>> What they did not foresee was 1) how rapidly ad-hoc fortifications (i.e. trench lines) could be extended From the planning of the former chief of staff of t

>> What they did not foresee was 1) how rapidly ad-hoc fortifications (i.e. trench lines) could be extended From the planning of the former chief of staff of the german army 1905: [Along the entire line, the corps] will move on the enemy from position to position as in a siege, advancing by day or night, digging in, advancing again, digging in, etc. They will use all the instruments of modern technology to shake the enemy’s confidence behind his lines. The attack must never be permitted to come to a standstill, as in the East Asian war. come to a standstill = trench warfare; The reason he emphasizes that the attack must come not to a standstill is the dramatically larger armies employed in a future european war make massive fronts of trench lines inevitable. There are multiple commentaries that make exactly this point. Once the germans failed at the seine the military reported to the political leadership that the war was lost precisely for this reason. >> The governments want a win. At any cost. Well, germany believed it had excellent winning odds. But if a compromise treaty was offered to germany by the entente it almost certainly would have been accepted; that was actually the expectation of many german officers. The problem for the entente was that the reason the germans were in favor of a compromise peace was they believed a war would break out again a few years later that they would be in a dramatically stronger position to fight. Russia, for one, was ruined by the summer of 1915. Germany would have benefited a lot more from any temporary peace economically because they would have access to world trade again. Germany's allies would have come out a lot better as well. Basically, any peace offer by france or britain would have been equivalent to a german victory.