Word: germanic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...grew eloquent: 2,000,000 men under arms in Germany, with 500,000 to be added in August; heavy concentrations of German troops on the Polish frontier from Danzig to Cracow; five German divisions in motion near Breslau; schools in Bohemia transformed into hospitals; troops and supplies moving east through Ostmark*-all this convinced him that "it would be disastrous, it would be pathetic, it would be shameful for the House to write itself off as an effective and potent factor in the situation. . . ." If things were in dead balance, no move should be taken that might weaken resistance...
Last week the Army of the Po went through its paces before Il Duce, King Vittorio Emmanuele, and German, Hungarian, Spanish and Japanese military missions. The troops first concentrated near Padua (see map). Their task was to dash 230 miles across North Italy to repulse "Red" (French) invaders who had supposedly overwhelmed the frontier and were descending on Turin from the Alpine passes...
...August 25, 1914, seven German Armies totaling 1,700,000 men were spread over a jagged 300-mile front from the Swiss frontier to the outskirts of Paris. In 20 days they had advanced like a vast hinge whose outer point traveled 180 miles, smashed through Belgium, through Mons and down the Oise, occupied 14,000 square miles of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. The French plan of an offensive through the German centre had been abandoned. At Paris, in the headquarters of General Joffre, commanding the French forces, the shock had bereft most officers of any plan except continued retreat...
...original German plan provided that the First Army under Kluck was to pass through Belgium, shoulder the Belgian Army out of the war, march southwest of Paris across the Seine, protecting the German right flank. But in the uncertainty of movement and position, Kluck lost direction, veered toward Paris instead of circling southwest to envelop it. Sensing the significance of the German right wing's undershot, in the evening of August 25, Marshal Joffre's tactical adviser, a smooth, silent, chubby little 42-year-old officer named Maurice Gamelin had written out Joffre's historic Instruction No.2...
Kluck continued southeast. Early in the morning of September 4, General Galliéni, military governor of Paris in France's greatest emergency, saw that Kluck was still moving southeast of the city and exposing the German right flank. He rushed his troops into position, telephoned Joffre asking for permission to attack. At six that same morning Colonel Gamelin, inconspicuous in his dark chasseur uniform, mysterious to other officers in his influence on Joffre, saw the same opportunity. He left his lodgings, crossed to Joffre's Operations Section, where officers were arguing over huge military maps scaled...