Question: In case of what country's attack was the origins of the Central Powers?

<P0-S0> The Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition was a diplomatic mission to Afghanistan sent by the Central Powers in 1915–1916. <P0-S1>  The purpose was to encourage Afghanistan to declare full independence from the British Empire, enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, and attack British India. <P0-S2>  The expedition was part of the Hindu–German Conspiracy, a series of Indo-German efforts to provoke a nationalist revolution in India. <P0-S3>  Nominally headed by the exiled Indian prince Raja Mahendra Pratap, the expedition was a joint operation of Germany and Turkey and was led by the German Army officers Oskar Niedermayer and Werner Otto von Hentig. <P0-S4>  Other participants included members of an Indian nationalist organisation called the Berlin Committee, including Maulavi Barkatullah and Chempakaraman Pillai, while the Turks were represented by Kazim Bey, a close confidante of Enver Pasha. <SEP> <P1-S0> The Central Powers (German: "Mittelmächte" ; Hungarian: "Központi hatalmak" ; Turkish: "İttifak Devletleri" or "Bağlaşma Devletleri" ; Bulgarian: Централни сили "Tsentralni sili" ), consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary , the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – hence also known as the Quadruple Alliance (German: "Vierbund" ) – was one of the two main factions during World War I (1914–18). <P1-S1>  It faced and was defeated by the Allied Powers that had formed around the Triple Entente. <P1-S2>  The Powers' origin was the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879. <P1-S3>  The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria did not join until after World War I had begun, although the Ottoman Empire retained close relations with both Germany and Austria-Hungary since the beginning of the 20th century. <SEP> <P2-S0> The Dual Alliance was a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was created by treaty on 7 October 1879 as part of Bismarck's system of alliances to prevent or limit war. <P2-S1>  The two powers promised each other support in case of attack by Russia. <P2-S2>  Also, each state promised benevolent neutrality to the other if one of them was attacked by another European power (generally taken to be France, even more so after the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894). <P2-S3>  Germany’s Otto von Bismarck saw the alliance as a way to prevent the isolation of Germany and to preserve peace, as Russia would not wage war against both empires. <SEP> <P3-S0> Ilie Bărbulescu (December 3, 1873 – June 5, 1945) was a Romanian linguist and philologist who specialized in the Slavic languages, also noted as a political journalist and Conservative Party cadre. <P3-S1>  Academically trained in his native country and in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, he investigated in particular the Slavic influence on Romanian and the origins of Romanian literature, with additional interests in Old East Slavic and Russian literature. <P3-S2>  He was a corresponding member of the Romanian and Serbian Academies, and helped establish a Slavic studies department at the University of Iași. <P3-S3>  Bărbulescu was nevertheless a controversial figure, deeply involved in academic rivalries, and taking up unpopular political stances—especially during World War I, when, contrary to his background in Slavistics, he took up "Germanophilia", rooting for the Central Powers.