Why was the stalemate on the western front broken?

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Roisin McCann 10E

Why was the stalemate on the western front broken?

The stalemate along the western front began in 1914 and was finally broken 4 years later in 1918 for a number of reasons. Among these were the introduction of new technology such as the tank, the British blockade of German ports, Russia leaving the war and the USA joining in.

Tanks helped end trench warfare and bring back mobility to the western front. At first they were better at defending and broke down a lot, but when the Mark IV tank came along things changed. At the battle of Cambrai in 1917 this tank was used the way all tanks would be from then onwards. Before this time tanks had been used to destroy and disorganise the opposition, but now it would be used to take land. This plan worked extremely well and the tank took so much land that the soldiers could not keep up with it and all had to retreat slightly, but this marked the first successful use of tanks in a combined arms operation and made the Allied army realise how important tanks would be in future battles. In summer 1918 commander John Monash of the Australian corps used tanks to make way for advancing infantry at Le Hamel, when this proved successful other commanders took note. Gas such as mustard gas, chlorine gas and phosgene plus artillery also played a part in the stalemate but rather more contributed to it than helped to break it.

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In 1914 Britain began blockading German ports in the hope that their starving and lack of war supplies may lead them to surrender. Both German civilians and soldiers suffered. In 1915 one third of all the pigs in Germany had to be slaughtered due to lack of fodder to feed them with. German people became very ill due to malnourishment leading to diseases like scurvy, influenza, dysentery and tuberculosis and 300,000 of them died. The winter of 1917-18 was called the Turnip Winter in Germany, as this is all there was left to eat. Morale among both troops and ...

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