ABSTRACT
The Germans' expectation that the war would be decided in a matter of weeks was in fact fulfilled, though not in the sense they had intended. By 13 September 1914, their attempt to effect the total elimination of French military resistance in six weeks had ended in abrupt failure. The establishment of a static German line on the River Aisne, and the later extension of that line north-eastwards to the Channel coast, marked what proved the irreversible defeat of the attempt at the military conquest of all Europe. The Schlieffen Plan, on which the Germans based their hopes of destroying French military power in six weeks, had been completed by 1907; and because of the feebleness of German civilian authority it had become the only fixed element in German policy. The battle, begun by a fierce bombardment; the French saved Verdun, at a cost of nearly half a million men, the Germans suffering very little less.
