Thanks for the links, though I am sure they are going to be dismissed as being unreliable by at least one person due to what they say not being congenial to them. I do agree with the idea that if Apis did have anything to do with the plot, he did so as an act against Pasic, as his position was really tenuous after the failed officers coup in May. I am sure if people chack back far enough in the history here they will find I have also questioned many times why anyone would pick assassins with little or no experience with weapons if they wanted an attempt to succeed, and why there were no better candidates to be found inside a Serbia where large numbers of people had been involved in the two very recent Balkan Wars and would have excellent chances of being better candidates than Princip and Co. In politics you do not entrust junior personel or new recruits to leak sensitive information, or to give really important briefings, something Apis was likely to be aware of as well as the good reasons for not doing so, which would make his opting to select Princip as a would be assassin either idiotic or desperate.Slobodan Cekic wrote:What you asked for, Terry; This is another paper from Batakovic, dealing with the Salonika process. On the pdf page 16, (book page 287 ) is what you asked for, once more. The whole document below. My translation more exact, btw
As for the discussion on the short war/long war/winning/not losing, it seems the one person out of step to a degree with the thoughts coming out of the GGS was Schlieffen himself if the lionised version we see in popular history is to be accepted. The great general who had never commanded any significant formation in action, let alone an army or army group, is meant to have believed in a quick victory, the certainty in defeating France quickly, though we have little in the way of direct quotes or documents supporting such claims. What we do know is that Moltke the Elder prefered a long war scenario while relying on a political solution to end the war when he had exhausted his enemies; Waldersee changed over to an offensive strategy but planned little before being replaced by Schlieffen; Schlieffen believed in a short war; Moltke the Younger seems to have never believed in a short war, rejected the 'Schlieffen Plan' (or whatever it was really called) due to the problem of Paris having no solution, as well as the ability of the French to retreat into their interior to avoid an initial defeat until the Russians were in the field in full force; Falkenhayn was disliked by Schlieffen due to his belief in a frontal attack to shatter the French army as fast as possible (as was Tappen) by inflicting massive losses even at the expense of losses to his own forces, and when commanding the German army opted for a strategy of attrition similar in concept to that of Moltke the Elder. Did the real Schlieffen really believe something so different to all the other commanders? Even Zuber, who tends to opt for a most pro-German stance, feels Schlieffen intended a rather more limited objective than popular history would have it!
You asked the question 'who could say he has not lost, after such a war?' which is a good question. I would say, as Attrition has already, that the Germans hoped for a quick victory even if they felt one was unlikely, and such a victory was only possible if the French were stupid and allowed themselves to get an army or two surrounded again, but thought the long war the most likely outcome even if it was unwinnable. Sadly they also believed they had no chance of victory even in a single front war with Russia once The Great Program had completed in about 1917, so taking the last chance to get a possible victory was rather less unthinkable than it had been even in 1912/13. Paranoia and an inability to see beyond a military solution to the strategic issues Germany faced were probably the deciding factors, though other powers had very similar problems in their own decision making process too, hence in my mind Germany cannot be held solely to blame for the situation or events in 1914.