In August 1914, a military timetable took effect in Germany on 4 August at one minute past midnight and replaced the normal timetable. The route and destination of every transport had been fixed exactly in peacetime. The planning lay with the railway section of the Great General Staff, headed since 1912 by Wilhelm Groener. Each army corps needed about 140 trains. The main lines had a planned pause of four hours to absorb disruptions. A regional history journal explains the precision: in the German General Staff, man nichts dem Zufall überließ, nothing was left to chance.