As "threatened", here comes a third cup of of lead-lined-samowar tea :
German ignorance of obvious changes for two years without any effect on german deployment/concentration/operations and other plannings.
In the East :
IOTL the germans had a pretty close picture of russian deployment-plans before 1914 and deployments after 28th July 1914, gathered by their consuls all over the russian empire, quite densly distributed in the Warsaw-, Vilnius-, St.Petersburg- and Kiev-military-districts, gathered by trades- and salesmen (
until 1914 Germany was the single biggest russian trade partner), gathered by their military attachees and other diplomatic personnel by listening to political, diplomatic as well as military "gossip" floating" around in St.Petersburg as well as Moscow and other places not at least due to the already mentioned factionalism (
or is that also butterflied/handwaved aways by whatever magical PoD you might use); also by regular visits of russian troops, monitoring their exercises, mobilisation exercises, military maneuvers.
And as it seems from my readings so far, the germans IOTL knew even better about the russian deployments opposite to austrian Galicia, than the austrians themself (
IIRC there was also some ... "strong" involvement of german intel in finding out about Redl).
But ITTL they don't see the build-up of logistics (
i.e. railways) in and to the southern parts of russian Poland, necessary to transport and support a force of 3 russian 5-corps-armies with their cavalristic additions.
And ITTL they also don't monitor the military exercises, maneuvers and (esp.) mobilization exercises pointing to the massive force build-up in case of war in southern Poland, seriously threatening Silesia, esp. industrially important upper Silesia.
And ITTL (not ?) looking at the russian military activities for two years they will ofc also miss, that there isn't any Narew-Army anymore, only a Njemen-Army of roughly half of what was anticipated as the overall russian force opposite to East-Prussia earlier on as well as IOTL in the 1912, 1913 and 1914 threat assessments as well as the much more defensive task of these troops compared to OTL.
And ITTL they also "miss" the becomming more and more obvious, simply visible neglect of the Warsaw fortress complex (Warsaw-fortressbelt, Warsaw-citadell, Novogeorgiesk, Zegrze) as well as of almost every Narew-Bobr fortress (Pultusk, Roshan, Ostrolenka, Lomza) with only (maybe) Osowiec, Grodno and Olitsa, maybe also Kovno (as IOTL) being maintained/updated/reinforced as the base for the now considerably smaller (
oh, mentioned it already) Njemen-Army.
Yep, absolutly plausible, that all of the german/prussian general staff miss over two years of (not ?) watching their most feared adversary the massivly growing threat against Silesia as well as the ever dwindeling threat of East-Prussia.
And ofc they miss a day by day more noticeable, almost teasing operational possibility :
a HUGE gap between the now residual russian North-West Front and strong(est) right wing of the russian South-West Front from the neglected Warsaw-area fortifications at the lower Vistula to the San-confluence at the middle to upper Vistula.
An open invitation to turn either the southern flank of the TTL Njemen-Army or the northern flank ... well not flank the BACK of the South-West Front three "strike" armies. To me its seems almost as if the russians "wiggle with their ass" here.
I would/will agree, that with our knowledge of hindsight such operation(s) would be logictically "unsound" at least.
However, given the contemporary military attitude of all war participants towards logistics (
this ofc includes the germans, who at least were IMO least off the mark of possibilities of their troops though still [perhaps often too] far off), their contemplation would be well within military thinking.
(A more detailed discussion of such possible operations maybe later.)