ABSTRACT
The general expectation in Europe in 1914 was that the war would, like the wars of 1859, 1866 and 1870. Those wars could be adequately summed up in terms of decisive battles–Magenta and Solferino, Sadowa and Sedan. The protraction of the war posed for the entente powers the associated problems of alliances and war aims, for the two were closely connected until the very end of the war. The entry of Roumania into the war in 1916 similarly helped to make the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire a war aim, since the Roumanians' reward was, naturally enough, to be Transylvania. The German Reich regarded the rest of Europe as populated by racial inferiors, and its aim was the reduction of the other states of Europe to the condition of colonial dependencies. The peace treaties of 1919 have a clear justification as an attempt to contain the German Reich by the liberation of the Slavs, and the peasants of Transylvania.
