As I'm planning/working on an ATL using a PoD around the signing of the Order of Mobilisation and Wilhem II. order to hold the western deployment and „turn the whole army to the East“ on 01.August 1914, I was looking for a more detailed account of the run of events at this situation.
I didn't found one.
As I'm a pure „hobbyist“. I'm just lacking the time (12 to 16 hours a day „off“ for work), the means and the money to access sources like Afflerbach with their immense ammount of diary sources or the documents collection of Zuber are not available to me as well as access to archivary sources kept by state or university agencies.
I got the „memoirs“ and „remembrabces“ of Moltke, Tirpitz, Wilhelm II., Bethmann-Hollweg as well as the collections of „ducuments leading to the war“ of the british and the german foreign secretaries of that time as well as of some russian documents. Also I access the „official“ history of WW I.
For more recent book-sources with my rather limited „budget for books“ I get my hands on :
Cristopher Clark, Holger Herwig, Allan Mullinson, Hew Strachan, Barbara Tuchman (only whar google-books let you read), Norman Stone, David Stone, partially Holger Afflerbach (also only what google-books let you read).
All these source only present only small tokens, some detail of the meeting, that started at 17:00 on 01.August 1914. The contemporary sources/“memoirs“ are also „suspicious“ of being biased for several reasons. And the tellings of „recent“ historians are often inconsistent in themself as well as compared to their collegues writings, incomplete, wobbly on the exact course of happenings, wobbly on the times, even the dates, often only highlightening one special sentence, sometimes „mixing“ different events.
Two examples :
I.e. : Christopher Clark is very unsecure in the arrival and reception of the different „Lichnowsky“-Telegrams during the 01.08.1914, explaing some of them arriving prior to this meeting some of arriving during the meeting, which arrived clearly afterwards, some he completly ignores (i.e. The „telegram of misunderstanding“ by King George V.).
I.e. Allan Mallison confuses the signing of the „Declaration of Imminent Danger of War“ at the New Palais at Potsdam with the signing of the Order for General Mobilisation. The latter happend during the meeting subject here in the Stars-Hall of the City-Palace. At the New Palias ther is no Stars-hall. And the former happend with all of the royal family present, Crown Prince, Prince Heinrich (who at the 01.08.1914 was already at Kiel, taking his new position of OdO, supreme commander of the Batltic Sea forces).
(Though I don't know, where the by him mentioned table made of wood from the HMS Victory actually was placed.)
What I thought/hoped for being secondary sources turned out to be tertiary or even quartery sources, one „copy 'n past“ from the other.
Therefore I embarked at the task to „reconstruct“ as detailed as possible the run of the events and talks around the signing of the Order of Mobilisation (OoM) at the 01.August 1914.
It's based mainly on the „Remembrances“ of Helmuth von Moltke, of Alfred von Tirpitz, what can/could be read on google-books of Afflerbachs biography of Falkenhayn (unfortunatly the meeting in question is only partially covered by that section) as well as the mentioned document collections with some bits'n pieces from the official History of the War 1914-1918 by the Reichsarchiv.