Military planning compounded the rigidity. Since the Congress of Vienna, there had been only one general European war—the Crimean War. (The Franco-Prussian War was confined to the two adversaries.) It had been conducted about a specific issue and served limited aims. By the turn of the twentieth century, military planners—drawing on what they took to be the lessons of mechanization and new methods of mobilization—began to aim for total victory in all-out war. A system of railways permitted the rapid movement of military forces. With large reserve forces on all sides, speed of mobilization
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