German forces in Belgium and France

At the outbreak of the First World War, the German army (consisting in the West of seven field armies) carried out a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan. This marched German armies through neutral Belgium and into France, before turning southwards to encircle the French army on the German border.^[10] Since France had declared that it would "keep full freedom of acting in case of a war between Germany and Russia", Germany had to expect the possibility of an attack by France on one front and by Russia on the other. To meet such a scenario, the Schlieffen Plan stated that Germany must try to defeat France quickly (as had happened in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71). It further suggested that to repeat a fast victory in the west, Germany should not attack through the difficult terrain of Alsace-Lorraine (which had a direct border west of the river Rhine), instead, the idea was to try to quickly cut Paris off from the English Channel and British assistance, and take Paris, thus winning the war. Then the armies would be moved over to the east to meet Russia. Russia was believed to need a long period of mobilization before they could become a real threat to the Central Powers.

The only existing German plan for a two-front war had German armies marching through Belgium. Germany wanted free escort through Belgium (and originally Holland as well, which plan Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected) to invade France. Neutral Belgium rejected this idea, so the Germans decided to invade through Belgium instead. France also wanted to move their troops into Belgium, but Belgium originally rejected this "suggestion" as well, in the hope of avoiding any war on Belgian soil. In the end, after the German invasion, Belgium did try to join their army with the French (but a large part of the Belgian army retreated to Antwerp where they were forced to surrender when all hope of help was gone).

The plan called for the right flank of the German advance to bypass the French armies (which were concentrated on the Franco-German border, leaving the Belgian border without significant French forces) and move south to Paris. Initially the Germans were successful, particularly in the Battle of the Frontiers (14–24 August). By 12 September, the French, with assistance from the British forces, halted the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September), and pushed the German forces back some 50 km. The last days of this battle signified the end of mobile warfarein the west.^[10] The French offensive into Southern Alsace, launched on 20 August with the Battle of Mulhouse, had limited success.

In the east, the Russians invaded with two armies, surprising the German staff who had not expected the Russians to move so early. A field army, the 8th, was rapidly moved from its previous role as reserve for the invasion of France, to East Prussia by rail across the German Empire. This army, led by general Paul von Hindenburg defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August – 2 September). But the failed Russian invasion, causing the fresh German troops to move to the east, allowed the tactical Allied victory at the First Battle of the Marne. The Central Powers were denied a quick victory in France and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself. Despite this, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of early victory.

New Zealand occupied German Samoa (later Western Samoa) on 30 August 1914. On 11 September, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed on the island of Neu Pommern (later New Britain), which formed part of German New Guinea. On 28 October, the cruiser SMS Emden sunk the Russian cruiser Zhemchug in the Battle of Penang. Japan seized Germany's Micronesian colonies and, after the Siege of Tsingtao, the German coaling port of Qingdao in the Chinese Shandong peninsula. Within a few months, the Allied forces had seized all the German territories in the Pacific; only isolated commerce raiders and a few holdouts in New Guinea remained.^[35][36]

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