World War One: A Short History Read Online Free PDF Page B

feed, clothe, arm and transport them. But the bankers had another argument. How could the war be paid for? British and French credit was very strong, but Germany’s public finances were surprisingly weak, as she was a federal country with many spending points. The Hungarian finance minister, a Baron Teleszky, when solemnly asked in cabinet how long he could pay for the war, replied, three weeks. 1 The gold would by then have run out (in 1914 gold-backed coinage was common) and the only alternative would be to print paper money, and that would mean inflation – grubby and crumpled notes changing hands very fast, and quickly losing their value. That in turn would make the social problems following upon the cessation of trade quite ungovernable, the poor becoming much poorer, maybe even starving. This is in fact what happened when Russia exploded in Bolshevik revolution in 1917, and Italy almost followed, with inflation of 700 per cent. The bankers were not wrong in anything other than timing.
    The armies went to war, just the same, with an illusion that it would all be over very soon – ‘home by Christmas’. The Russian High Command, Stavka , asking for new typewriters, were told that the war would not last for long enough to justify the expenditure: the old ones would have to do. Generals promised to write to their wives every day, and soon ran out of things to say. The Austro-Hungarian commander (who wrote to another man’s wife) slept in an iron cot; the Russian high command ordained religious services every day and foreswore vodka, unless foreigners were present. By November, foreigners were much in demand, and the choir was singing Prince Igor . But to begin with the plans of every country reflected ‘the short war illusion’ – an immediate and vast attack, taking up resources that, with hindsight, should have been husbanded for what was to come. But other calculations, relating to fortresses, artillery and cavalry, also proved quite wrong-headed.
    Northern France and Belgium were studded with fortresses, strategically placed above rivers that an invading army would have to cross – especially the long, winding, Franco-German Meuse – and their names again and again come up in military history, as far back as the Middle Ages: Liège, Namur, Maubeuge, Dinant, Verdun, Toul, Antwerp. They were very expensive and contained thousands of guns. When they were modernized in the 1880s, the usual rule was to have a very strong citadel, with a ring of forts to keep enemy artillery beyond range of it. In the 1890s, artillery ranges became longer and the shell heavier. More forts and more elaborate fortifications, usually with concrete, had to be constructed if the fortresses were to be effective. But by 1914 the guns had won. Heavy howitzers were able to launch high explosive at a range of ten miles, and the fortresses were an obvious target – a trap for the defenders, who would have been better off if they had just dug unidentifiable holes in the ground outside the forts. Earth absorbed high explosive far more easily than concretecould, however pre-stressed, and all fortresses attacked in the campaign of 1914 fell quickly. Liège, on the German border with Belgium, lasted only two days.
    With cavalry, the illusion was also dispelled, but not as dramatically. In the Crimean War the Light Brigade had charged Russian guns, and had at least been able to reach them. In 1914, this was no longer possible. An infantryman with a rifle could hit a horse a mile off, and artillery was more devastating still, at a range of three miles. However, in empty territory, cavalry was still serviceable and could find out where the enemy was; and there was not much alternative to it, because the internal combustion engine was still in a relatively undeveloped stage – almost all of the fifty German lorries crossing the mountainous Ardennes broke down. But horses, eating ten kilograms of fodder every day, made huge demands on the