Britain Reinforces Belgium in 1914

[Cook]

I still don't see how neutral British forces in Belgium helping her defend her neutrality from all comers invalidates her neutrality but I guess we'll just have to disagree.

Time frame again Simon.

Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28th. At this stage it is just ‘some damn fool thing in the Balkans’, without wider consequences; there had been wars in the Balkans in 1912 and again in 1913 without wider consequences. In 1914 the Balkans were a very remote part of Europe which most people hardly considered at all.

Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23rd, fully twenty-four days after the assassination and followed this up with a declaration of war on the 28th. The Serbian’s appealed to their allies Russia, who ordered mobilisation on the 30th of July. That is the point at which a general European war, as opposed to one confined to the Balkans, commences. The Germans sent a message to the Tsar demanding that he demobilise the Russian Army, this expired without reply on August 1st and the Kaiser ordered general mobilisation that day.

Two days later they declared war on France and crossed the Belgian frontier on August 3rd. Conceivably the British could have started making preparations when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, but that leaves them six days to start getting troops into Belgium, assuming Belgium accepted the offer of British troops and didn’t consider that the arrival of British troops in Belgian ports would be considered a threatening move by Germany and justification for Germany to attack Belgium, precipitation the very thing the Belgians, and the British, were hoping to avoid.

 

[David S Poepoe]

Really? I was always under the impression that it was an open secret. Hell I've come across mentions of Schlieffen himself apparently anonymously publishing his version of it in the the open press in 1909 and criticising the new variant as they were making the right hook too weak in his opinion.

I still don't see how neutral British forces in Belgium helping her defend her neutrality from all comers invalidates her neutrality but I guess we'll just have to disagree.

The was never any 'Schlieffen Plan' written down as we consider it today. The plan could have been published before the war since it was apparently developed and explored as a means to justify the expansion of the German Army at the next round of budget talks with the Reichstag.

It is highly unlikely that Schlieffen ever knew about any changes that Moltke did to his work since he would have been retired by then. German war plans were so secret that not many outside Moltke's office knew anything about them.

 

[Simon]

Time frame again Simon.

Yeah, that's the unfortunate conclusion I was coming to. Even with some sort of self defence pact already in place six days just isn't enough time to get them in place in southern Belgium in enough numbers and with enough supplies to be effective. Which is annoying as I wanted to try doing something to turn the Germans eastwards with as little tinkering as possible. On the face of it I just can't see a way to get the Germans to not go through Belgium and limit themselves to the Alsace-Lorraine front.

One idea is that with no Britain in the Entente France is scared enough to advance into Belgium to create a forward defence but all that does is recreates the trenches from Switzerland to the sea. Aside from putting Britain firmly into the full-on neutral camp it means similar to OTL French casualties so much likelihood for a decent negotiated surrender. The only other one I can come up with is that someone on the general staff comes up with a report showing the cold hard facts of why the Schlieffen plan is wasn't workable and gets to enough important people that it just can't be ignored.