MILITARISM

- militarism has a number of ramifications and must be handled on several levels comprehensively:

• as a result of advances in chemistry, new, more powerful explosives were developed and applied: dynamite, nitroglycerine, cordite, and smokeless powder.
  
• more powerful explosives not only increased the range of shells, but also the development of exploding shells made them more deadly.
  
• there was also a rapid development of metallurgy; this made possible rifles and artillery that could shoot further because stronger explosives could be used without the weapon exploding.
  
• physics and ballistics studies were applied to improve accuracy as the ranges of weapons were increasing dramatically. Pointed, spinning projectiles reduced friction and drag. Thus, rifling in the barrels (big guns as well as small arms), pointed projectiles, and standardised charges and shell casings increased the accuracy as well as distance.
  
• there was very much increased rapidity of fire: breech-loading rifles and then magazine-loaded, repeating rifles; machine guns; also, breech-loading artillery and big naval guns; turrets for naval guns.
  
  

• increasing thicknesses of iron and later steel armour plating on ships protected ships, but then larger and larger guns with armour piercing projectiles (with time-delay fuses) were developed in a continuing cycle.
  
• also steam and screw propellers allowed larger, heavier and faster ships.
  
• thus, there was an on-going naval race which culminated in the development of the HMS Dreadnought. The Dreadnought was the first all big-gun battleship; it also used oil as fuel and helped to stimulate the switch from coal. It rendered all existing battleships obsolete at one blow when its keel was laid in 1902. With the largest number of battleships, Britain was the big loser. Suddenly, Germany was starting from a position of virtual equality and a new naval race began very much in earnest between Germany and Britain.
  
  

• someone talking in Napoleon’s presence said, “We’ll win because God is on our side.” Napoleon’s retort was, “God is on the side of the big battalions.” The side with the largest forces does not always win, but their chances are a lot better.
  
• the armies that fought in the battles in the Napoleonic wars were less than 100,000 men. Even that was a formidable task to organise, equip, train and control that many men; then there was the task of keeping them supplied.
  
• by the late 19th C, armies were numbering hundreds of thousands and even millions and the development of new quick-firing weapons made supply problems monumental. Railways had made this scale possible, but the logistical burdens were great.
  
  

• what are the likely or possible crises which could develop? What enemy or enemies are we likely to have and what are they likely to do? What can or should be done in each case?
  
• how do we mobilise and move our army and how do we keep it supplied? Supply has always been critical to armies, but now the increased size of armies plus the increased firepower and rates of fire were multiplying the quantities of food and materials needed.
  
  

1. Perpetual Arms Race
   
   - there was a continual search for new or better weapons to gain an advantage;
   
   - a new invention or innovation in one country immediately set off a mad scramble by everyone else to get this latest invention and to get it in large quantities. Old weapons became obsolete and had to be junked or sent off to colonies.
   
   - the effect was rapidly rising defence budgets as the pace of innovation accelerated and as the sophistication of weaponry increased costs.
   
   - this was very similar to what happened during the Cold War of the late 1940s to late 1980s.
   
   
2. Mobilisation of Manpower
   
   - it was clear that speed was becoming more important as was the mass of armies; they could speed things up if the men were trained before war broke out. Thus, there was a need to mobilise and train as large a proportion of the nation’s males as possible.
   
   - this need brought the introduction of universal military conscription; all young men had to perform military service. Usually, the term of compulsory service was 2 years, but because of a smaller population, France was being forced just before 1914 to extend the term to 3 years. Conscription for compulsory service meant that there was always a substantial number of men under arms at any point in time (the standing army).
   
   - however, after their term of compulsory military service, all men went into the military reserves (often with a 4-6 week annual refresher training) and remained subject to call up during a general mobilisation until they were in their 40s.
   
   - thus, over a period of years, almost the entire available male population was trained and, therefore, ready, at fairly short notice, to be called into arms.
   
   
3. Military Plans
   
   - however, massive stockpiles of arms and trained manpower were not enough; detailed, careful organisation was required to get these men (the French and the Germans intended to mobilise 2.5-3 million men each initially, the Russians 7-8 million) and all the necessary materials where they were needed in the shortest possible time. The military must be prepared for as many contingencies as possible.
   
   - thus, ‘general staffs’ were all busy drawing up elaborate ‘mobilisation plans’.
   
   - in these plans, they had to make many assumptions (who the enemy or enemies were likely to be; what diplomatic and political situation was likely to exist, etc.); with the enormous scale and complexity, the result was a great deal of rigidity in the plans.
   
   - the best example is German; the plan in effect from about 1905 and a contributing factor in the war was the ‘von Schlieffen plan’, named after the general who conceived it and oversaw its creation; it involved general directions for staff officers outlining strategy and overall movements. The plan depended on exact timing so plans had to be very specific and included elaborate and detailed railway scheduling and timetables.
   
   - then, more detailed instructions for each level of command down to the level of regimental and company commanders were prepared. These orders were all printed and sent out to the appropriate military units but, because they were top secret—only a few members of the general staff knew what was in the plan—the orders were sealed and kept locked up, to be opened only when a mobilisation order was issued. Drawing up such a mobilisation plan under tight secrecy, getting it printed and getting it distributed took many months, over a year.
   
   - as a result, it was impossible to make significant changes at the last moment without producing chaos.
   
   
4. Military Alliances
   
   -the first three developments (i.e., the stockpiling of the latest arms, the training of manpower, and the mobilisation plans) were all attempts to find ‘security’.
   
   - paradoxically, all they did was to increase the level of fear and insecurity. Each step one country took to increase its security promoted a reaction and even panic in other countries; their responses in turn caused fear and uneasiness in the first. So the cycle continued.
   
   - in this situation of fear, national governments began to look for allies; thus the alliance system emerged.
   
   
   • Germany was worried by the fact that it had no really good natural frontiers and had frequently suffered invasions over the centuries from several routes; German leaders were especially worried by having large countries on either side—France and Russia. As a result, the German government engineered the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and with Italy. This would secure Germany’s southern border and it was hoped that it would discourage either Russia or France from attacking because it would have to fight 3 nations, not 1. [please note that the Triple Alliance was 1st in 1882!]
     
     - one consequence of this alliance was that Germany increasingly came to feel that preservation of the Hapsburg Empire (Austria-Hungary) was essential at all costs for its own security.
     
     
   • France was frightened by the growing German military and industrial might; on the other hand, Russia was in conflict with Austria-Hungary in the Balkans and the Triple Alliance put Germany in the role of a potential antagonist. With a common potential enemy in Germany, France and Russia concluded an alliance in the 1890s (The Dual Alliance) in order to distract and divide German military power. The Dual Alliance created the very nightmare that had haunted German officials—a possible two-front war.
     
     
   - thus, the alliance system arose out of a desire to find security but its effect was to increase insecurity. This effect of alliance systems became familiar to us during the Cold War, but it was also the condition in Europe from the 1890s-1914.
   
   

1. because of the Dual Alliance, the German planners assumed that any war with France or Russia would almost certainly involve a two-front war even though, like the Triple Alliance, the Dual Alliance was defensive only; members were not obligated to help their allies if those allies were deemed to be the aggressors. [Nobody, especially the Germans, really took the protestations about being defensive only very seriously.]
   
   
2. because of the scale and size of its empire, Russia’s mobilisation would take at least 3-4 months before the Russian army could launch a large offensive (in the event, the Russians were a bit quicker than this assumption).
   
   

1. the ancient distinction between a mobilisation and a declaration of war was eliminated. A mobilisation involved calling out the army and marching it to the border; hostilities would begin only after the further step of a declaration of war. In the Schlieffen Plan, there was a need for speed against France; also, such a large proportion of the German forces had to get through such a narrow corridor that troops had to keep moving to get out of the way of those coming behind. As part of the mobilisation orders, the troops nearest the Belgian border were instructed to cross not much later than 24 hours after the beginning of mobilisation and without further orders. Sending troops across a border without permission is an act of war. Orders could not be changed; once mobilisation started, the war began.
   
   - politicians were accustomed to using mobilisation as a threat with the belief that war was a distinct and separate step that need not be taken; although mobilisation was a serious step, it was not regarded as irrevocable. In the Schlieffen Plan, mobilisation and the commencement of hostilities were almost simultaneous actions.
   
   - it was only days before the start of the war and after German politicians had already taken a number of distinct steps (urged the Austrians to make the ultimatum to Serbia and threatened the Russians not to mobilise) that they learned how serious matters really were: mobilisation was an irrevocable commitment to war; also, the timing of German mobilisation was determined by others—the beginning of a Russian mobilisation started the German clock ticking with the Germans having at most 3-4 months to defeat the French and get their armies moving east to meet the Russians.
   
   - it also involved an important alteration in the etiquette of war—the elimination of a formal declaration of war.
   
   
2. the plan required the violation of Belgian neutrality and the long-standing treaty and commitments to observe this convention. Some Germans are said to have referred to the treaty as ‘a scrap of paper’ and therefore of no significance.
   
   - this shows the limitations of narrow military thinking.
   
   - the Schlieffen Plan was premised upon the belief that the French would observe the legal and moral obligations of the treaties and that this would provide a decisive military advantage to the power willing to violate and disregard the rules. While this strategy offered short-term military advantages, it carried serious political and long-term military costs.
   
   
   1. the Belgians were outraged and, to the surprise of the Germans, fought the German army tenaciously. Instead of a couple of days, the German advance was delayed for two weeks and the Belgians went on harassing the northern flank of the German forces. In a plan where everything had been staked on speed, this was a serious delay.
      
      
   2. Britain, whose immediate participation had been very uncertain, was also outraged and immediately declared war on this principle. The Liberal government and party had been split on the issue of what Britain should do in case of war; however, the invasion of Belgium persuaded a number of waverers to support the declaration of war. The British would almost certainly have entered, but a delay might have made it too late to prevent the defeat of the French.
      
      
   - German strategists were not entirely surprised by these events; however, they had underestimated their significance and this in fact thwarted any hope of success for the Plan. Even if the 100,000 man British Expeditionary Force got to France in time, the Germans believed that it was too small to have any effect on the outcome. It is true that the BEF could not stop the German army, but it could slow it down. This delay, added to the Belgian delay plus the inevitable foul ups of their own, allowed the French army to swing some of their forces from the eastern border to meet and eventually to stop the German advance from the north about 20 miles from Paris.
   
   - the German actions increased both the number and the determination of their enemies; Britain entered the war immediately and eventually added enormously to the resources of the Allies: military and naval forces, large scale war production and large financial resources.
   
   - it was an error the German military made repeatedly throughout the war. The resumption of the submarine war in January 1917 was based upon a similar narrow military calculation. The U.S. army was regarded with even greater contempt than the British. In any case, the German military government believed that the use of the submarine would enable them to win the war before the U.S. could become a decisive factor. Thus, the short-term military advantages were accepted while the political and long-term military disadvantages were ignored; as a result, an extremely powerful opponent was added in the United States.
   
   
3. the Schlieffen Plan ensured that any war would become a world war: German political leaders believed that there were 3 possible outcomes if the crisis over the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand were pushed to the point of conflict:
   
   
   1. a local war between Austria and Serbia; the destruction of Serbia was desirable in order to ensure that Austria-Hungary would remain intact.
      
   2. a general European or Alliance war (of the members of the two alliances without Britain); many German leaders in the military thought that an alliance war was inevitable and it would be better to have it sooner rather than later. The longer it was delayed, the more improvement there would be for Russia as a result of the army reforms that were being implemented.
      
   3. a world war (including Britain).
      
      
   - to many in both the German gov’t and military, the first would be welcome and the second would be acceptable; only the third was regarded as very undesirable. The Schlieffen Plan ensured that the 3rd outcome, the very outcome that the Germans did not want, was the one that happened.