Why didn't the germans just fortify this area and go all out againts the russkie's

Germany didn't understand total war. They thought France would be like oh sorry we stop war now, and there'd be a Victoria II style truce that would stop them from attacking again when Germany is weak.

IKR it seems really stupid considering they had years of military experiantce and hundreds of generals

>And I'm not an expert on the pre-ww1 political situation by any means, but I believe Germany thought Britian would get involved anyway, Belgium or no.
Britain WOULD have gotten involved anyway, Belgium or no. Ulster made the whole war too damn convenient. They had already pledged to wage a naval war on Germany two days before they crossed into Belgium.

Because the guy in charge of logistics fucked off after sending all the troops to Belgium, to enact the Schlieffen plan, and then when he was told no reroute them all to Russia he said it was impossible.
Which was a lie.

>go all out againts the russkie

Like how exactly do you think this works?

The Russians already proved during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia that even taking Moscow is entirely meaningless. However, France proved it would quickly surrender after its capital fell.

Think a little before making retarded threads.

sage

Well also remember the capital of Russia was Petersburg, and that is a lot more attainable then Moscow.

Put yourself in their shoes:

You have to fight a two front war
You need to quickly defeat an enemy immediately to consolidate your forces
France was easily crushed forty years prior before your nation was even united, and after losing Paris, which is very close to your borders
Russia could hold out even after losing Moscow
European Russia is many times larger than France
You have a relatively powerful ally on the border to Russia that you expect will be able to hold Russia off for at least a year

Not him, but it honestly isn't.

The terrain is really swampy most of the year, except in the depths of winter when it freezes over. With Finland still part of the Russian empire, you can only approach it from a narrow bend in the south, unless you march literally hundreds of miles out of your way around Lake Ladoga to invest it from the north as well. It's one of the toughest cities to crack in Europe, if not the toughest.

There's a reason it never fell in WW2.

Even by sea? If memory serves the world war 1 era Russian navy was laughable.

They thought Russia would be slower to mobilize than France. Germany wanted to have their cake and eat it too - they thought a swift victory against the French would mean they could also catch the Russians with their pants down. If you hit Russia first, there was zero chance you could hit France before they had fully mobilized. Russia's just too damn big for a quick victory.
France was a legitimate threat in this period, and likely taken far more seriously than that of the Russians who had lost to Japan like a decade earlier.

I mean, it borders the baltic, and yes, the German navy easily outclassed the Russian one, but you seriously want to try invading a heavily defended port city by sea? Terrible idea user. Gallipoli was awful enough, and the Russians were way tougher than the Turks, not to mention that the British tried to land on a nearly undefended beach instead of right in the enemy capitol, which will have lots of coastal batteries.

Really bad idea there.

coastal guns > ships
turns out being impossible to target, being heavily fortified, constantly supplied, and also fucking hidden is something of a force multiplier.

>turns out being impossible to target, being heavily fortified, constantly supplied, and also fucking hidden is something of a force multiplier.
Hidden, impossible to to target and heavily fortified... yeah it's a wonder we had navies at all if they are so useless in the face of land based defenses, I mean they were obviously useless and obsolete that is why no naval invasions ever worked post 1900s.

Not that user, but I've never even heard of an attempt to bring in warships to duel with coastal batteries to support an invasion. Ever.

You don't fucking have 12-16" guns placed everywhere, and that's why you invade somewhere that doesn't have them. Invading somewhere that does is suicidal, on the other hand.

Do you even know what the Shliefen plan intended to do? Take Paris within months, knock France out of the war fast, then focus on Russia. It failed, forcing Germany into a two front war. After the first battle of the Marne, Von Moltke already declared the war lost.

Now imagine that the Germans don't go on the offensive and the front is now technically on German soil. You now have the same two front war except most of the French industry isn't destroyed and Belgian industry isn't dismantled and siphoned back to Germany. It would also mean that Britain, as Belgium's benefactor, can invade Germany through Belgium. France too probably, on account of being allied to Britain.

The Germans were retarded, but not THIS retarded. They knew they needed to win the war on at least one front fast.

You'll notice that most successful landings were conducted on beaches, not directly into a fucking coastal city, and even then coastal batteries were a constant threat.

The utility of navies wasn't just as a tool to invade by land either, you know. They were used for blockades, to destroy enemy shipping, and to ensure the enemy couldn't do the same to you. And if you did have naval superiority, you had the luxury of being able to target a beach to land on.
Perhaps there are some serviceable beaches near St Petersburg, I have no idea, but attacking the city directly would've been pretty dumb.

Well yes of course you don't land directly in the city, that is retarded, you could land near it though, it's not like the entire coast line is covered with Antiship batteries.

Don't forget, you need to land close enough to the city that this is a viable attack route, but also close enough to a port that you can ship in supplies and reinforcements to your attack.

AFAIK, there aren't a lot of small ports near St Petersburg, and most of that sea area ices up in the winter, which limits the shelf life of anywhere you do seize, assuming you can reach anything before the Russians blow it up.

Then there's the little matter of the overseas line of communication, which is tricky to manage at the best of times. Sure, the German navy is a hell of a lot stronger than the Russian Baltic Fleet; but the Kriegsmarine was way weaker than the RN, and still managed to snipe at British convoys in WW2 for a long, long time. Dealing with little ships raiding your troop and supply vessels is going to be a constant problem.

Finally, this whole thing got started because pointed out how hard the city is to attack from the south, and the next user suggested dodging those defenses by going in by sea. If you want to go that route, you'd really have to land in what's now Finland, and I don't know what the sea infrastructure was like back then, but I doubt it would be enough to support the kind of force you'd need to invest St Petersburg.

There were gunnery duals against coastal guns in WW2 but usually with overwhelming force, such as a battleship vs a couple of 8 inch guns.

Again, you need a good beach. I can't speak for where a good beach would be, but it'd at least need to be far enough out of the bay (which presumably would have plenty of defensive batteries and forts - looking at it on Google maps anything east of Kotlin Island would probably be suicidal to approach).

From there you need to secure your beaches, probably capture a port somewhere nearby to provision your troops, then advance on St Petersburg, and fast enough that the Russian army doesn't turn up to try and drive you back into the sea.
Keep in mind, too, that the Germans didn't have a lot of the tech (like those neat prefabricated harbors) that the allies did in the D-Day landings in WWII. This means supplying your army with anything significant (or even landing significant numbers of troops) would require a harbor. So you were either on a ticking timer to capture St. Petersburg or you had to capture another harbor along the coast.

They thought that Russians will be harder to defeat.

They wouldn't have to occupy France if they left the war. The British army was piss small.

Not laughable as in possible to ignore, especially when operating in range of their shore batteries, which they've proved during the war in those isles west of Estonia.

And what about the French? Did they plan on killing every adult male?

To all the people saying russia is too strong to fight,what matter does it make.They were going to fight them anyway,the more they wated the bigger the dissadvantage they would have.And even if they beat France how would that help the rest of the war.They'd be stuck wasting troops occupying france.It's not like the french were just going to sit on their ass and wait for the war to finish.they would have attacked germany at the first possible moment even if they had a peace treaty.

>Not that user, but I've never even heard of an attempt to bring in warships to duel with coastal batteries to support an invasion. Ever.
IIRC, the Brits tried a few times when they were attacking French cities. Coastal batteries still fucked them up something get awful

dude did you read the post.there was no way the french could pass alsace-lorraine.They failed misserably IRL and that was when the german army was really distracted.Now imagine if they had invested in forts,the french wouldn't have been able to do shit.They'd be grinding manpower away like crazy just trying to take 1 or 2 forts.

They would leave the war

They didn't need to

See: the actual war

All France and the UK needed to do was wear down Germany for as long as possible. Time was always against them. Germany needed a quick victory because the combined Entente manufacturing power was much greater than their own.

>They failed misserably IRL
And nowadays Alsace Lorraine is french.

Yes but if they sit and bash their skulls against a well fortified position it will cost them a lot of lives, the French would have pushed to retake Alsace-Lorraine fanatically especially early war, that would have bled a lot of their manpower, and all that manufacturing power means nothing when you have no warm bodies left to use it, World War 1 was largely an attrition war, having more people is what won the war, and the British Empire, and the French just simply had more people then Germany, and you had battles like Somme where you see ridiculous amounts of casualties, without the population to replace them you just won't win.

what does that change the war would have been long with or without france.
>what is plan XVII

>there was no way the french could pass alsace-lorraine.
They wouldn't need to. They'd only need to force Germany into an unprofitable two front war. That plus a naval blockade would put the Germans in a very unfavorable position.

As for those forts, they would cost money to build, maintain, equip, resupply etc. All money that could've been used on the eastern front.

Your strategy may work if you assume unlimited resources though.

>Time was always against them. Germany needed a quick victory because the combined Entente manufacturing power was much greater than their own.
This. On top of that they also both had large navies that blockaded the central powers as well as their own colonies and friendly relations with the USA, who sold them resources even before joining the war.

Every time the germans have tried to bleed the french out it didn't work (see Verdun, where the german army ended up worse than the french).

The germans lost because they did the same mistake the french did in 1870 : underestimating the enemy.

Retardation at its finest

ok but how does that change the situation for the german war planners?
>be germany 1914
>rush paris
>france is dead
>deutschlanduberalles.png
>britain still blockading your ships
>1000000 russkies marching toards konigsberg
>have to waste manpower occupying france
>A-H being on suicide watch
>most of your troops are stuck in france
>the french can backstab you at any moment even if you have a peace treaty

Shit's crazy, man. In WW1 the Germans underestimated the French as cowardly weaklings because of 1870. In WW2 the Germans feared the French as invincible supersoldiers because of WW1. Hitler underestimated how much WW1 broke France's back so he was surprised because of how fast it fell (though that was probably due to Rommel and Manstein ignoring orders and pushing straight to Paris instead of awaiting further orders as they 'should' have).

Because the number of troops you need to occupy whatever part of France you're occupying will almost certainly be less than what you need to fight along the French front. Not to mention that you need a much lower caliber of soldier to do occupation/garrison duty as you need to do front line fighting, freeing up even more firepower to throw at the Russians. And I mean, historically, the Germans were able to pivot and drive the Russians back even when fighting on the western Front.

Because you can and will set up an indemnity that will probably include tribute in the form of material resources that you're missing out on due to the blockade. And the British can't stop them without firing on French ships and pushing them into your camp.

The French are not likely to backstab you if you include Paris in the occupation zone, given that its metropolitan area is some 20-25% of France's overall population sitting right there under your thumb.

>the French would have pushed to retake Alsace-Lorraine fanatically

Foch left after only one offensive. The French weren't fucking stupid. Germany was still going to need to dedicate a lot of manpower to prevent the whole front of Alsace-Lorraine from falling to the French army. Don't forgot also, that Belgium was friendly with France, and might have granted permission to move their military through.

You under-appreciate how difficult it would be to get away with re-organizing and re-mobilizing your military when you have an enemy army watching you like a dog.

This isn't true, no one "underestimated" anyone else in WW1. The reason the Schlieffen plan wasn't as successful as it could have been was because von Moltke believed a total offensive in France would leave East Prussia crippled by Russia, so he made what he believed were the necessary troop movements.

even if france peaced out in 1914 and you got all those troops to the east the germans would still be at numerical dissadvantage.Not only that they would be fifhting on their own land and would suffer massive civilian cassualties.plus the french would have attacked them at the first possible moment if they thought the germans were weak enough no matter the consequences.

even so it seems better than to gambit on a quick rush.and i dont think belgium would have allowed the french to pass they were bound to be neutrall be a treaty.

Why didn't Hitler just go around Russia?

Because the French would've gone through Belgium if the Germans never did.

It's not better at all. When your enemy is outproducing you and restricting your maritime movement, trying to fight fully defensive is the absolute worst thing you could do. Had the Germans given France four years with their coal in Picardie the output of wartime production would have been insane. If nothing else, the Germans would have starved to death under blockade.

Ok, so France folds after Paris is taken sometime in September of 1914.

A peace treaty is almost certain to include disarmament, an indemnity, food and metal tribute, denial of French ports/colonies/services/etc to her former allies, and occupation of say, the northeastern 1/3 of France until the war is over with France's allies and the indemnities are paid up.

For starters, this will probably collapse the current government, and throw France into internal turmoil for some time. Secondly, re-armament takes time, and isn't likely feasible until the internal situation stabalizes AND the Germans somehow take a nap and let France re-organize their army.

Thirdly, going by WW2 as a comparison, the size of the occupation force was about 28% the size of the invasion force. Transferring 3/4 or so of the forces allocated to the Schlieffen plan will bring you up to numerical advantage with the Russians. Hell, they just about matched them historically during the summer of 1915 when they pivoted, and a victory in the west would allow them to free up even more troops.

>.Not only that they would be fifhting on their own land and would suffer massive civilian cassualties

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Please be clearer.

>plus the french would have attacked them at the first possible moment if they thought the germans were weak enough no matter the consequences.

"Oh Gee, the Germans just overran us in about 2 and a half months, and now they're kicking the crap out of Russia on the other side. Britain is flailing impotently and trying to open up tertiary fronts in Egypt, and we just turned over pretty much all of our heavy armament over to the Huns. Better start a new war!"

but what good is all the coal if you cant advance on the enemy.Plus the war was bound to be long even if france got knocked out.the best thing that could have happened was for germany to secure polish and ukrainian wheat and hope the british dont join the war.If belgium was never invaded i doubt the british would have joined as soon as they did irl.and without the royal navy germany could still import food from abroad.

>Schliefen plan
>WWII
Pick one

because the french wouldn't just dissarm their whole army unless the germans forced them by threat.and that would require stationing a large forceat france to make sure they were obliging by the treaty.And who is to say the war would have been smooth for the germans once france fell.All it would take is for the germans to bog down and some right winger to rise to power in france and they would have been at war again.not only that the germans would need all there men to fight in the vast territory of russia leaving the french front exposed for a suprise attack.and what i meant by the previous post is that they would have to fight the russians in eastprussia and sillesia.

>what good is all the coal if you can't advance on the enemy

Wonders. Wartime production kicks in and France is producing like a madman. Planes, guns, ships, artillery, munitions. Considering all that Germany would still need a substantial amount of troops to be stationed in the West, maybe near the same number they needed historically. There would be no difference except allowing France whole years to produce unopposed, fully anticipating a war entirely along the Rhine, especially if they could move through Belgium.

>i doubt the british would have joined as soon as they did

They still would have joined. British foreign policy was to prevent a major power from growing dominant on the Continent. Germany pushing into Russia would look threatening, but France would be a totally open front with a lot of friendly room for troop movement. The ships were coming no matter what.

You seem to be ignoring the major points here. There was absolutely no feasible way a disarmed France could magically rise back up with its military totally recovered and attack Germany with any threat.

it would have taken less troops to hold alsace loraine than it took irl to hold the western front.IMO even if you had all the troops in the world you would be stuck in the same situation the persians were stuck at the Thermopylae. And as for the dissarnament what would the krauts be able to do if the french only followed the treaty "on paper".Just because it said they had to dissarm doesnt mean they will do it to the full extent,unless there is some imidiate threat to coerce them.

>because the french wouldn't just dissarm their whole army unless the germans forced them by threat

You seem to be missing the part where we're starting with the assumption that the Schlieffen plan actually works and the war on the Western Front is effectively over. The Germans would be forcing them to, similar to what they did post Franco-Prussia 1871.

>.and that would require stationing a large forceat france to make sure they were obliging by the treaty

And going by historical precedent in WW2, that's probably going to be about 28% of their invasion force, and disproportionately less well trained and equipped forces to boot.

>And who is to say the war would have been smooth for the germans once france fell

Basic logic. They were kicking the crap out of Russia with a bit under a million men on the Eastern Front in 1915. If you win in the West, you can afford a much, much larger deployment than that, and will kick the crap out of the Russians even worse.

>All it would take is for the germans to bog down and some right winger to rise to power in france and they would have been at war again

So, first you need the Germans to bog down. Then you need a right winger to win the election on a war platform. Then he needs to secretely re-arm the country without the Germans noticing and doing something about it, and get back on to a war footing while over half the country's industry and some 1/3 of its population is denied to them because lol occupation. Then this fighting force needs to do better than the last one, because hey, remember, they got crushed, and do well enough to divert the Germans from shitstomping the Russians, who might or might not have also folded by this time.

This plan is incredibly stupid.

>and what i meant by the previous post is that they would have to fight the russians in eastprussia and sillesia.

You mean like they did historically in 1914? And then rolled the Russians back?

But thats asuming everything goes acording to plan for the germans.Plus beathing the russians is not a n easy task,they lucked out with the battle of tannenberg.if it weren't for the incompitance of the guy who was incharge if the army in east prussia,the russians wouldn't have failed so misserably.

Because if you leave France alone to just build up forces, the 2 front war gets that much harder to fight.

Also there's the fact that France is just plain easier to take out than Russia, the Schlieffen Plan was essentially to cut out the middle man, remove one front as quickly as possible, so Germany would never even have to worry about a military buildup in the west against them while they're tied up in the Steppes of Russia.

Trying to do the reverse, knocking out Russia then focusing on France wouldn't work simply because of the time it takes to take on a colossus like Russia. where a military campaign can easily take 4 to 5 years without any guarantee of victory. So the safest bet was to knock out a power Germany knew they could steamroll first, then focus on the most dangerous power once that was taken care of.

>Belgium was friendly with France
No it was not, Belgium told the French to fuck off until the Germans invaded them because they didn't want to provoke a war with Germany.
The French offered to move into Belgium and protect them from the Germans.

Was there any records of Germany trying to get home the Netherlands as an ally during this war.

He tried to warn them, why didnt they listen

Because they felt like they couldn't win a lengthy war. This is actually one of the big myths of WW1 which gave people a lot of food for thought. Also, it's not just Germany. All continental powers planned offensively. Both France and Russia had offensive planning too. All of the plans failed. Only the Brits had defensive planning, but this had less something to with them having a better understanding of WW1 level strategy and more something with their geographic disposition as a naval power.

Why all of the continental powers felt like they couldn't win a defensive war I don't know. I've heard someone argue that they didn't trust their local populations to deal with stress of losing many men, worrying about unrest or even revolution at home due to the political turmoil at the time (socialists, communists, etc.), which were an issue in all countries, but I'm not sure to which extent this was true.

In hindsight, Germany should have fought defensively. That way they could have beaten France and Russia. Going through Belgium gave Britain the casus belli and France, Belgium and the British Empire at once was simply too much for them to handle.

>France, Belgium and the British Empire at once
By that I meant France, Russia and the British Empire of course.

No offence to Belgium.

The Brittish treaty with Belgium was written up in the 1830s, nearly 100 years ago. The higher ups figured they wouldn't get involve in a costly war for such a minor treaty

No the Germans knew the Brits would defend Belgium because they wanted an excuse to join the war and knock Germany down a peg.
That is why the Kaiser tried to have the troops sent to Belgium redeployed to Russia before they crossed the border, unsuccessfully I might add.
If you want a good book about the build up and opening months of world war 1 check out the guns of august it has some good information in it.

They believed the Russians to be the stronger of their enemies.Their idea was to knock out the weaker foes quickly and then refocus on Russia.

And no professional army, remember only British at a time had professional army

>It's not like the french were just going to sit on their ass and wait for the war to finish.
Thats exactly what happened in 1870. The Prussians knocked out the French army at Sedan and the resistance offered by the French afterwards was laughable.

The higher ups figured Belgium had to be sovereign in order for the balance of powers in Europe to be preserved.

Netherlands were more valuable to Germany as a neutral than as ally.

The original von Schlieffen plan did involve invading the Netherlands though, and this is what happened in WW2.

But it's true that the plan was adjusted to keep the Netherlands neutral to avoid many disadvantages of a blockade. The Netherlands would still be able to trade overseas, and then trade those products with Germany. We more or less see the same happening now: Russia is subject to sanctions due to Ukraine, and suddenly landlocked Belarus is selling a lot of fish to Russia.
fort-russ.com/2016/03/record-fish-sales-to-belarus-bypassing.html

>France was easily crushed forty years prior before your nation was even united, and after losing Paris, which is very close to your borders

Pretty simple, when you're whole army is composed of traitors who wanted the monarchy to return.

They didn't plan for war though