The BEF, led by Sir John French, landed in France and met the advancing Germans at Mons on the 23rd of August. With only 100,000 men this small but well-trained and well-equipped force of professional soldiers gave the Germans a nasty shock. Reports show that Germans still thought that British soldiers wore short scarlet tunics with small caps set at an angle on their heads; or bear skins with the chin strap under the lip instead of under the chin. There was much joking and even a remark by Bismark about sending the police to arrest the British army. They weren’t prepared for the BEF. The troops at Mons were well led by Lieutenant – General Douglais Haig and were using Lee Enfield 303 bolt-action rifles effectively, rather than the machine guns the Germans thought they were wearing.
The Germans expected the French to fall back up to the Belgian border when the Germans advanced, so the weaker German troops tried to enter France through Alsace Lorraine. However French troops were still there so Germany had to divert some of their troops back too help the others fight against the French. This slowed sown the Germans even more.
The French may have been on the defensive in September 1914 but by this stage things were not going entirely well for the Germans either. The German Supreme Commander Moltke had to pull 100,000 troops out of the army advancing on Paris because the Russians had mobilised far more quickly than expected and had already invaded Germany. This was to prove the break that the British and French needed. The German army also faced another problem. Their advance had been so fast that their supplies of food and ammunition could not keep up. The German soldiers were underfed and exhausted. Von Kluck, the German commander decided he couldn’t swing round Paris according to the original plan, so he advanced straight towards it. While the Germans advanced on foot, French troops were diverted to Paris by rail, then onto the front, transporting some of them by taxi. The German army was too weary and overstretched. The French were fighting to save the country. Combined French and British forces were able to stop the German advance along the line of the River Marne. They then counter-attacked and pushed the Germans back to the River Aishe. However, they couldn’t drive them out of France entirely.
The Germans’ only hope was to surround the British and French. They swept round to the North but the French did the same and neither side was able to trap the others. Meanwhile, the British also heard nothing to prevent the Germans capturing vital Channel ports such as Calais and Boulogne. They arrived just in time, helped by the Belgians, who delayed the Germans by flooding their land.
The war on the Western Front was a new kind of warfare. No one had experienced war like it before. The generals’ plans had not allowed for it. Everyone had to adapt. The most obvious new feature of this kind of warfare was the system of the trenches. Insteas of a war of movement this was a war of static. Trenches began as simple shelters but by 1915 they had developed into complex defensive systems. Heavy artillery barrages that sometimes lasted for days preceded attacks. Before an attack, whistles were blown; then the troops advanced across No Man’s Land to attack the enemy trenches – this was known as ‘going over the top’. Both sides used new tactics, for example, prolonged heavy artillery that caused more casualties than any other weapon. On land some weapons (such as machine guns) actually led to a more defensive war. At the beginning of the war the guns were not accurate; by the end of the war however, artillery was much bigger and more accurate. By 1918 artillery tactics were extremely sophisticated as well. There were many important new developments in weaponry for use on land, on sea and in air. Trench warfare changed the role of the infantry dramatically. The cavalry charge was replaced by the ‘infantry charge’, which became the main tactic used in war.
By Christmas 1914 a long line of trenches stretched from the English Channel to the Swiss border. These trenches were ‘home’ for the soldiers of both sides for the next three years. Despite millions of casualties, neither army would move more than sixteen kilometres forwards or backwards until well into 1918. There were four main types of trenches. Behind the frontline trenches (from which attacks were made) were support trenches and, behind them, reserve trenches. Communications trenches connected these three types of trenches. German trenches tended to be better constructed and so gave better protection from artillery barrages. Conditions in the trenches soon became dreadful as the heavy shelling destroyed drainage systems. Soldiers on the Western Front went through an enormous range of experiences, from extreme boredom to appalling stress of an enemy bombardment or attack. Millions of men and thousands of horses were close together. Sanitation arrangements were makeshift. In summer the smell of trenches was appalling owing to a combination of rotting corpses, sewage and unwashed soldiers. The soldiers were also infested with lice or ‘chats’ as they liked to call them. The weather had a marked effect on the soldiers’ lives. In summer the trenches were hot, dusty and smelly. In the wet weather soldiers spent much of their time up to their ankle or knees in water. Many thousands suffered from ‘trench foot’, caused by standing in water for hours or days. In winter the trenches offered little protection from the cold. Many got frostbite. For much of the time shells were falling, so working, sleeping or eating soldiers had to live with the fear of being killed by an exploding shell. Despite the constant dangers of trench life, the daytime was mostly very boring as an attack was always most likely to happen at night, when sentries had to keep a careful watch while others repaired defences or barbed wire, or carried out scouting and spying missions. In the day however, some soldiers tried to sleep. Others just sat around reading, ore smoking or playing cars. There were also routine jobs to do such as filling sandbags, cleaning latrines and fetching supplies.
Breaking the stalemate
The tank was a British invention. Early in the war inventors took the idea to the army leaders but it was rejected as impractical. However, Winston Churchill, head of the navy, thought that the idea had potential and his department funded its development. These first machines only moved at walking pace. They weren’t very manoeuvrable and were very unreliable – more than half of them broke down before they got to German trenches. After two years of trialling and designing, the first working armoured vehicles were ready. They were carried over on a ship to France on a cool summers night in 1916. To disguise their invention from the German spies the British covered the armoured vehicles and labelled them ‘Water tanks’. The name stuck. From then on armoured vehicles were used as tanks. The tanks carried a crew of about eight men. Conditions inside were terrible. The engine gave off strong fumes. It became so hot that crewmen wore leather jerkins to protect them when they were thrown against the hot moving parts as the tank lurched across the battlefield. The temperature inside could reach over 38 degrees centigrade. The cramped and sweaty crew were quickly exhausted. The noise inside was so loud that the commander had to give orders by hand signals. Field marshal Haig at the Battle of Somme first used tanks. It was a desperate attempt to gain something from the battle when the infantry had been slaughtered.
“Statistics about the damage gas caused:
British: 178,500 hurt
7,500 killed
French: 107,250 hurt
22,750 killed
Germans: 101,650 hurt
5,250 killed”
At 5.30 p.m. on 22nd of April 1915, the Germans released about 152 tonnes of chlorine gas into the air above their trenches at Ypres. They allowed the gas to drift into the wind onto the British trenches about 200 metres away. The troops began to cough and retch and panic set in. This was the first gas attack of the First World War. It struck terror into the troops and from then on gas attacks were a fact of life in the trenches for the soldiers of both sides. To start with, the aim of attacks was to knock out the enemy soldiers so your own could attack them more easily. But gradually more and more lethal gases were developed, which killed, blinded, maimed or blistered the enemy. German, British and French scientists worked on new substances to attack the enemy and tried to perfect new gas masks to protect their own soldiers.
The aeroplane was a new weapon in the First World War. When the War began, it had been only eleven years since the Wright Brothers had made the first flight. None of the countries that entered the First World War had many aircraft. The main job done by these early aircraft was reconnaissance (finding out where enemy troops are). They soon proved their worth: when cameras were fitted to aircraft it became possible to have very accurate aerial photographs of enemy positions. Military commanders began to realise how valuable aircraft could be. In September 1914, at the Battle of Marne, the Germans were on the verge of a breakthrough to Paris, which could have won them the War. British aerial photographs showed a gap in the German lines that allowed British troops to advance, forcing the Germans to withdraw. Sir John French said that reconnaissance aircraft had given him information of ‘incalculable value.’
There were also forms of new technology, such as armour piercing bullets, artillery pieces etc.
The USA was officially neutral but was supplying loans and equipment to the Allies. In 1917 the Germans had used unrestricted submarine warfare to try to starve Britain out. This involved sinking any American ships which they suspected of carrying supplies to the Allies, they also sunk many passenger ships which lead to killing many American civilians, which made it likely that the USA would enter the War. The Germans hoped they would win before American troops could make a difference. When the USA discovered that Germany hoped to ally with Mexico against them it was the final straw; the USA declared war on Germany in April 1917 but it was over a year before it could get its troops properly trained and equipped. The first American troops reached the Western Front in May 1918.
From the start of the war both sides tried to prevent the other from getting essential supplies to soldiers. Maybe they could be starved into submission? The British had been blockading German ports since 1914. The blockade was supposed to strangle German industry so that it could not supply the German army. It reduced German trade from $5.9 billion in 1914 to just $0.8 billion in 1917. By 1918 the British naval blockade was biting hard. It is estimated that over a quarter of a million Germans died of starvation in 1917 and the numbers were even greater in 1918. There were strikes and demonstrations in northern cities, as many civilians demanded an end to War.
General Ludendorff was in charge of the last great offensive in March 1918, and he planned to break the stalemate. Instead of an ‘over the top’ frontal assault by a wave of troops, he sent small groups of ‘stormtroopers’ to attack all the way along the front line. It was a success – the Germans broke through the line and drove the Allies back more than 60 kilometres. Once again, as in 1914, the German army was in sight of Paris.
But by August 1918 the German army was exhausted and could not reach Paris. The Allies had fought hard to hold their positions and American troops were now joining them.
It was now the turnoff the Allies to push forward and they were helped by new technology. Better tanks tore huge holes in the German defences. The Allies advanced more kilometres in a day than they had done in all the months of previous fighting. The Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, a line of concrete bunkers and heavy defences. They could have made a strong stand here but other events were taking a hand.
These reasons were interconnected with each other.
There were connections between blockading and the USA entry into the war. By blockading the British ports as the British did to them, the German U-boats sunk American ships. It was the sinking of these ships that led to the Americans entry into the war, as it was the final straw.
When the British blockaded German ports the Germans were stopped from getting raw materials and food; which led to rationing and even starvation, which in turn led to discontent. The people were fed up with the war. The Germans were forced to act before the USA arrived in force or the people rebelled at home. The Germans acted by putting into action the Ludendorff offensive.
The most important factors for breaking the stalemate were the Blockade of German ports and the German offensive.
The new technology was, I feel the least important. Although new technology did help break the stalemate, some forms of new technology also helped to cause the stalemate, as there were lots of counteractions available and also fault with this new technology. For instance take the tank: The Germans were amazed. But there were not enough tanks to have a big effect; they were unreliable, and they only travelled at around ten kilometres per hour in any case. Worse of all, the great secret weapon was no longer a secret. Anti-tank ditches defended German positions from then on, and armour-piercing bullets were developed to go through the tank to the crew inside.
Despite all this, there were not enough infantry to follow up and this gave the Germans time to recover and fight back. Sixty-five tanks were destroyed by enemy shellfire and then as the battle went on, over 100 ran out of petrol and were marooned in enemy territory. Having spent all day in their cramped compartments with gun smoke and petrol fumes, the crews were exhausted. Many of them died trying to get back to their own lines.
The USA entry into the way did have a big effect in breaking the stalemate, as it was one of the reasons Germans had to act quickly. However it was the Blockading of the German Ports and the Ludendorff offensive which were most important. The blockading was upsetting the people of Germany because of the rationing and in some cases starvations; while the Ludendroff offensive worked for a time, until other things broke down. There were not enough German troops and they were exhausted! With the help of some new technology, the Allies were putting a lot of strain on the German army.
By the beginning of November, all of Germany’s allies – Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria – had surrendered. In the northern ports, German sailors mutinied and in Berlin crowds marched through the streets demanding an end to the War. There were food riots and strikes in other German cities. The Kaiser unable to take the mounting pressure, fled to Holland. A new German government formed and immediately asked for a ceasefire. At the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 an armistice was signed. All fighting stopped. The Germans had surrendered.
