For many years the assumption that Germany went to war in 1914 believing that the war would be short has remained unchallenged. However, recent research by Stig Förster has cast doubt on this traditional interpretation. By examining surviving German military intelligence reports about the French army from before 1914, this article explores German beliefs about the French army's tactical and technological abilities, its strategic capabilities, and its operational plans. In doing so, it argues that German war planners did not view the French army as a serious threat and assumed the German army could defeat the French quickly and easily. Thus, German fears about a long war, if they did truly exist, must have come from the capabilities of Britain and Russia and not France