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Of those age classes, yes.

Hence why I only said the missing or the dead. The French have lost, as KIA, MIA or POW, the same level of dead and missing they had historically in the course of the entire war. That means their Pre-War Army has been gutted, giving the Germans plenty of opportunities to exploit the situation...

Probably, but even if 30 or 40% do successfully break out, you've still had the French take all of their historical 1914-1918 casualties in the space of a single campaign season. The French manpower was effectively exhausted in 1918, and now that is their state from 1914 onward.

Total French casualties in World War I were 1,385,300 dead and missing. Total mobilized French forces in August of 1914 amounted to 3.6 million, of which 60% have just marched into a grand encirclement; that's 2,160,000 million killed, missing, captured and wounded. The French manpower base...

Honestly, this does seem like proto WWII maneuver warfare, especially the use of frontline communications and airplanes to direct fire support and the focus on ensuring sufficient wagons to enable greater mobility. It doesn't really read all that different from the early days of Operation...

And what a horrible pick.

I don't think I can agree with this assessment, because artillery only played an important role in the initial phase and thereafter the course of the battle consisted of frequent and wide ranging flanking movements. 1914-1918 Online categorizes it thusly: The joint German-Austro-Hungarian...

There is no reason to assume such because it requires the Germans to literally hand their war plans over to the Russians; I know you said they would "telegraph" their plans to the Entente, but there is absolutely no reason to do this and doesn't fit with what any of the powers were doing in the...

Pretty much it would happen in August.

France's produced 21.57 million tons of iron ore in 1913, of which 90% was mined in Lorraine (i.e. Briey Longwy), according to Abraham Berglund's "The Iron-Ore Problem of Lorraine" in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 33, No. 3 (May, 1919), pp. 531-554. Importing from elsewhere requires...

Except it was done historically, in that memorandums were drawn up at the time and staff officers looked at it; Post-War one even did a detailed study who found it definitely could've worked and would've resulted in the bulk of the German Army in the East within two to three weeks. It was the...

I think it bears further explanation why the East First/French offensive into Alsace Lorraine would be bad, since I have repeatedly said it now. Terrence M. Holmes, writing in "Not the Schlieffen Plan 1914", explains the situation thusly: If Moltke had followed Schlieffen’s real intentions for...

Presuming the Russians adopt a defensive stance despite them having already activated their planning in July/August, which I presume is the POD of the OP in that the East First option pushed by the Kaiser is adopted, it has no real effect on their ability to hold back the German-Austro Hungarian...

French unity collapses after 60% or more of their army is killed or captured attacking into Alsace-Lorraine, which enables the Germans to then effectively walk to Paris if the French don't see reason with the only real delaying factor being making the logistics for such an advance available in...