Historians have not done justice to discussing the Belgian army at the start of World War I. It is sort of skipped over while Great thought is poured into what the major powers decided. It has been our consistent thesis that the Great General Staff (GGS) did rrent job in keeping the Kaiser and the war cabinet appraised of how much risk faced the Germans because of the Belgian army. Why they did that is the $1,000,000 question. Locked away was he extremely secret plan known as the ˙Handstreich. This Coup de Main was not only not known to the Kaiser but also to the soldiers that had to execute it. It was a terrible plan. This one was designed to lose from the get go. But yet it was the best plan that the GGS could come up with. The general staff’s military intelligence branch played a central role in Schlieffen’s decision to march through Belgium. It had meticulously observed and analysed France’s fortifications along the French- German border and come to the conclusion that a rapid German advance through
this defence system, which had been intensified since the 1870s, was not possible.
The 4th department, being responsible for the observation of France and Belgium’s fortifications, repeatedly devised attackson individual French forts,
Speed was, however, a condition sine qua non for a German victory, since the French army had to be defeated before the slow-mobilizing Russian troops could invade East Prussia. In a 1898 memorandum, Schlieffen considered it necessary to bypass the “Great Wall built along the Moselle and Meuse rivers”. The French fortresses could only be circumvented in the north “through Luxembourg, which has no army, and Belgium, which will want to withdraw its relatively weak army into fortifications”, especially since it is “easier […] and more effective” here, “because it directly hits the enemy’s line of retreat”. It was not only the “topographical reasons”, as Jehuda Wallach believed,2that led Schlieffen to march through Belgium, but also the fear of a French army applying that exact strategy and attacking through Belgium itself.
Germany was well aware that Belgium had a road network of 10.000 kilometers and, with 4.700 kilometres of railway lines, the densest network in Western Europe. Nine major routes connecting Germany and France passed through Belgium. Schlieffen’s successor Helmuth von Moltke adhered to the fundamental con- cept of the plan devised by his predecessor – an initial offensive strike against France via Belgium – even though he was far less convinced of its success.29 The possibility of a formidable Belgian resistance particularly concerned him. Thus, when Moltke was appointed Quartermaster General in 1904, becoming Schlieffen’s deputy, he immediately communicated his concerns to the Chief of Staff: In the event of a German attack, the Belgians would defend their territory with full force and destroy the Meuse bridges, the main railway bridges and tunnels.
Apart from the railway-related concerns, Moltke also seemed to have more scruples than Schlieffen when it came to violating the neutrality of the Benelux countries. To preserve the Netherlands as a “windpipe” and not be cut off from international markets in the event of a British naval blockade, he amended the German war plans so the Dutch province of Limburg would not be entered by German troops. In the end, it was primarily France’s well-developed fortification system, the Swiss Alps and the terrain and infrastructure of Belgium that persuaded the German general staff to disregard the neutrality of the neighboring country and invade. Although Moltke had far more problems with the planned breach of inter- national law than Schlieffen did, the fear of a French offensive through Belgium and the assumption that the Belgian Kingdom had made arrangements with the Third Republic and Great Britain weighed more heavily than moral opprobrium. With marching through Belgium viewed by the general staff as a necessity if the coming war was to be won, German military intelligence then had the task of assessing whether the Belgian army should be considered a serious adversary.
Shortly after the turn of the century, the German general staff did not believe the Belgian army to be well prepared for war. This evaluation was based on re- ports by the general staff’s 3rd department, which was responsible for analyzing not only the Belgian army, but also the armies of France, Great Britain and other Western European countries. German military planning was based on the 3rd department’s intelligence work that had confirmed for Schlieffen that Belgium would withdraw its “relatively weak army into fortresses”5 in the event of a German invasion. The Belgian Army Act of 1902 had not expanded its peacetime standing army, leaving it at 48,000 men, Although a specially created military commission had proposed an increase, this was resisted by a broad anti-militarist movement. However, the Army Act of 1902 only included provisions for drafting some 13,000 recruits an annually, to be selected by lot. Furthermore, the conscription quota had to be approved by parliament every year. The 13,000 recruits were to be supplemented by 3,000 volunteers – a number that was never reached. The state of the Belgian army’s equipment was also deplorable. Until 1908 the artillery did not have guns with a modern barrel recoil. Of the 180,000 soldiers available to Belgium in the event of a war, only 80,000 men belonged to the field army, while the rest were assigned to reserve units and manning fortresses.
In view of the Franco-German tensions during the first Moroccan crisis of 1905/06, many Belgian newspapers had stressed that the army was not ready to defend the country against an aggressor. The Belgian parliament was beginning to doubt whether the planned enlistment of 13 classes was really sufficient to reach the army’s official wartime strength of 187,000 men. However, the army could still rely on the Civic Guard, which was under the Minister of the Interior’s authority and included every male Belgian from 20 to 40 years of age who had not served as a soldier. In the event of a war, the Civic Guard’s main tasks would be to patrol the borders, protect the roads connecting the front with vital supplies and reinforce the fortress crews. The parliament approved the bill to expand the Antwerp fortress after all but it would hardly be able to stop a German march through Belgium
Based on these judgements, Moltke, in a 1908 letter to Chancellor Bülow, classified the Belgian army as “militarily inferior” and “not capable of solving major tasks”.
After long and heated debates, the new Belgian minister of war, was finally able to present a new law on military service on 8 December 1909, which broke with the previous lottery system, abolished deputizing and the possibility of redeeming, and thus was a step towards military service as a personal duty. From then on, one son per family was drafted into the army, while the length of service was reduced.
