Ever since the Franco-Russian Alliance that was first announced 20 years ago, Germany has faced

the unpleasant prospect of fighting a two-front war. Germany's solution to this seemingly

insoluble problem was what became perhaps the most famous war plan in history, the Schleifen

plan, in which most of the German army would attack France, and most of that attack would be a

surprise offensive through neutral Belgium, aimed at nothing less than knocking France out of the

war before her ally Russia would be fully mobilized.

This would mean fighting all the way to Paris in less than six weeks,

in an age when armies still march on foot.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. The 20th century. Episode 80 Keep the Right Wing Very Strong

When the Great War began in 1914, it had been not quite a century since the last general war in Europe.

A lot had changed in that not quite a century.

But it isn't as if there were no wars among the great powers during this time.

There were plenty.

There were the wars of Italian unification. There were the Crimean War,

the Austro-Prussian War, the Russo-Turkish War, and the Russo-Japanese War. There were the Boer War and

the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War. Most influential of all was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

All of these wars had lessons to teach.

Military planners picked up on some of these lessons and ignored others. We've discussed this at some length on this podcast. Back in the Napoleonic era, France astonished the world by converting

its citizen-rep Republic revolutionary zeal

into mass conscription, and fielded armies capable of defeating all comers. When Napoleon invaded

Russia in 1812, he commanded a force of nearly 700,000 soldiers, a mammoth army larger than anything Europe had ever seen before.

But armies in the 19th century still got to where they needed to go by marching, which was slow and tiring to the soldiers.

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