Over the course of the year, the French tried and failed to push the Germans out of their territory. The British built up a massive army to join the French in the front lines. The Germans held their ground while making progress on the Eastern Front.
Founding Sponsor. Terms Of Service Privacy Policy. Publishing Partner Login. This simplistic explanation does not suffice under close scrutiny though. If this were so, why were the Germans not stopped in France until after they had removed troops to the Eastern front for the Battle of Tannenberg and why were the French stopped cold when they attempted to invade Germany in August ? The reasons for stalemate are complex; they are both systemic and technical. The machine-gun certainly played a major role but even more decisive was the cult of the offensive prevalent in the British and especially French armies.
The French disdained anything but the headlong attack, they thought the way to fight was to charge with the bayonet and trained their army that way. This accounts for the staggering number of casualties the French army suffered in the opening months of the war, over , French soldiers died by the end of August The British army was the only completely regular force in Europe and their performance in the opening months showed it.
They stopped the Germans at Mons for two days using their rifles. In people expected that Britain would win the war and be home by Christmas. In reality the new trench warfare and complicated tactics meant that both alliances held out and battles resulted in stalemate many times. New techniques and equipment were developed after to tackle these new challenges. There were new artillery and tanks and new tactics to get past trenches and get around barbed wire.
Most guns increased in power and abilities. In World War II people thought that pistols were useless but this was proved wrong due to the fact that the U. Also there was an addition of an anti-craft gun which made it even more powerful and unstoppable Slayton The United States and the Allies came out victorious once again but the cost of war greatly affected all the countries.
In my opinion, the most important reason for the stalemate was the strategies used during the war. With a lack of imagination from the generals added to the defensive stance of the Germans meant that the stalemate lasted a very long time. The overall offensive tactics involved mainly an artillery bombardment, infantry climbing out of the trenches to eliminate the enemy, then a support attack of cavalry.
However, though this tactic may have worked in the past, the addition of the new weapon, the machine gun, destroyed any real chance of this orthodox attack from succeeding. The generals of the First World War started off and carried on throughout most of the war with the idea of massed infantry charges with bayonets fixed to their rifles, so with the ability to fire rounds per minute, this weapon was excellent for wiping out large numbers of infantry and cavalry units, thus making it an excellent weapon of defence.
The weapons manufactured during World War One, such as the rifles and machine guns, forever changed warfare for the worse because these weapons were killing machines and would kill thousands. The main and most common weapon carried by soldiers during World War One was a rifle Westwell Although they were very popular, they came in a limited supply Both German and American soldiers had rifles, but did not use the same types of rifles.
Each country was constantly trying to make their rifles better to outdo the others. Warfare During the Renaissance Warfare did not get invented during the Renaissance, but there were some significant innovations.
Feudal cavalry lost its strength of the battlefield, infantry gained in stature, states learned how to field large armies for long periods of time. Most important of all, however, was the use of gunpowder. The chief result of these innovations was that warfare once and for all was taken out of the hands of private individuals the nobility and was taken over by the nation-state.
Moreover, war became so expensive and destructive that it became ever more difficult and dangerous for small states to wage war, even at the local level. The Development of a Stalemate on the Western Front The main reason trenches developed on the western front is due to the failure of the Schlieffen plan, if it had not been for this elaborate quick way to win the war by Germany, trench warfare may never have developed in WWI.
As the Germans were being pushed back from Marne they had to dig trenches to protect themselves from the advancing allies, and the allies mirrored them and did the same.
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