“For 3 years from the end of 1914 to early 1918, the Western Front never moved more than a mile or so. In 1918 considerable movement occurred as first the Germans and then the Allies advanced. Why did these changes happen so quickly?”

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“For 3 years from the end of 1914 to early 1918, the Western Front never moved more than a mile or so. In 1918 considerable movement occurred as first the Germans and then the Allies advanced. Why did these changes happen so quickly?”

 At the end of 1914, both armies discovered that with the type of war they were fighting, it was much easier to defend than attack. And so began three long years of trench life, with neither army being able to make any breakthrough into open ground. Many major offensives were made throughout this part of the war, such as Verdun by the Germans and the Somme by the British. These are both well known for being very unsuccessful and for huge loss of life. Although neither side made the same catastrophic mistake again, there were many other battles that made little progress such as 3rd Ypres. Then suddenly, in 1918 the Germans made a breakthrough, and suddenly the war was back to one of movement. But what factors established this in 1918 and what was different from the early years of the war.

Before 1914, this type of hard, attritional warfare had never been experienced. In 1914, war culture changed forever. Instead of two sides lining up on adjacent hills, with their brightly coloured flags waving high, waiting for someone to charge into battle. The War was one of no heroic deeds, no great pride shown in red uniforms, it was lengthy, disgusting and simply boring to be a part of. These massive changes, due to the new technology available (machine guns that could kill 10 men in 5 seconds, shells that could blow 20 men away) meant that sending men charging into battle was simply unacceptable. Unfortunately for so many men in the First World War, the Generals didn’t for-see this so therefore they didn’t make any changes in battlefield tactics. If these Generals could practice fighting this way using new training methods then maybe they would have seen the sheer power of these dangerous weapons then they could plan offensives accordingly. The problem was that there was only one place for the Generals to try out tactics and offensives, and that was on the battlefield. So at first the impact of what the war would be like didn’t really kick in because it began as a war of movement which developed into trench warfare. And it was here where the Generals sat and planned how to break the lines, something that they had never done before, so it was just a matter of time before some kind of breakthrough was made. Whether it came from attrition, new technology, new tactics or political changes, 3 years later in 1918, a breakthrough was made. So we know how this deadlock situation occurred, but how was it broken out of, and why in 1918?

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To understand the breakthroughs in 1918, we need to know what the nature of this earlier deadlock was, and why all the previous offensives had failed. There are two major views held of why nothing changed in those middle 3 years of the war. There is the traditional view that generalship had been unimaginative at best and criminally incompetent at worse, which is the view held by the historians that believe Haig was an incompetent field marshal. And there is the more modernised view that in 1918 the generals put into practice what they had learnt and experienced from the ...

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