war. But it was ultimately a corset from which one could not escape. For Schlieffen, like Moltke, in all imaginable scenarios in which the German Empire entered the war there was no alternative to commencing a campaign against France, regardless of whether France even assumed a threatening posture or not. The existing alliances alone led the German General Staff to conclude