Week Three

Why Christmas Never Came



Lecture, readings, and discussion during this week will concentrate on an examination of the resources of the powers involved as war began, the plans made to use them, and the outcome of the efforts to put these war plans into action.  Conventional wisdom had it that general war could not be sustained in modern times for more than a few months.  The early months of this confict did not see its end.  Instead they set the course the war was to take in the four coming years of world-wide battle. 

 Required reading:

G. J. Meyer, A WORLD UNDONE, Part Two: August-December 1914 - Racing to Deadlock, pp. 103-238
The Schlieffen Plan
Desperate hours in the West - the Abandonment of Paris
A French Assessment of the first months
Trench Warfare begins along the River Aisne

Images:

French soldiers with a send-off on their swift and heroic march to Berlin, August, 1914
German soldiers with a send-off on their swift and heroic march to Paris, August, 1914



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Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 17013