Edward Henderson 10L 1/12/01
Was the Western Front as important as the war at sea and the war in the air?
The western front was a very important part of the war. This was the main reason the war was lost by Germany. The Battle of the Somme, Verdun and trench warfare was the main reasons for the German defeat.
In September 1914, the combined French and British armies halted the German advance before Paris at the Battle of the Marne. The exhausted Germans fell back, and dug trenches protected by machine guns to defend the land that they occupied. The British and the French then dug trenches opposite the German front line and this was the beginning of trench warfare. Trench warfare was said to drag the war on a great deal. Both sides tried to make breakthroughs but kept failing. The failure at the Battle of the Marne determined that trench warfare would be used. Trench warfare had awful living conditions and disease was spread easily and both sides built a great deal of trenches. It wasn’t that important in the war, all it did was drag the war on.
There are two major events that occurred in the western front and these are the Schlieffen plan and Stalemate. The Schlieffen plan was Germany’s pre-war plan and it failed within two months of the start of the war. Before the war Germany believed that it would not be able to fight a war on two fronts against France in the west and Russia in the east. The German military planned to attack France by sending neutral troops through Belgium and taking Paris within six weeks. They also planned to attack Russia in the on the eastern front. This was called the Schlieffen plan. The Schlieffen plan began at the start of September 1914 and by October 1914 the plan had failed. The Schlieffen plan was a disaster and was a very important part of the Western Front. From late 1914 to early 1918, there was largely stalemate on the western front. The Germans and the Allies were evenly matched. Commanders such as Haig and Falkenhaym on both sides were committed to a war of attrition. The bombardments from both sides failed to cut the barbed wire and they warned the other side of an impending attack. Neither side’s artillery nor infantry could breach the enemy’s front line to let the cavalry through. New developments of technology were made such as gas, tanks and aircraft but this wasn’t strong enough to break the stalemate. Another problem was that neither side was prepared to compromise to make peace. Stalemate was a very important part of the war due to the fact that neither side could make a breakthrough and both sides were getting frustrated. Stalemate brought in new developments, which were important, but this still couldn’t break the stalemate.
