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Germany invades Belgium
On the 4th of August, 1914, Germany triggered the invasion conceived originally as the "Schlieffen Plan", a large flanking manuever through Belgium while operations based in the Ruhr held against an expected French invasion of Alsace - Lorraine. Although a great deal of ink was spilled about the failure of the plan and the heroic defense of France, the reality was the plan was not an all or nothing gamble, and there was not an expection of total victory from it. The main idea of the plan as it was executed was to blast the German army into northern France, catching as many units as they could and decimating them, before turning to take care of Russia using the time gained by the attack.
The Belgium Army defending the national redoubt consisted of just 6 division, 2-3 corps of troops, and a 7th calvary division. It was faced by nearly 750,000 German soldiers. Although the battle of Belgium was often seen as a walk over for the Germans, it was anything but. The Germans lost nearly 20,000 casulaties in the fight, more than 10 times what they anticipated, and the invasion took days longer than planned, allowing French formations to make up for the late head start they had.
The stubborn Belgium resistance and the high German casualties were used as a reason by the German high command to activate their reign of terror campaign, the policy of schrecklichkeit.
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