A Broken World

At the beginning of WWI, Russia was advancing on their borders and
preparing war with Germany. Germany felt threatened and declared war on
Russia. Because Russia believed that they needed their allies to win the
war, they wanted to ask France to join them, but before the France could
respond, Germany declared war on France too. Germany was in a bad position
because it was rite in between two enemies. Fighting on just one side could
result in loss of land on the other side of the country. Splitting the army
could make the army weaker and maybe lose both sides of the country. The
Schlieffen Plan was thought up.
The Schlieffen plan was a brilliant plan that stood a chance against both
enemies. Its plan was to finish France quickly with the whole army and come
back to Russia to fight them off. Because they knew that the French borders
were blocked, they attacked through the Belgium side of France and fought
there.
The Schlieffen plan had a minor problem that later changed the war. If they
could not finish the French quickly, the plan could fail. The battle with
France took longer than expected. Germany was being attacked from both
sides. The plan failed and there was a stalemate in the western front.
I thought it was interesting that Germany would bravely declare war on
countries that were on 2 sides of the country. They didn’t really have any
other choice though. I also thought that it was amazing that one country
could fight off surrounding countries and even almost win the war. The
Schlieffen Plan was amazing because it allowed the country to use its whole
army without ignoring one side of the country.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 3:59 pm and is filed under World War I. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.