Why did a Stalemate develop on the Western Front?
The Schlieffen Plan, the plan which Germany had made to avoid having to fight on two fronts at one time. They planned to invade France first and conquer them in 6 weeks, whilst Russia was getting ready for war and then deal with Russia later. This plan however depended on four things: beating France in six weeks; Russia being slower than six weeks, Great Britain not joining in with the war and Belgium not resisting when Germany went through it. When the plan went ahead, all these things went wrong. Firstly, Russia was ready before the 6 week time scale, which meant that Germany had to send 100,000 men which were meant to be going through Belgium to fight the French to defend Russia, which weakened the German army. Whilst they were advancing to France, they were moving fast, food supplies and ammunitions were being carried by oxen, which are slow and heavy, so they would be hungry whilst fighting and run out of ammunitions too, and when this happened they wouldn’t be able to carry on fighting the battle. To make the matters worse for Germany, Belgium put up a fight when the German army was going through it, which slowed down the army a lot. The British had signed a treaty with Belgium in 1839 saying that if Belgium was in war, Britain would help them. Germany didn’t think that they would help seeing as the treaty was made so long ago and they thought it as just a ‘scrap of paper’ but they had planned to capture all of the Northern ports in France and Belgium to ensure that they couldn’t help. However, the Brits got there first and then guarded the ports which wouldn’t allow German ships to come in and out. Although the British army was small and consisted of just 100,000 men, they were well trained and could count as 200 000/300 000 men because they professional, whereas the armies from different countries such as Germany, France and Russia were conscripted so not very well trained or prepared. The British Expeditionary Force (the British army) also had the Enfield rifle, which could fire so fast it could pass as a machine gun. The BEF joined in the war and stuck to the treaty with Belgium and helped them slow down the German army. Germany didn’t even manage to get into the French border within three weeks, the amount of time that they had planned to take to capture Paris in. After this, the British army helped the French army guard Paris and helped to close the gap to the sea.
