World War One was caused solely by the aggression of one country and its allies. It was made possible by the political, military and economical environments inside the aggressor country. These all contributed to the initiation of the First World War by the then mayor European power, Germany.
             To the credit of the Prussians, Germany had the largest (except for Russia), best equipped and best-trained army of Europe. With their innovative use of the heavy machine gun (the Maxim gun) in protected pillboxes the German quickly had an edge in over the other European armies. To use this military might in an effective way the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alfred Von Schlieffen devised an attack plan appropriately named the Schlieffen plan. According to this plan the bulk of the German army had to march through Belgium and Luxembourg attack France out flanking its armies in the process and after a six-week campaign France would be defeated and the whole German Army could then attack Russia. "The Schlieffen Plan rested on two critical assumptions. The first was the preservation of overwhelming German numerical superiority against France. The second was the inability of the Russian Empire, with its primitive system of land transportation, to deploy its numerically superior along the German before the Knockout blow to the west"(Kelroy pg.48). This plan should have been very effective when it was conceived. However during 1913 two events happened; one, French male citizen were now required to serve three years not two of military service this change would have brought the French army to the same size of the German army by 1915, 1916; secondly, with the help of France, Russia had created a large and relatively modern railroad system connecting it to the center of Europe. "... the undeniable fact that the German Empire was loosing its margin of strategic superiority in Europe over the combined armed forces of France and Rus...