German Invasion of Belgium and British Entry into the War
Germany invaded Belgium on 4 August 1914 and Britain declared war the same day. The Schlieffen plan required it. German staff planning since the 1890s had assumed a two-front war and had concluded that France must be beaten in six weeks before Russia could mobilise, and that the French fortress line could not be forced frontally in the time available. The only way round it was through Belgium, whose neutrality Prussia had guaranteed by treaty in 1839. Bethmann Hollweg told the Reichstag that necessity knows no law and that Germany would make good the wrong afterwards, and told the British ambassador that his country was going to war for a scrap of paper. Belgium refused an ultimatum offering to pay for passage, and King Albert declined to be a road. Liège held for eleven days against siege howitzers. What followed was the atrocities. Some 6,500 Belgian and French civilians were killed in reprisals in August and September, at Dinant, Andenne, Tamines and Aardenne, in the belief that snipers were operating; the university library at Louvain was burned with about 300,000 volumes. The reports were exaggerated in Allied propaganda and were substantially true, which had the effect after 1918 of making atrocity reporting disbelieved. Some 1.5 million Belgians fled. Britain's guarantee of 1839 supplied a cabinet that was split with the argument that carried it, and the country entered the war more or less united. The plan also failed on its own terms. The right wing was weakened to reinforce Alsace and the east, the advance outran its supply, and the French counterattacked on the Marne in September, after which the war Germany had designed everything to avoid began.
- Year: 1914 CE
- Category: Military
