LETTERS The wrong story
Sir: Sarah Gainham (Letters, 8 February) does not make it quite clear what she is working up to with her contention that some great truth about the first world war is being concealed. She appears, however, to wish to shift the responsibility for begin- ning the war from Germany to France, rather along the lines of the propaganda disseminated by German governments in the 1920s. But this lost cause is not convinc- ingly revived by the string of false state- ments she makes.
The Schlieffen Plan was not formulated in 1905 but in the 1890s. It was not a reply to 'war propaganda by France' over Alsace and Lorraine — by then a lost cause for most French politicians and people — but a way of circumventing the defensive Franco- Russian alliance of 1892. Contrary to her claim, the plan was indeed secret: how else can one explain the almost fatal French failure to take precautions against it? The war in the West did not, as she states, begin with a French attack on Alsace-Lorraine. The first offensive action — the essential feature of the Schlieffen Plan — was the overwhelming surprise attack on Belgium, absolutely not a response to any French attack: on the contrary, the French had pulled their troops back from the frontier to avoid precipitating hostilities. No one even at the time took seriously the official German excuse that French aircraft had bombed their territory. All this is perfectly well known, which is why I find Sarah Gainham's attempt to prove that black is white so intriguing.
The only part of the 'whole story' of 1914 still difficult fully to understand is why the German government and army plunged into war although knowing quite well that the consequences would be catastrophic.
Robert Tombs
108 Mawson Road, Cambridge
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