"1914: German numbers" Topic
5 Posts
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redcoat | 24 Jan 2019 4:27 p.m. PST |
Hi all, I am thoroughly confused – can anyone please enlighten me? I am watching a documentary ('Great War in Numbers') that says the Germans mobilised 4.5m men at the start of the war. Wow! The documentary then seems to indicate that only around 1m Germans participated in the Schlieffen Plan, although I'm not clear whether that includes all the armies in the west (inc. those defending Alsace-Lorraine), or just those involved in Moltke's giant cartwheel. So where was the balance of the 4.5m Germans supposedly mobilised in 1914? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks! |
khanscom | 24 Jan 2019 6:51 p.m. PST |
One of my references indicates that in 1900 Germany had 6,213,000 "men enrolled for war" comprised of 3,013,000 in an offensive force (presumably first and second line reserves) and 3,200,000 in the landsturm. Haythornthwaite's "The World War I Source Book" says that within a week of mobilization the army had had been increased to more than 3.8 million with 2 million or more deployed on the western and eastern fronts. Likely the unaccounted for were in transit, training, assigned to internal duties, etc. |
Old Contemptibles | 24 Jan 2019 6:55 p.m. PST |
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Dan Cyr | 24 Jan 2019 11:01 p.m. PST |
Same number of reserve divisions as regular divisions at start of war, how many were in East, still mobilizing and not at front, etc. If regarding the Schlieffen Plan, are the troops not trying to flank the French via Belgium and Luxembourg (attacking to pin the French) considered to be part of the plan? As I recall, as many troops were not marching on the western flank as were attacking on the central and eastern flank. Plus lots of divisions/corps were not even in the front lines (look at numbers sent east after the Russians panicked the German High Command. Dan |
Martin Rapier | 25 Jan 2019 12:31 a.m. PST |
The front line strength of twentieth century Armies is generally a small faction of their overall strength. All those chaps néed to be trained, moved, fed, signalled etc which consumes vast numbers men. The millions of horses also take a bit of looking after. |
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