telegram to the Emperor Franz Joseph on 6 July 1914. The telegram has become known to history as the "Blank Check".In order to balance the power, France and Russia signed an alliance. Russia saw itself as the 'protector of Slavs' in the war, and immediately mobilized. When the war began, the German decision that if they were going to have to fight Russia and France, they would strike at France first according to its Schlieffen Plan, and then turn West to Russia. Germans believed that Russia at the time was unprepared for war, and that it will take a long time for Russia to mobilize its army. On July 28, 1914 Austria declared war against Serbia. Russia responded by partially mobilizing against Austria as a 'protector of Slavs', and Germany insisted that Russia immediately demobilize. Russia refused to do so, and on August 1 and 3 declared war on Russia and France. When war was declared in August people involved on all sides felt that it would be a short war, and will be over by Christmas.In order for Germany to accomplish its Schlieffen Plan, Germany occupied Belgium. By August most of Belgium was under German occupation and the Schlieffen Plan appeared to be going well, but it brought Britain into the war because they had made a treaty with Belgium before, and Schlieffen Plan involved the invasion of neutral Belgium.One of the problems during the Great War that military staffs and thinking were far behind new weapons and logistics. In other words military commanders like General Haig or Marshall Joffre were not quite ready to the war with it's modern weapons and new technologies such as machine guns, bunkers and railroad systems that allowed to bring troops quicker into defensive positions. This was the first war in the human history where the weapons of defense were superior to offensive. The First World War is also known as a war of attrition. In order to protect themselves from modern weapons, men dug in along the whole of the Wester...
