The Great War: Hubris or Analysis

An essay explaining the basic military context in Europe on the eve of the Great War

In the common imagination, the Great War plays the climax to European nationalism and Romanticism. With the rise of the nation-state and the consolidation of Europe into several Great Powers, unparralled power and prosperity was enjoyed by her people. This in turn made the peoples of Europe tragically hubristic, blind to the peace which had undergirded the world order for nearly a century. The Concert of Europe, the work of many hands and many eminent statesman, was cast aside for national chest thumping, and Europe rushed headlong into the war to end all wars; delusionally believing that the conflict would last no more than a few months time. The tragic hubris of Europe, the bright smiles of volunteer soldiers being shipped off for training, the cheers of women and children seeing them off, all to suffer harmatic reversal as the months turned into years.

These narratives, while a strong morality tale, do a disservice to the people of early 20th Century Europe. The Great War has the double misfortune of being overshadowed by an even greater war soon after and for many of its driving ideological forces: nationalism, self determination, monarchism vs liberalism, to have either fallen out of favor or been obviated by the course of history. Only the nihilistic hindsight of the 1920s would survive into the modern day, leading to a warped view of the four year long conflict and its prelude.

On the Eve of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, the geopolitical situation of the Triple Alliance, which at the time consisted of the German Reich, Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy was severely disadvantageous compared to the strength of the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France and the Russia.

In the outbreak of war, the members of the Triple Alliance, particularly the German Empire, would have to contend with a conflict that spanned two major fronts simultaneously. In contrast, the Triple Entente’s forces had the luxury of dividing and conquering with France and Britain able to hammer the West, while Russia struck the East. Matters looked even grimmer during the July Crisis as it became clear that Italy would remain neutral in the overall conflagration (at least at the start), reducing even further the capacity of the so called Triple Alliance to withstand Entente military action.

Not only was the Entente better situated geographically to fight a war against the Alliance, but they overall held the superior military force on paper. National aspiration and the strong investment had made the German Navy the second largest navy in the world with seventeen dreadnaughts, but this still lagged significantly behind the worlds leading naval power, Great Britain, with twenty nine dreadnoughts. Austria Hungary had no serious naval ability at all. The Triple Entente could be secure in the belief that with British sea power, they would rule the waves.

On land a similar situation predominated. The German Reich was the primary military power and while her army was the most professional in Europe, Russia still possessed the largest land army. Both by land and sea, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were the weaker overall parties. A long war would be difficult to sustain if for no other reason than the two Empires would be overrun.

No less than German High Command believed this to be the case. In doing so, they created the infamous Schlieffen Plan where the full nearly the full mass of the German army would strike into the heart France and neutralize the Western Front in 30 days before the Russians could fully mobilize. When the French and British armies managed to miraculously stop the German advance 25 miles outside Paris at the Battle of the Marne, the doomsday scenario for the now Central Powers was at hand; two Russian armies numbering around 200,000 each were marching directly into the German heartland and only a singly army group of ~150,000 opposed them. Yet again, another miracle would stop the “logical” situation from playing out when against all odds the German forces would destroy both Russian armies in the Battles of Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes with minimal losses.

In Austria-Hungary, the war played to the script and the Russians were able to secure far more favorable battlefield outcomes and only stalled out their advance when German forces were sent to shore up Habsburgs, possible only thanks to the Reich’s spectacular earlier victories.

In a bitter twist, the overperformance of the British and French forces in the Western Front and the German Empire’s in the Eastern Front in the opening days of the Great War confounded all expectations and led to the worst possible world, stalled military fronts in both the East and West.

The length and brutality of the Great War was in many ways an accident of history. The expectations of much of Europe that the war would be “over by Christmas,” as often cast in the collective imagination were not wholly out of place. Europe did not hubristically sleep walk into a meat grinder, ignorant of what war meant. They understood war and because they understood war, expected a short one. It is only due the extraordinary performance of the soldiers who fought that those few short months turned into four long years.

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