Niall Ferguson on Helmuth von Moltke the Younger

“The Germans were not, as the phrase 'more or less' makes clear, optimistic. Moltke himself had warned the Kaiser as early as 1906 that the next war would be 'a long wearisome struggle' which would 'utterly exhaust our own people, even if we are victorious'. 'We must prepare ourselves', he wrote in 1912, 'for a long campaign, with numerous tough, protracted battles.' He was just as gloomy when he discussed the issue with his Austrian counterpart, Franz Conrad von Hôtzendorff, in May 1914: T will do what I can. We are not superior to the French.' In any case, 'The sooner the better' was not the watchword of Moltke alone. His Russian counterpart, Yanushkevich, threatened to 'smash his telephone' after the Tsar had finally approved general mobilization, to avoid the risk of being told of a royal change of heart.”

“The puzzle is why [France's] heavy losses did not lead to a complete collapse - as had happened in 1870 and would happen again in 1940. Some credit must certainly go to the imperturbable French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre, and particularly to his ruthless purge of senescent or incompetent French commanders as the crisis unfolded. Fundamentally, however, time was against Moltke for the simple reason that the French could redeploy more swiftly than the Germans could advance once they had left their troop trains. On August 23 the three German armies on Moltke's right wing constituted twenty-four divisions, facing just seventeen and a half Entente divisions; by September 6 they were up against forty-one. The chance of a decisive victory was gone, if it had ever existed. At the Marne, the failure of Moltke's gamble was laid bare. He himself suffered a nervous breakdown.”