In private, he scorned Edward's personal diplomacy which supported Britain's shift from isolation to alliances with former foes France and Russia, calling his uncle "Satan" for plotting to encircle Germany.

It re-emerged in 1910 when Wilson used his new position of Director of Military Operations and his friendship with Foch to reinvigorate joint war plans, just in time for the second Moroccan crisis of 1911, whose aftermath was a shake up of the Royal Navy's top brass, a naval agreement between Britain and France and a non-binding mutual support of their armies.

However, an opportunity to change this course and the twentieth century emerged shortly after 5 PM when Foreign Minister Jagow and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg unexpectedly received a telegram from Ambassador Lichnowsky stating that Britain would remain neutral if Germany did not attack France.

"[6] Despite General von Staabs arguing in 1925 that technically four of the seven armies could have been deployed to the Eastern Front by August 15, temperamentally it is difficult to believe Germany would not have attacked France when Der Tag arrived.

Admiral von Tirpitz pragmatically questioned the wisdom of serving an ultimatum to Russia if Germany did not intend to attack it, but diplomatic protocol and military schedules prevailed: the German die was cast.

On July 30, the French Cabinet, led by Premier Viviani, made the unprecedented decision "never before taken in history"[7] to withdraw troops ten kilometers from its borders to avoid clashes with the German Army.

The four Liberal Imperialists, Asquith, Grey, Haldane, and Churchill, believed Britain's national interest lay in supporting France, while the Little Englanders led by Morley, were suspicious of any foreign adventures.

Despite the poor state of its army, which consisted of only six infantry and one cavalry division, no heavy artillery, no clear war strategy, and four different mobilization plans, Albert remained resolute: "Our answer must be 'No' whatever the consequences.

On the political front: At 3 PM on August 3, Grey revealed to the House of Commons the existence of informal military talks with France and asked it not to stand by and witness the violation of Belgian neutrality and the "unmeasured aggrandizement of any power whatsoever.

Simultaneously in Berlin, the Kaiser famously declared in his speech from the throne: “From this day on, I recognize no parties but only Germans.”[16] At 3 PM, Bethmann-Hollweg informed the Reichstag that German troops were “perhaps already in Belgium" and admitted publicly that this “invasion [was] contrary to international law”,[16] after which it unanimously voted for a 5 billion mark war credit and adjourned for four months.

After intense debate, he reluctantly conceded but issued John French conflicting orders: the BEF was to support France but avoid undue risk and remain entirely independent of Allied command.

[23] Such outspoken menace worked to solidify opposition to Germany, caused George Bernard Shaw to become "fed up" at Prussian Militarism, and H. G. Wells to condemn the German "war god" and hope for an end to all armed conflict.

By September 2, the French armies had fallen back 150 miles from their starting positions on August 24; soldiers retreated haggard, hungry, and exhausted, marching past their own homes which they knew Germans would occupy the next day.

These soldiers were, in fact, “phantom,” but the British public’s hallucination was so strong that it contaminated France, where droves of Parisians gathered at railway stations to welcome these imaginary Cossacks, and Germany, where it influenced the military command at the Marne as much as the actual troop movements.

Recognizing that Maunoury was defeated, the BEF was absent, and his flank was secure, Kluck decided on August 31 to turn southeast at Bülow's suggestion to cut off the French Vth Army's retreat.

Kluck’s push reflected the confidence of German officers in their imminent entry into Paris, except for Moltke, who, puzzled by the absence of the usual signs of victory, believed the French were not defeated but retreating to prepare a counteroffensive.

[40] The Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan "was gripped from her wonderful first sentence":[41] So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.One of the key events took place on August 1.

"[44] But Tuchman was more interested in writing a book on the escape of the German cruiser Goeben from Royal Navy's Gloucester, an event that would precipitate the Ottoman Empire into the war and for which she had personal affinity since she was present, although aged only two, with her parents on a small steamer from which they witnessed this naval pursuit.

"[45] Being the grandchild of Henry Morgenthau, she is referring to herself as she confirmed in 1981 in her book Practicing History,[46] in which she tells the story of her father, Maurice Wertheim, who was traveling from Constantinople to Jerusalem on August 29, 1914, to deliver funds to the Jewish community there.

"[51] Indeed, all reviewers have praised her narrative style, even the academic historians who have raised a few pointed critiques to The Guns of August because Tuchman had erected a rigid, deterministic thesis by relying too heavily on sources that corroborated it, ignoring, misrepresenting or downplaying factors that undermined it and veiling it with an anti-German veneer, which could be partially explained by the context of her writing as 1962 was probably the height of the Cold War.

He provides two such examples: In 2014, Margaret MacMillan, who was greatly influenced by the book, ends her positive review on a similar note: "her main argument that entangling alliances and rigid military timetables caught Europe in a grip that led the powers inexorably towards catastrophe is no longer accepted by most historians.

Tuchman has ignored the major works on the origins of the war written by Sidney Fay, Luigi Albertini, Pierre Renouvin, Bernadotte Schmitt, George Gooch and William Langer.

[62] Instead, as Professor Hale concludes, she relied on "controversial sources, which in many instances are not evaluated critically, [i.e. the retrospective works by statesmen and soldiers] rather than upon the solid general staff operational histories of the respective military establishments.

When it comes to the first Tuchman has disregarded in particular three developments: On the other hand, the chapter 10 dedicated to the Gloucester's chase of the Goeben and the Breslau in the Mediterranean is "long and somewhat awkward", "inadequate", "out of context" [65] and contains "numerous inaccuracies and over-simplifications."

[62] Professor Gordon points out that Tuchman's excessive focus on Germans' villainy led her to pay "[l]ittle more than passing mention, if that, [..] to universally operating forces as nationalism, imperialism, trade rivalries, and militarism, in creating a situation where war was an increasingly acceptable solution for the problems of Europe."

Suffice is to add that one of the German generals, Alexander von Kluck, duly emerges as a "grim-visaged Attila" and that that Prussian officer corps is, in any case, composed exclusively of "bullnecked" or "wasp-waisted" types."

[58] Professor MacMillan continues explaining Tuchman's anti-German bias as a consequence of "[h]er view that the Germans somehow wanted to impose their culture on the world [which] is surely a reflection of that great ideological struggle of her own time between the west and the Soviet bloc."

By April 2024, The Guns of August has been translated in (at least) 19 languages: Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

According to the cover notes of an audio version of The Guns of August, "[President John F. Kennedy] was so impressed by the book, he gave copies to his cabinet and principal military advisers, and commanded them to read it.

Here it was absurd since the additional forces made available by 'Alert' had no military significance.Graham Allison, a political scientist who covered the Cuban Missile Crisis in Essence of Decision, noted the effect of Tuchman's book on Kennedy, but also its implications for the proper study of decision-making and warfare.