concentrate their efforts against Russia at the beginning.
Eh, with perfect hindsight, maybe. The thing about Russia is, it has often been possible to inflict vast defeats on its armies in the field; but how do you knock it out of a war? Sure, in the Great War it did happen eventually—but the Germans weren’t planning on multiple years of war that would stretch societies past their breaking point. (For that matter, in 1917 Germany was itself feeling the strain; it’s called the “Turnip Winter” for a reason.) There were vast slaughters and defeats on the Eastern Front, true; but the German armies were never anywhere near Moscow—not even after the draconian peace signed at Brest-Litovsk. The German staff presumably didn’t think there was any chance of getting a reasonably quick decision in Russia.
Do note, when a different German leader made the opposite assumption, “it is only a question of kicking in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down”… that didn’t go so well either; and he didn’t even have a Western front to speak of. It seems to me that Germany’s “problems” in 1914 just didn’t have a military solution; I put problems in scare quotes because they did have the excellent peaceful solution of keeping your mouth shut and growing the economy. It’s not as though France was going to start anything.
Eh, with perfect hindsight, maybe. The thing about Russia is, it has often been possible to inflict vast defeats on its armies in the field; but how do you knock it out of a war? Sure, in the Great War it did happen eventually—but the Germans weren’t planning on multiple years of war that would stretch societies past their breaking point. (For that matter, in 1917 Germany was itself feeling the strain; it’s called the “Turnip Winter” for a reason.) There were vast slaughters and defeats on the Eastern Front, true; but the German armies were never anywhere near Moscow—not even after the draconian peace signed at Brest-Litovsk. The German staff presumably didn’t think there was any chance of getting a reasonably quick decision in Russia.
Do note, when a different German leader made the opposite assumption, “it is only a question of kicking in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down”… that didn’t go so well either; and he didn’t even have a Western front to speak of. It seems to me that Germany’s “problems” in 1914 just didn’t have a military solution; I put problems in scare quotes because they did have the excellent peaceful solution of keeping your mouth shut and growing the economy. It’s not as though France was going to start anything.
Not by itself, but France was very willing to support Russian aggression against the central powers.