17. When the Germans Tried to Economize on the Manpower Necessary to Guard the Belgian-Dutch Border in World War I
In World War II, Germany invaded both the Netherlands and adjacent Belgium in order to get at France from the northeast. However, in the First World War, the Germans invaded only Belgium, and the Netherlands remained neutral. That left a lengthy border between the two countries, through which smugglers, spies, and saboteurs, slipped back and forth, and prisoners of war escaped to freedom. By the end of 1914, over a million Belgians had crossed into the Netherlands as refugees. The task of guarding the porous border tied down many German soldiers. Soldiers who were desperately needed elsewhere.
When the war began in August 1914, it was greeted with great enthusiasm by millions, who expected that it would last for only a few weeks or months at most, and would be over by Christmas. Instead, the conflict turned into a horrific bloodbath. It was stalemated in attritional combat in the trenches of the Western Front, which stretched for hundreds of miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea. So the Germans wracked their brains to come up with ways to economize on the manpower necessary to guard the Belgian-Dutch border. The results were tragic for many.