If you think of the First World War, your mind probably turns to images of trench warfare and thousands of men losing their lives just trying to gain a few meters of land.

However, in the first few weeks of the war, this was not the case at all. In fact, it initially looked like the war might not even last for two months.

What stopped the collapse of France and began widespread trench warfare was a desperate battle that took place in the first week of September 1914.

Learn more about the first Battle of the Marne on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. you're going to see. It's hard to express just how differently the First World War might have turned out

if events had proceeded just a little differently in the first weeks of the war.

When war broke out, Germany was far more prepared than any of the other Allied powers.

In a previous episode, I went over the German plan for the war which was known as the Schlefin

Plan.

The Schlefin Plan had been years in the making and was a highly detailed plan for what Germany

would do in the opening weeks of a war with France.

The creator of the plan, Field Marshal Alfred von Schleifen, knew that if a war broke out between France and Germany,

and it turned into a war of attrition, Germany would eventually lose.

He felt that Germany had a window of about six weeks to take care of France

before Russia could mobilize and threaten them from the East.

He also realized that things had changed

dramatically since the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The movement of troops

wasn't limited to how fast men could walk or a horse could gallop anymore. There were now trains and

automobiles which could move large numbers of men, equipment and artillery, very

quickly across long distances. Schlefin didn't live long enough to see his plan put into action.

It was Helmouth von Molke, chief of the German general staff who was responsible for the execution of the plan when the war started.

The plan was extremely detailed and made a lot of assumptions, some of which turned out not to be true.

For example, they assumed that the Belgians wouldn't put up any resistance at all, which they did, and they didn't even plan for the British being there.

...