In 1904, an alliance was signed by Britain and France three years later, Russia joined this pact. This became the Triple Entente. It was ten years later that the three other major powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance. This meant that the six major counties had been divided into two separate alliances. I think this was significant in the road to war for it created a lot of tension between certain countries, for example, France and Germany and Britain and Germany. However I do not believe that the alliance system was a major cause of World War 1 but it attributed to the war as it split the countries up. Also with the alliance system any country in trouble would receive help from the other members of their alliance so if France were to attack Germany then Italy and Austria-Hungary would step in. It would only take one country to attack another for a World War. So this could have heightened tensions amongst the members of each alliance.
The German leaders were very worried because of the positioning of France and Russia, members of the Triple Entente. These countries were either side of Germany, therefore “encircled”. As France and Russia were both in the same alliance and on friendly terms it was seen as a surrounding attempt to threaten Germany. I believe this made war likely because the Germans, surrounded by Britain and France, and threatened by the great British navy and expansion of Russia’s military might, may have decide was necessary for survival. Therefore they devised a plan to try and counter this threat. Not only were they “encircled” but this was coupled with the French bitterness that Germany was certainly well aware of. The alliance system can be linked to the Schlieffen plan because it split two major countries in France and Germany into separate alliances, who shared a large amount of tension.
Therefore the Germans devised a plan that they were certain would not fail. It was designed by Count Von Schlieffen in 1905, so known as the Schlieffen Plan. Germany wanted to avoid fighting a war on two fronts so Schlieffen proposed attacking France through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. He planned to use 90% of his forces to deliver a knock out blow to France and use the remaining 10% to defend the eastern border from any Russian attack assuming the Russians would be slow to mobilize their forces. However in 1906 Schlieffen was replaced by Von Moltke who made some alterations to the original plan. His version avoided invading through Holland but instead concentrating the attack through Belgium. It was thought the Belgians would not be able to resist the powerful German military, and German forces would rapidly enter France. In the final plan the assumptions were that Russia would take at least six weeks to mobilise, France would be defeated within six weeks, Belgium would not resist any German attack and Britain would remain neutral. The Germans assumption that Russia would be slow to mobilise her forces came down to the fact that Russia was such a vast country and relatively inefficient. Also Austria planned to send large forces across the border on the outbreak of war, so Russia would be contained.
However the Schlieffen Plan is significant in the road to the establishment of the Western Front due to its eventual failure; it ultimately paved the way for war. Once it had been drawn up there could be no going back. I think there might have been no German attack if there could have been negotiations. However it was too late and the reality was that as planned the German army invaded Belgium and Luxembourg on 2nd August 1914. However the Germans were held up by the Belgian army, backed up by the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) so the plan soon began to go wrong. One of the assumptions had been the British would remain neutral. Until the invasion of Belgium, Britain might well have stayed out of the war. However they had signed a treaty in 1839 agreeing to defend Belgium’s neutrality. The Germans claimed that Britain had gone to war over “a scrap of paper”. Now they were at war with Britain.
In Belgium the German’s failed to advance as easily as they had predicted due to the fierce resistance put up by the allies at Liège and Antwerp. The Germans were not getting far at all and matters became only worse for them when the Russians mobilised their troops within 10 days. Upon mobilisation the Russian forces entered Germany on the 19th August. This meant that the Germans had to withdraw troops from their Schlieffen plan in order to defend their Eastern border. However the allies could only delay the German advance and by the 4th September the huge German army was in sight of Paris. Despite getting rather close to Paris they never actually took the French capital but instead drove east of Paris. Once again they had gone against the original plan proving its great failure.
I think the failure of the Schlieffen plan can go down as a very important event in the road to the Western front. Russia mobilised faster than expected, only 10 days not the 6 weeks the Germans had expected it to take and the British had gone to war with the BEF playing a great role. Together the allies had met the German army with fierce resistance and foiled the Schlieffen Plan
The German forces were met by French forces at the Battle of the Marne. This battle lasted from the 5th of September to the 11th. This halted the German advance. Over 2 million troops struggled for a whole week across a front covering two hundred kilometres wide. The French eventually resorted to ferrying their men to the battlefront in the taxis. Man after man was brought in to push the Germans back. Britain’s rapid military deployment in defence of France stopped the Germans from achieving the easy victory they had imagined. By 11th September they had forced the German forces to retreat 60 kilometres to the river Aisne. It was here the Germans built machine gun post and “dug in” trenches in order to defend themselves. So now the Schlieffen Plan had been a complete failure and lead to the Battle of the Marne which had resulted in the first trenches.
Both sides now extended their operations northward, each attempting to outflank the other in a series of maneuvers that has been called “the race to the sea.” Maubeuge, on France's northern border, fell to the Germans on September 8th , as did the Belgian fortress of Antwerp on October 9. Fierce battles in Picardy and Artois were followed in late October and November by the Battle of the Yser and the First Battle of Ypres. At Ypres, the BEF was nearly battered while successfully resisting a German drive.
Shortly thereafter the trench warfare began, as mass conscript armies used the spade, machine gun, and barbed wire to prevent any movement between the North Sea and the Swiss border.
The Western Front had been formed after a combination of failures, including some military decisions, and the final Battle of Marne and race to the sea.
So in conclusion I believe that the main cause of the Western Front was the Schlieffen Plan due to the fact that its massive failure changed the course of everything. Instead of attacking the French capital, Paris, they turned east and were met by the French resulting in the famous Battle of the Marne.
Each country had a reason for going to war against their opposing countries so they were all partly to blame for the establishment of the Western Front. France was against Germany and Britain against Germany. They all looked for power as single empires and they believed war would bring this to them.
