This is the

This is CBS In The World. I'm John Babsler speaking to Professor Nick Lloyd, a reader in military and imperial history at King's College London.

His new book is The Western Front, The History of the Great War,

Volume 1, we attend immediately to the larger than legend personalities of the

Four Powers. Germany? of the four powers, Germany, France, Britain and America as the final power.

We begin with Germany because a man named Molke, a man who is the relative of an earlier commander of German forces, is in charge of the Schleifen Plan in August of 1914 in conversation with the Kaiser.

And I learned from you, Nick, that the Kaiser favored Molteke, but Moltsa was a man who was dealing with the

the ghosts of his ancestor and also of Schleifen. What do we need to know about

Molkka that he took it upon himself to alter the Schlefin

plan in the attack on Paris?

Yes, you've got a pressure on someone like Helmer

von Mulker, the younger, that's his title is a full name, is enormous in 1914,

and he's not up for it.

He's a man that is, as you say, bowed down by the weight of victory that his uncle achieved in 1870 and 71 in the Franco-Prussian War.

And he is, you know, he is concerned about the plan, the Schlefin Plan, envisages a massive attack

through Belgium and the low countries that will essentially outflank the French frontier, the frontier fortresses the French

have built, get the French army into the open and destroy it in a grand battle of

development. It's one of the most ambitious military plans you'll ever likely to see.

But Malta, you know, he doesn't, he feels very vulnerable and he feels quite insecure about having to do it and ultimately doesn't have the nerve to actually

put it into play in the way that Schlefin envisaged with that right wing that sort of swinging

door would be as strong as possible.

So Moltke begins to alter that, alter the balance of forces,

...