How did stalemate develop on Western Fornt

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History Coursework Part 2

Why did stalemate develop on the Western Front?

     In this essay I will look on the case of stalemate and reasons for its development. Stalemate is a stop in fighting during a war. Enemies usually are unable to advance. It usually occurs when trenches are building, in the case of World War One they had been build because of advanced technology, and failure of battle plans. The battle plans that had failed where mainly Plan 17- French plan to attack Germany through Alsace- Lorraine and German’s Schlieffen Plan which was supposed to knock France out of the war by attacking it through Belgium and Luxemburg.

     To make matter worse there was new advanced technology introduced during this war such as Machine Guns, Aircrafts, Gases ; Chlorine, Mustard Gas, Hand Grenades, Lee Enfield Rifle, Artillery( Heavy Guns) as well as Tanks. All this new technology had put strain on the soldiers, who for their own protection had build trenches.

     Trenches Welfare was dig outs in the ground usually connected with each other, taking a shape of corridors. They were dirty, smelly and absolutely disgusting. Trenches were usually full of dead bodies and rats who were finding them as a great food. Soldiers spend half of their time fighting with rats that sometimes were as big as cats, as well as with fleas and all sorts of different horrible insects.

     Both Germany and France had their own war plans, which had both, went wrong leading to the stalemate on Western Front. Germany’s war plan was called Schlieffen Plan. The main priority of this plan was to deliver a massive knock out on France to quickly get them out of the war and then to transport the soldiers back to Germany to protect the country form Russia’s war power. Germany wanted to attack France thorough Belgium and Luxemburg, as quickly as possible. They had given themselves 42 days/6 weeks as they thought that this was the time that Russia would take to get ready. However Russia needed only 10 days and than delivered the first attack. They naively thought that their invasion of would be easy, and there was a nasty surprise waiting for them. They get hold back by fighting Belgium which was backed up  by BEF. By this time Russia had send their first soldiers to attack Germany and German army had to send 160, 000 soldiers to defend their country which seriously decreased their strength in Belgium. For some reason Germany have not taken a chance to attack Paris and they were met by the French at the battle of Marne (5- 11 Sept) which had held their advance even more. How did this lead to stalemate? Well, The Schlieffen Plan relied upon the destruction of the Western Allies within a very short period of time, allowing Germany to focus on Russia and avoid war on two fronts. When the German attack of the West failed, they were forced to split the attentions of their military and were rendered incapable of delivering decisive blow to the Allies. This resulted in stalemate.

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     The start of the war for France also went really badly. Their war strategy was called Plan 17 which was basically French plan to attack Germany through Alsace- Lorraine.  It went totally wrong for French. . Plan 17 failed because it was exactly what the Germans wanted France to do. the French attacked Alsace and Lorraine to recover them , as they lost them to Germany after the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. The Germans counted on the French doing this and left only a small army to defend Alsace and Lorraine with the idea the Germans would retreat ...

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