![]() The violation of Belgian neutrality brought Britain into the war and it was off to the races. Thus the main practical step Germany took to defend Austria was to launch a preemptive attack on France and Belgium, neither of whom had officially entered the war yet. German war planning assumed that any war with Russia would expand to include war with France, and the operational plan called for attacking France first. This required Germany to go to war in defense of its ally. Then Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. First Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after Serbia refused to acceed to Vienna's extensive demands regarding Serbian support for anti-Austrian groups. The main participants in the war mobilized over the course of about a week. By chance, Gavrilo Princip had by this time moved over to Franz Joseph Street and he was able to take the fatal shot. Franz Ferdinand ordered his car to turn around so he could visit people injured by the grenade but his driver misunderstood, and continued on the original route where, while attempting to turn around, his car stalled. The assassins believed their plot had failed. The motorcade then continued past the other assassins, none of whom acted as they lacked clear shots in the commotion. The second assassin tossed a grenade that injured several people. The first assassin was standing near a policeman and didn't use his weapon. He was joined in the city by seven Serbian terrorists there to kill him, in hopes of removing a prominent moderate from the line of succession and heightening the tensions between Vienna and its South Slavic subjects. In 1941, Hitler’s Wehrmacht grossly underestimated Soviet military capability, leading to disaster in World War II.Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrived in Sarajevo, then part of the Habsburg dominion, on June 28, 1914. ![]() For years its legends helped to shape German nationalist ideology and military policy. Tannenberg’s mystique later served the Weimar Republic and Third Reich propagandists. In addition, he demolishes many myths about the battle, such as the supposed superiority of the German military, the animosity among Russian field commanders, and the assumption that the Germans viewed their opponents as a horde of uniformed illiterates. Examining the battle in the context of contemporary diplomatic, political, and economic affairs, Showalter also reviews both armies’ social settings and military doctrine, and shows how the battle may be understood as a case study of problems that military organizations face in the initial stages of a major war. ![]() The author carefully guides the reader through what actually happened on the battlefield, from its grand strategy down to the level of improvised squad actions. In this first paperback edition of the classic work, historian Dennis Showalter analyzes this battle’s causes, effects, and implications for subsequent German military policy. The battle of Tannenberg (August 27–30, 1914) opened World War I with a decisive German victory over Russia-indeed the Kaiser’s only clear-cut victory in a non-attritional battle during four years of war. ![]()
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