August 1914 Trivia Quiz

Answer: 7

Germany based seven armies on the border with France and Belgium, totalling 1,360,000 men. The First Army, under General von Kluck, would have to march the hardest and longest of all the armies once the war began.

Answer: Liège

Twelve forts surrounded Liège. The siege of Liège began on August 4 and lasted until August 16, two days behind schedule for the Germans.

Answer: Schlieffen Plan and Plan 17

Alfred von Schlieffen, the German chief of staff from 1891 till 1906, conceived the plan that bore his name. The goal was to defeat France before Russia could mobilize, in the event of a two-front war. Subsequent German generals weakened the plan by transferring some men from the right wing, which would conduct most of the offensive operations, to the left wing to check French plans of attack through the French-German frontier. Consequently, the armies on the right wing lacked the strength to envelop Paris.

Answer: He killed himself

General Aleksandr Samsonov, commander of the 2nd Russian Army at Tannenberg, killed himself after the Germans badly mauled his army in this key battle in East Prussia. He could not face Czar Nicholas II, who had placed much trust in him.

Answer: von Moltke, Joffre and French

Helmut von Moltke was the German chief of staff until he resigned after the failures of 1914. Joseph "Papa" Joffre led France's armies until December 1916. Sir John French commanded the British Expeditiary Force until 1915. Paul von Hindenburg was commander of the German Eighth Army on the Eastern Front.

The remaining three were the successors of the generals of 1914: Erich Von Falkenhayn succeeded von Moltke, Ferdinand Foch was the final leader of the French army, and Sir Douglas Haig led British forces from 1915 to the end of the war.

Answer: Luxemburg

The Germans steamrolled right over Luxemburg in 1914 (just as they would in 1940). Serbia proved suprisingly resilient and beat back two Austo-Hungarian invasions. Not until the Germans supplied an army in 1915 was Serbia knocked out of the war in a combined Central Powers operation.

The Germans never fully conquered Belgium. The Belgians held on to a tiny corner of their country, and three of the war's most terrible battles were fought there: First, Second and Third Ypres (the latter was also called Passchendaele).

The Netherlands was not a participant in World War 1.

Answer: The machine gun

By 1914, Germany was the only nation to have thoroughly integrated the machine gun into its armies. The machine gun truly proved its effectiveness during the Battle of the Frontiers, when German soldiers mowed down charging ranks of French soldiers. The bayonet and fighting spirit were no match for the machine gun. Poison gas and trench warfare didn't appear untii later in the war, and the machine gun was ineffective against concrete forts.

Answer: Heavy artillery

The Germany First Army used previously unseen heavy artillery to literally smash the forts. They used 420 mm howitzers, which were powerful enough to blast through the Belgian concrete and steel structures. Tanks wouldn't come into play for another three years, and rockets were still a novelty. Explosive charges weren't powerful enough to break through the forts.

Answer: Hindenburg and Ludendorff

Paul von Hindenberg and Erich Ludendorff first teamed together at Tannenberg. They were responsible for much of the German success on the Eastern front (though not all) and were brought west to command German forces in 1917. Hindenburg later held the title of commander in chief while Ludendorff was quartermaster general, but Ludendorff practically ran the show, and in 1918 was the de facto dictator of Germany. Von Falkenhayn succeeded von Moltke at the end of 1914, Richthofen was the name of the famous Red Baron fighter pilot, and Erwin Rommel and Erich von Manstein were German field marshals of the Second World War.

Answer: The Marne

Germany was stopped at the first Battle of the Marne in September 1914. French newspapers called it the "miracle of the Marne," but German exhaustion, last of supplies and command screw-ups had as much, if not more, to do with the battle's outcome as French resistance.

The Battle of the Frontiers was the name given to the fighting along the German-French border in 1914, which saw France's Plan 17 attack blasted apart. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the name of a joint US-French operation in the summer of 1918.

The SOmme was a long and bloody 1916 battle.