There's also - not mentioned in the BBC piece - a class/political component to that. The left end of the political spectrum was holding on to "proletarian inte

There's also - not mentioned in the BBC piece - a class/political component to that. The left end of the political spectrum was holding on to "proletarian internationalism", and agitated for workers of one nation refusing to shoot at workers of another. The fears of the top brass came into being in Russia, where the Bolsheviks used the war as the main lever to gain power in November 1917, because the democratic parties didn't end the war in the February revolution. (Unexpectedly, really, the prime target for revolutionary upheaval was industrialized Germany.)