The Great War: 100 Years Ago

In what was to be one of the least heralded but most important actions of the Great War, the British telegraph ship Teleconia cuts the transatlantic communication cable that provided Germany access to the United States.  The result was that all German communications with the Americas had to be routed either through wireless communication subject to eavesdropping, or be carried on cables controlled by Great Britian.

The organization of the British Expeditionary Force moves forward with the appoitment of a field staff, with Field Marshal Sir John French in command and Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray as chief of staff.

In response to the invasion of Belgium, the UK followed through on its treaty committments, declaring war on Germany.

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.

Germany had planned to attack France first in case of war with Russia, invade its northern industrial areas, then rapidly turn and defeat Russia.  To carry out this plan required that France be at war with Germany.  While it was hoped France would declare first, it turned out that Germany was forced to make the decleration, doing so in August 3rd.