CHAPTER II WHY THE PLANS WERE CHANGED
Let us now pass from designs to events, and, reviewing in their military bearing the operations between August 3, when the German troops crossed the Belgian frontier, to the day, exactly one month later, when the German plans were apparently changed, deal with the question: Why were the plans changed?
The Germans entered Liége on August 10. They had hoped by that time to be, if not at, at any rate close to, Paris. In part they were unable to begin their advance through Belgium until August 17 or August 18, because they had not, until that date, destroyed all the forts at Liége, but in part, also, these delays had played havoc with the details of their scheme.
Consider how the shock of such a delay would make itself felt. The mighty movement by this time going on throughout the length and breadth of Germany found itself suddenly jerked into stoppage. All its couplings clashed. Excellently designed as are the strategic railways of Germany they are no more than sufficient for the transport of troops, guns, munitions, foodstuffs, and other things necessary in such a case. If, owing to delays, troop trains got into the way of food trains, and vice versa, the resultant difficulties are readily conceivable. All this war transport is run on a military time table. The time table was there, and it was complete in every particular. But it had become unworkable. Gradually the tangle was straightened out, but the muddle, while it lasted, was gigantic, and we can well believe that masses of men, arriving from all parts of Germany at Aix-la-Chapelle, found no sufficient supplies awaiting them, and that sheer desperation drove the German Government to collect supplies by plundering all the districts of Belgium within reach. As the Belgians were held to be wilfully responsible for the mess, the cruelty and ferocity shown in these raids ceases to be in any sense unbelievable.
Dislocation of the plan, however, was not all. In the attempts to carry the fortress of Liége by storm the Germans lost, out of the three corps forming the army of General von Emmich, 48,700 men killed and wounded.[10] These corps, troops from Hanover, Pomerania, and Brandenburg, formed the flower of the army. The work had to be carried out of burying the dead and evacuating the wounded. The shattered corps had to be reformed from reserves. All this of necessity meant additional complications.
Then there was the further fighting with the Belgians. What were the losses sustained by the Germans between the assaults on Liége and the occupation of Brussels is, outside of Germany, not known, nor is it known in Germany save to the Government. To put that loss as at least equal to the losses at Liége is, however, a very conservative estimate.
Meanwhile, the French had advanced into Belgium along both banks of the Meuse and that further contributed to upset the great preparation.
We have, therefore, down to August 21, losses, including those in the fighting on the Meuse and in Belgian Luxemburg, probably equal to the destruction of two reinforced army corps.