More powerful artillery became essential to his successor, Alfred von Schlieffen, who planned quickly to defeat France by sweeping through Belgium (the Schlieffen Plan) in response to the 1893 Franco-Russian Alliance. Moltke began requesting more powerful guns that same decade. By the 1880s the barrel diameter of the German Army's most powerful gun, the 21 cm (8.3 in) field howitzer, was no longer adequate against fortresses. Although German artillery had been effective during the Franco-Prussian War, it had been allowed to stagnate. The German Empire also fortified its borders, but Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Elder desired the ability to break through Franco-Belgian fortifications. Combining rings and barriers, France created a vast fortified zone on its border with Germany, while Belgium began construction of the National Redoubt in 1888. In response, star forts evolved into polygonal forts, mostly underground and made of concrete with guns mounted in armoured, rotating casemates. These forts were vulnerable to new artillery shells, which could penetrate earth to destroy masonry underground. Rifled artillery could now fire out of range of fortress guns, so military architects began placing forts in rings around cities or in barriers to block approaching armies. The quick advancement of artillery technology beginning in the 1850s provoked an arms race between artillery and military architecture. It had a longer and heavier barrel that was mated to the M-Gerät's carriage but was found to be less effective than the base gun. The Paris Gun, a railway gun used to bomb Paris in 1918, has historically been confused for the M-Gerät.ĭue to losses from faulty ammunition and Allied counter-battery artillery, a smaller-calibre (30.5 cm (12.0 in)) gun called the Beta-M-Gerät was built and fielded from 1916 until the end of the war. German soldiers bestowed the gun with the nickname "Big Bertha", which then spread through German newspapers to the Allies, who used it as a nickname for all super-heavy German artillery. When the First World War broke out, the two M-Gerät guns, still prototypes, were sent to Liège, Belgium, and destroyed Forts Pontisse and Loncin. Test firing began in early 1914 and the gun was estimated to be finished by October 1914. The M-Gerät designed in 1911 as an iteration of earlier super-heavy German siege guns intended to break modern fortresses in France and Belgium and entered production in 1912. The M-Gerät had a 42 cm (17 in) calibre barrel, making it one of the largest artillery pieces ever fielded. The 42-centimetre kurze Marinekanone 14 L/12 (short naval cannon), or Minenwerfer-Gerät ( M-Gerät), popularly known by the nickname Big Bertha, was a German siege howitzer built by Krupp AG in Essen, Germany and fielded by the Imperial German Army from 1914 to 1918. Model of an M-Gerät at the Musée de l'ArméeĨ shells an hour or 1 shell per 7.5 minutes
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