Seite - 74 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

74 Two Million Men for the War the effect that they would be able to deploy only slowly, no longer applied. The reloca- tion further back was also designed to enable better cooperation with the forces of the German eastern army. Gerhard Ritter argued that Conrad would in any case not have risked a simulta- neous war against Serbia and Russia without what seemed to him to be far-reach- ing agreements with the German General Staff.153 This must, however, be questioned. Conrad was, as described above, so very convinced of the necessity of the war and so inclined to wage the war offensively that he left the Austro-Hungarian army no other alternative. The firm will to engage offensively was linked to two considerations : first, Conrad wanted by means of a swift move to offensive warfare to grasp the law of action and begin operations in such a way that his troops dictated what would hap- pen. Second, he saw only an offensive as offering the possibility of capitalising on the hoped-for head start in mobilising and preventing the enemy from calmly completing its own deployment. The offensive approach was also designed to take the war on to the territory of the enemy. In their agreements and, finally, also in July and August 1914 the Austro-Hungarian and the German general staffs accepted a good deal that hid considerable risks : Austria-Hungary accepted that Germany would use the mass of its forces against France in the hope of wrestling France down after about six weeks. The German Empire also initially agreed to Austria-Hungary being engaged in the Balkans and thus only being able to deploy in the Russian theatre in a weakened state. If the operational planning of the Central Powers, which  – and this should again be empha- sised  – had not been agreed on in detail, was to be successful, then the German Empire in France and Austria-Hungary in Serbia would have to achieve rapid successes. Above all, however, the Imperial and Royal Army would have to avoid being encircled in the north-eastern theatre of war by the increasingly superior Russian forces. What would happen, however, if this did not succeed ? Both armies, the German and the Austro-Hungarian, were to be led into a two-front war. Both of them should be victorious in a short time in their respective theatre of war : the Germans in France and the Austrians in Serbia, in a campaign lasting 1,000 hours. Then Russia should also be defeated. It was thus a perfect military world that had been sketched out by the two general staffs. Speed would have to replace more detailed planning. In this way, ‘Plan XVII’ of General Joseph Joffre in France, the concepts of Schlieffen and the younger Moltke in the German Empire, the thoughts of General Mikhail Alekseyevich in Russia and the ‘Conrad School’ in Austria-Hungary all re- sembled one another.154 Even if Conrad had had doubts that the Moltke Plan would be successful, he had clung to it and, as far as it was in his power to do so, he wanted to contribute to Austria-Hungary fulfilling its part of the obligations. If according to the general staff agreements Austria-Hungary largely subordinated itself to German plans, this was not quite so evident in the political arena and it could