9781422286029

Prelude to a Catastrophe

7

Chapter 1 Prelude to a Catastrophe “Y ou will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.” That’s what Kaiser Wilhelm II told German troops marching off to war in early August 1914. Like their emperor, most Germans thought the conflict that was begin- ning would be brief. And soldiers and civilians alike joyously welcomed the fight. “We none of us got to sleep till three o’clock in the morning, we

French soldiers on their way to the front lines take a break in August 1914. When the con- flict began, both sides believed that it would end quickly. No one envisioned that the First World War would result in more than 15 million dead and would completely redraw the map of the world’s nation-states.