When Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser

DESCRIPTION: "A silly German sausage dreamt Napoleon he'd be" and so broke his promise to Britain. He tried to reach Paris, but hasn't gotten there yet, because "Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser, Europe took a stick and made him sore."
AUTHOR: Alf Ellerton (source: Arthur-WhenThisBloodyWarIsOver)
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (Arthur-WhenThisBloodyWarIsOver)
KEYWORDS: war royalty promise
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Arthur-WhenThisBloodyWarIsOver, pp. 13-15, "When Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser" (1 text)
DT, KIBOSHK
Roud #V15590
NOTES [749 words]: This song gives, to put it mildly, a distorted view of the opening phase of World War I. What follows is derived from the books in the Bibliography; I'm going to tell it so briefly that I won't even try to cite pages, but it's roughly pp. 45-80 of Keegan, the entries "Belgium," "Invasion of Belgium," and "Schlieffen Plan" in Pope/Wheal, and pp. 30-45 of Stokesbury.
Germany had known for a decade before World War I that, if war came in Europe, it might have to fight both France and Russia, one to the east and one to the west, with no other power on Germany's side except Austria, which was hardly a power at all. The German General Staff did not think they could successfully fight both simultaneously (they may have been wrong about this, but it's what they believed), so they concluded that they had to try to knock one of them out of the war and then concentrate on the other. And, since France was more efficient than Russia, the Germans decided to attack France first.
Had they known France's absurd plan (which was to take two of their five armies and try to recapture Alsace, lost to the Germans in the 1870 war), the Germans might have just stood back and let the French commit suicide. But they didn't know. So they concentrated seven armies against France (leaving just one to delay the Russians) and planned to us them in a great steamroller against the French, holding their lines around Alsace in the east and leaving the bulk of their force to attack the French left (western) flank. This was the Schlieffen Plan, which at its simplest involved overwhelming the left side of the French defensive line and from there driving on toward Paris.
There have been debates for the last century over whether the Schlieffen Plan could have worked had it been implemented properly. This isn't really relevant; what matters is that three German armies had to attack the French left. And, to get in position to do so, they needed to pass through Belgium, and to use its roads and railroads to bring up supplies.
Belgium was, by treaty and inclination, neutral. They supported neither Germany nor France, and they had fortified their frontiers. They refused French help -- but also refused to grant the Germans passage rights. This was presumably what is meant by "putting the kibosh on the Kaiser"; the Belgians would fight rather than give in.
Fighting was what they got; their fortifications gave the Germans some trouble, but they broke through and headed into France.
Britain was one of the countries that had guaranteed Belgian neutrality. When the Germans invaded and would not pull back, Britain declared war. The immediate British contribution was small, but eventually they would control nearly half the Western Front. The attack on Belgium -- which eventually involved several atrocities -- did not cause the Schlieffen Plan to succeed (the French were able to hold the Germans at the Battle of the Marne; the invaders never reached Paris), but it did cause the Germans to gain another enemy, whose contribution was probably decisive; without Britain, France and Russia might not have been able to hold back Germany.
Miscellaneous references in the song:
* Serbia: The initial conflict was between Austria-Hungary and Serbia; the Austrians accused the Serbs or orchestrating the assassination of Crown Prinz Franz Ferdinand
* Liege: Liège was one of the three great Belgian fortresses the Germans captured to clear their path through Belgium
* "First stop Paris": Paris was the ultimate objective of the Schlieffen Plan. The Germans failed to capture it.
* Turkey: It was still the Ottoman Empire at that time, not "Turkey," but of course it was ruled by Turks. At the time this song was written, the Turks were still neutral, but they had taken in the German battlecruiser Goeben; for background, see the notes to the "Dardanelles Patrol Song"
* "His warships... disappeared from sight": The German navy was outnumbered by about 3:2 by the British navy; so the Germans avoided battle with the British fleet; the only major naval battle of the war, the Battle of Jutland, occurred because the Germans were hoping to trap a part of the British fleet and instead ended up facing the whole thing
* Jellicoe: Admiral Sir John Jellicoe commanded the British fleet from 1914 until after Jutland
* "I'll settle John": I.e. the Germans will defeat John Bull. They didn't, quite, but the British lost most of a generation of their young men; no one really won the First World War! - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.6
File: AWTBW013

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.