Why did they go with the trouble of going to West instead of South at Serbia, where was war declared by Austria-Hungary?
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Because Serbia was being joined by Russia which was allied to France.
Germany was concerned about a two front war and had a plan to knock France out of the war quickly to avoid that. It didn’t work and also brought the UK into the war.
Allies, France (and Russia) were allied. The Schlieffen plan was basically an attempt to knock France out early and then focus on Russia. https://youtu.be/1raRARbpzyQ
Because Serbia was not a threat to Germany (and Austria was already invading them, and Germany didn’t have a border with Serbia anyway), France and Russia were.
Germany’s goal was to quickly invade France and knock them out of the war so they wouldn’t have to fight on two fronts.
They were all allied. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, who called in their ally Russia, who declared war on Austria-Hungary, who called in their ally Germany, who then declared war on Russia, who called in their ally France, who declared war on Germany. So for Germany their options were to either fight both France and Russia or to abandon their ally Austria-Hungary to fight Russia on their own. And when they had to fight both Russia and France they could either try to defend against France while trying to do like Napoleon and Charles before and invade Russia, or they could try to take France before they had mobilized and then turn around to fight Russia. The German strategy were very sound, the issue was that they were unable to execute their strategy.
Germany entered the war on a pretense of helping Austria. They were eyeing war with Russia and their ally France since at least 1910. Moltke and other German generals were pressuring kaiser to start the war as soon as possible. And they also demanded strict following with Schlieffen plan, even though kaiser Wilhelm wanted to avoid attackinjg France if possible.
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