Until nearing the end of the war, The mobility of armies, and their ability to take the offensive, were not very good, however improvements were made due to the development of tanks, lighter machine guns and mobile mortars like the Stokes mortar.
I believe one of the most important reasons for there being stalemate on the western front was the failure of the Schlieffen Plan.
Von Moltke, the German General Chief of staff, believed that Belgium’s small army would not be strong enough to stop German forces from quickly entering into France. However he was wrong and the German army were held up in Belgium and arrived in Belgium 10 days late. Not only this they were shocked by the Russian Army’s advance into East Prussia. The German Army was also surprised as to how quickly the British Expeditionary Force reached France and Belgium. The Germans were not able to break through allied lines and on the 9th September General , the German Commander in Chief, ordered General and General to retreat. However, the German Army had not been defeated and its successful retreat and the building of between the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier ended all hope of a short war. The Germans were fighting a war on two fronts. This meant that they were quite happy just to sit in their trenches and defend, therefore giving them an advantage and making it more difficult for the allies to penetrate through the German lines. Hence causing stalemate between the two sides.
There were also many criticisms of Field Marshal Haig and that of the tactics he deployed. The Great War was the birth of a new kind of war. There were new technologies such as the machine gun, the tank, aircraft, submarine and many new weapons. Haig and his commanding officers were not used to this new kind of war and so they were inexperienced when creating tactics.
Shown above: Field Marshal Haig.
- Haig was too ambitious. He went for breakthrough and victory. This wasn’t likely to happen quickly as Germany, who were on the defensive had the advantage. Haig put too much faith in artillery bombardment of which he was using the wrong type. Overall Haig underestimated Germany.
- Haig did not care about the lives of his men. Haig repeated attacks on German strongholds eg. Pozieres at great cost to life. Haig refused to call off offensives even when rains came down and turned the battlefields into bogs. One historian (John Laffin) has argued that Haig’s plan amounted to little more than mass slaughter. He says that Haig had an HCI fixation (Heavy Casualties Inevitable) and did nothing to minimise casualties. Haig did not care for humans.
Tactics used by the armies of the Great War were not very well made up due to commanders’ inexperience in this new kind of warfare. At the battle of the Somme, poor tactics resulted in 620,000 casualties for the British and the French and 680,000 casualties for the Germans.
The breakthrough of 1918 was partly down to an improvement in tactics. Generals learnt how to improve battle plans through bitter experience.
The Germans pioneered ‘storm trooper’ tactics, which involved using small, mobile heavily armed groups of soldiers attacking weak points in the enemy line. This was made possible by the greater firepower available to the soldiers.
Conclusion
- Due to inexperienced commanders, battle plans were not very good and cost armies many lives.
- There were limitations to the technology; aircraft and tanks were still in their infancy and artillery was still largely immobile. Fully mechanised warfare would not arrive until the Second World War when the ‘Blitzkrieg’ saw rapid offensive operations.
- The failure of the Schlieffen plan ended in both sides needing to build trenches as the front line soldiers from the two sides were often close together and because of new technologies and weapons such as the machine gun, survival would have been impossible. Finally because the Germans were happy to stay where they were in defensive positions. This gave them an advantage, making it harder for the allies to breakthrough their lines and achieve a speedy victory.
I have come to the final conclusion that these three factors were the most important reasons for stalemate between the Germans and the allies on the western front.
