First World War

Background Information

The origins of the stalemate

When war broke out across Europe it was greeted with enthusiasm. Everyone agreed it would all be over by Christmas (with a magnificent victory of course). The populations of Europe were gripped by war fever - images of brave young men in cavalry charges or gallant infantrymen putting the enemy to flight. Most people either couldn’t remember or chose to forget what war was really about. Certainly Britain’s heavy casualties in the Boer War of 1899-1902 in South Africa were forgotten. The heavy casualties caused by heavy artillery in the Balkan wars of 1912-13 seem to have gone unnoticed.

Everyone was convinced the war would be over by Christmas, but it wasn’t. Within five months the romantic ideals and hopes of the young soldiers, their families, as well as the plans of their military leaders, would be drowned in mud, bogged down in trenches and barbed wire.

As soon as war was declared the French prepared to carry out Plan 17 and Germany's Schlieffen Plan went into operation. The Schlieffen Plan involved an overwhelming attack on France through Belgium. France was to be knocked out of the war. Then the German war machine would turn its might on the Russians. The Belgians put up a heroic resistance from well-equipped forts on the frontiers with Germany. The Belgian resistance bought time, but it did not stop the crushing German advance.

In the meantime, the French and British armies had made use of the few days provided by Belgium. The British Expeditionary Force, led by Sir John French, landed in France and met the advancing Germans at Mons on 23 August. This small but well-trained force could do little more than hold the Germans up a little and make an orderly retreat. Nevertheless, they gave the Germans a nasty shock. A German soldier, Walter Bloem, described the consequences of running into a squad of British troops armed with Lee Enfield .303 rifles:

Sunday, the second since we crossed the Rhine. Reports coming back along the column seemed to confirm the fact that the English were in front of us. English soldiers? We knew what they looked like by the comic papers; short scarlet tunics with small caps set at an angle on their heads, or bearskins with the chin-strap under the lip instead of under the chin. There was much joking about this, and also about Bismarck's remark of sending the police to arrest the English army. (The attack begins) ... We had no sooner left the edge of the wood than a volley of bullets whistled past our noses and cracked into the trees behind. Five or six cries near me, five or six of my grey lads collapsed on the grass. Damn it! This was serious...! Forward again - at the double! We crossed the track, jumped the broad dyke full of water on the far side, and then on across the squelching meadow. More firing, closer now and tearing into our ranks, cries, more lads falling... the 160 men that left the wood with me had shrunk to less than 100... From now on matters went from bad to worse. Wherever I looked, right or left, were dead or wounded, quivering in convulsions, groaning terribly, blood oozing from flesh wounds...We have to go back... A bad defeat, there could be no gainsaying it; in our first battle we had been badly beaten, and by the English - by the English we had so laughed at a few hours before.

The French were in a worse position than the British. Their plan, Plan 17, failed disastrously. On 20 August the German forces on the frontier cut the French troops to ribbons with artillery and machine-gun fire. The French lost over 200,000 men. They now had to regroup their forces to defend Paris from the advancing Germans.

There was some hope for the Allies, however. The German Supreme Commander Moltke pulled 100,000 troops out of the Western Front because the Russians had mobilised far more quickly than expected and had invaded East Prussia. The German advance in the West was slowed. The French diverted troops to Paris by rail, and then on to the front (some by taxi!). The combined British and French forces were able to stop the German advance along the line of the River Marne. The Battle of the Marne was a turning-point. The German army was weary and overstretched. The French were fighting to save their country. The combined British and French forces pushed the Germans back to the River Aisne, but they could not drive them out of France. Neither side could make any progress and by September 8 troops on both sides were digging trenches to protect themselves from snipers and shell fire. Soon after, they added machine-guns and barbed wire. Until now, it had been a war of movement, but here were the first signs of the stalemate that was to come.

Neither side could break through. For the Germans, this was particularly serious because the Schlieffen Plan had failed and Germany was caught up in a two-front war. Moltke was replaced by a new commander, Falkenhayn. Falkenhayn decided to try to outflank his opponents by racing to the sea. The charge began on 12 October.

It was a huge and deadly game of chess. The German artillery pushed the Belgian army out of Antwerp but it remained able to fight. The French and British managed to block the German moves. One observer at the time called these 'the Railway Battles of Northern France', because both sides moved their troops by rail to a key area if it seemed that the enemy was about to break through.

At the devastating Battle of Ypres (16-22 November) the deadlock was well and truly established. British and German troops died in their thousands but neither side could break through the lines of the other. The French army tried to break through the German lines in Artois and Champagne in December, but they too were beaten back with heavy losses. As 1914 ended, the Western Front had reached a stalemate which was to last until 1918.

Deadlock: The mother of invention?

The deadlock on the Western Front lasted until 1918. Legend has it that there were no new ideas and that fighting on the Western Front was a series of pitched battles in which hundreds of thousands were sent to be slaughtered in meaningless assaults. This impression is not entirely wrong, but it is not the whole story either. There certainly were pitched battles in the Great War, but there were also thousands of minor engagements, skirmishes, raids and patrols.

It is also not true, as popular legend has it, that the generals were only ready for the last war, that they simply threw men over the top because they had no new ideas. The fundamental problem for the generals was that they were required to win. Only politicians could change this situation. Army commanders do not have the authority to negotiate for peace. This is not to suggest that the Army High Command were pacifists! However, faced with the fact that they had to win, they tried. The problem was that the technology and tactics of the time made defence so much more effective than attack. Ground could be taken but it was very difficult to hold, because the attackers had usually suffered heavy losses and they were soon faced with enemy reinforcements, fresh, well armed and well equipped.

Essentially, victory in the Great War was about which of the immensely powerful protagonists could outlast the other. In these circumstances new weapons and technology could be important but they could never be decisive. Tanks certainly played a role, but they were most effective when they attacked in vast numbers, with no shortage of spare fuel and ammunition. The lightly-armed German stormtroopers of 1918 were a brilliant innovation in trench warfare. They failed because there were not enough of them, and because the British naval blockade meant that they were poorly fed and equipped. When the decisive Allied counterattack took place in 1918, both the Allies and the Germans were using very sophisticated combinations of technology and tactics. However, the ultimate decisive weapon was supply.

At Amiens and at other major battles such as the Hindenburg Line (29 September 1918) the British artillery plan was sophisticated and extremely successful. There were the standard features such as a creeping barrage consisting of a mixture of smoke, and high explosive and heavy counter-battery activity using gas. Key points at which defenders were sheltering were targeted to prevent close support troops reaching the front line. In total the assault on the Hindenburg Line was supported by over 1 million shells being fired in a 36 hour period - as many shells as were fired in the week-long preliminary bombardment on the Somme in 1916. Furthermore, heavy machine guns were used to provide an additional curtain of fire to protect the advancing British infantry.

In this extract the military historian Simon Peaple describes part of the activity of 1918. The technical skill is impressive, but would any of it have been possible without the factories producing the goods?