The British Expeditionary Forceâ??s intervention in World War I :: essays research papers

When France, Britain and Russia entered the threefold Entente, Germany was faced with a problem. It wanted to capture France but knew that if it attacked then Russia would engage and it would face a war on two fronts. The Schlieffen see was a solution to this threat. The plan was to invade France through Belgium and then to quickly to build up Paris by flanking around it from the north. Once Paris was in German hands France would be relatively secure, leaving Germany to deal with Russia to the East.There were a number of reasons for the failure of the Schlieffen plan it relied on a series of assumptions in order to succeed. The Germans assumed that Russia would take a long time to marshal its forces from all over a large country. The Germans also forgot about the accordance signed by both Prussia and Britain in 1839, stating that they would defend the neutrality of saucily formed Belgium, the Kaiser called it a scrap of paper but it may come up have lost Germany the war.D uring the course of the war the British military army which arrived very soon after the invasion of Belgium had a very burning(prenominal) role in slowing down German forces. Despite its relatively small size of 70,000 men the BEF was very effective in competitiveness alongside French units in order to inflict many casualties upon their attackers. Sir tooshie French ordered the force to defend the town of Mons and they did so very effectively, holding the town against huge opposition before finally falling back.I think that the BEF was one of a number of issues that Von Schlieffen did not account for in his plan and that altogether these meant that the plan failed. Although the British Expeditionary Force played a very important role it was sure enough not the only cause of the problems encountered by Germany in executing the Schlieffen plan. early(a) factor which played a major role were the defence put in up by Belgian forces and the speed of Russias mobilisation, nei ther of which Germany was expecting. The Schlieffen plan was to capture France within six weeks Germany assumed that during much of this time Russia would in time me amassing its forces, in fact within 10 days Russia was mobilised to attack Germany from the east front with more forces than could be contained by Austria-Hungary and so some German units were forced to return in order to defend their homeland from attack, this debased their advance through France.