This is CBS Iron World, I'm John Baps, you're speaking to Professor Nick Lloyd, a reader

in military and imperial history, King's College London. His new book is The Western Front.

The history of the Great War, volume one, we attend immediately to the larger than legend

personalities of the four powers, Germany, France, Britain and America as the final

power. We begin with Germany because a man named Muldke, a man who is the relative of

an earlier commander of German forces, is in charge of the Schleefen Plan in August

of 1914 in conversation with the Kaiser. And I learned from you, Nick, that the Kaiser

favored Muldke. But Muldke was a man who was dealing with the ghosts of his ancestor

and also of Schleefen. What do we need to know about Muldke that he took it upon himself

to alter the Schleefen Plan in the attack on Paris?

Yes, you've got the pressure on someone like Helmoth on Muldke, the younger. This is

title, this is a full day. It's enormous in 1914 and he's not up for it. He's a man

that, as you say, bowed down by the weight of victory that his uncle achieved in 1870

in the Franco-Prussian war. And he is concerned about the plan, the plan, the Schleefen Plan

envisages a massive attack through Belgium and the low countries that will essentially outflank

the frontier fortresses the French have built. Get the French army into the open and destroy

it in a grand battle of involvement. It's one of the most ambitious military plans you

will ever likely to see. But Muldke 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 Schleefen envisage with that right wing, that sort of swinging

door would be as strong as possible. So Muldke begins to alter that, alter the balance

of forces so he puts a little bit more force in the south on his left so that it's not

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