Mitchell Loughlin’s Reviews > The Guns of August > Status Update

Churchill and co were totally baffled. They had mad plans, commitments, and allies only to turn there back. The both parties of cabinet members threatened to resign if it it didn’t go there way. England just recovering from “the Irish situation” was fractured politically and wanted to restore some level of stability before war.

G officially declared war on Russia which forced E’s hand.

Despite commitments to France the English cabinet remained opposed war. France, who had planned the entire war around the idea of English assistance along the coast was notability pissed. One French leader was quoted to have said “I’m an waiting to see if the word honor is removed from the English dictionary”

The common view was that this war was of no concern of England and they should remain neutral

Germany now in full panic considers giving France its claimed territory back if they stay out of the war but the leadership sours at the idea of losing power (shot)

In fact after the war an entire book was written describing why they could in fact have turned the troops around.

Meanwhile France knowing there alliance with England was predicated on Germany being the aggressor pulled all
Of there troops back 10 kilometers from the border to make it painfully obvious who fired the first shot. This was a risk due to the attack mindset of the French people

He refused to do so because it took so much planning to pull off his French attack. Basicallyan ego move (shot). He claimed that pulling back at this point would be impossible due to the inability of the train scheduled to be updated at this point. Counterpoint to this his own uncle, a war hero and the reason he rose so far, had designed annual test runs for the train operators to
So just that.

The Germans now freaked out that their threats didn’t work have to pay the tab. They attempt to negotiate there way out of this war by pleading to England who gives them a political answer that Germany misinterpreted as agreement to stay out of the war if Germany doesn’t attack France. In fact they said France or Russia. (Shot)

The Kaiser starts to follow this belief asking the leader to pull back from France

The Russian army secure in knowledge that they have French backing do not reply to the threat.

While this is happening the Germans also
Send an ultimatum to France saying they need to give up there forts indefinitely to Germany and to agree to not back the Russians. France knowing Germany will be fighting a two sided war reply France will respond in pursuance of its own interests

The word of the day is: Incompetence.
Take a shot every time someone basically starts a world war!


Outbreak
Russia who has been threatened by Germany for a long time mobilize there troops to the border. Germany has given them an ultimatum to give up territory and verbally commit to inaction or be invaded. The German army assumed fear of attack would be enough and they could bully there way into more power

There army was under supplied with some not having guns and those with guns have only 800 bullets for the whole war. They could not easily supply there troops because in a defensive mechanism they made there trains operate on wider tracks then the rats of the world so they could not use there own trains to outside of Russia.

It was estimated they could bring 6m fighters albeit rather slowly to the front lines. Compare this against Germans 1.5m moving to France and you can understand the fear. They were however entirely incompetent from a leadership perspective. There czar was purposely uneducated by his father as to not be a threat. There chief of military believed no important development in tech would have change military functions