The Guns of August 1914 - The Outbreak of First World War

William Bache presented The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s masterful history of how a conflict among European royals and their empires ignited and escalated into a world war. He explored how mass mobilization, nationalism, military doctrine, political alliances, new technologies, and railroads combined to accelerate the slide into a four-year cataclysm of industrialized warfare, in which millions of soldiers, civilians, and horses were killed. Central to this story is the Schlieffen Plan, which called for a massive German offensive against France, concentrating on the right flank to drive through neutral Belgium, then swing south to encircle and defeat the French Army.

The heroic Belgian Army and the timely arrival of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) thwarted German efforts to seize the Belgian coastline along the English Channel and prevented the collapse of the French left flank. Under the leadership of King Albert, the determined Belgian resistance delayed the German advance long enough for the BEF to reach Mons and for the French Fifth Army to redirect its attack. Together, they slowed the massive German onslaught sufficiently to avert the decisive defeat of the French Army and the fall of Paris—all within the first month of the war. Yet this is only the beginning of the story.