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A comment on Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World. Parent comment

Re:Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World by michaelt on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @06:21AM (#16366311) 

  Once the armies were assembled it was going to be
  impossibly difficult to move them all back so they got
  put into action instead.
I read a more subtle theory in the book "Arms and Influence" by Thomas C. Schelling [1].

In short, at the start of WW1, the Russians had two plans available: A plan to mobilise against the Austro-Hungarians only, and a plan to mobilise against them and the Germans at the same time.

But if they went for the Austria-Hungary-only plan, they'd be extra-vulnerable to German attack. After all, the troops and trains are all in the wrong place!

So although they were _mostly_ worried about Austria-Hungary, they were moderately worried about Germany, so they went with the mobilise-against-both plan. And as soon as Russia started massing troops at the German border, what could Germany do except respond in kind? Hence there was an escalation to war despite the fact neither side would benefit from it.

In other words: The logistics played a part, but it wasn't _just_ using the troops because they're here now - the logistics forced the Russians to choose between two bad options, forcing them into a choice that would inevitably trigger the escalation to war.

[1] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TX_yAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161&lp...

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Re:Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World by notahacker on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @06:29AM (#16366338)
The accompanying theory is that Germany had long planned for the eventuality of fighting a Franco-Russian alliance, and their agreed military strategy for dealing with this potential situation was to attack France first, in the hope that they could knock France out the war before Russia was fully mobilised. The need for speed in executing this plan necessitated an attack via neutral Belgium to avoid France's border forts and easily defensible territory (which was what brought Belgian ally Britain into the war)
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