Balkan strategy

[Guest Roger J. Marchant]

I wonder if anyone can provide reference(s) to support the story that over the years preceding WW1 the Anglo/French (or English; or French) High Command had discussed the possibility of attacking Germany via Turkey? I read somewhere that there had been four-yearly general Staff conferences ever since the Franco-Prussian war, where the more politically and strategically minded generals realised that (i) the next major war would be France/England against Germany plus any of her satellites; (ii) the war would be decided on what became the Western Front, and: (iii) there would be a stalemate that needed to be broken. A naval blockade would take too long, so two options were canvassed—the Baltic and the Balkans. At the conferences this problem may even have been posed as a ‘Strategic Exercise without Troops’.[/size][/font]