Origins of the First World War, pt. 12 -- War Planning & Strategy

We examine the prophetic warnings from scholars and bureaucrats that a great-power war in the twentieth century would lead to bloody stalemate, mass destruction, and a wave of revolutions; and we trace how war strategists and generals reacted to the prophets of doom, formulating new war plans, from Russia’s blundering steamroll, to Germany’s precarious and ill-fated Schlieffen plan, to Britain's devious and mercurial scheme of economic warfare. Suggested further reading: Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August”; Nicholas Lambert, “Planning Armageddon” Nicholas Lambert’s discussion of Britain’s hope of economic warfare, “The Short War Assumption” -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7jJ-POo90&pp=ygUQbmljaG9sYXMgbGFtYmVydA%3D%3D Margaret MacMillan’s lecture on war planning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RUFHkal6Jk&pp=ygUbbWFyZ2FyZXQgbWFjbWlsbGFuIHBsYW5uaW5n Image: Cartoon of the dispute over Alsace-Lorraine as a medieval romance, Puck Magazine, 1898 Please sign up as a patron to support this podcast, and hear recent posts on Germany and Japan in the lead-up to World War I -- https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632