How did warfare change between November 1914 and March 1918?

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  How did warfare change between November 1914 and March 1918?

Warfare changed in many different ways between these times.

Trenches were developed to shield against machine gun fire that meant soldiers had to dig below the line of fire, causing a trench. This was a basic trench. This developed into a trench system on both sides throughout most of the war.

However, the Germans tended to develop theirs ore because they knew that to win the war all they had to do was defend. So the dug a trench and they were basically told to hold their positions. The British were told to force them back and gain some territory, so theoretically they were meant to be always moving forward. Therefore the generals concluded that trench warfare as far as the British were concerned, trench warfare was deemed as temporary.

An example of how much the Germans took the trench seriously would be the Hindenburg Line. This was defence in depth. They retreated to this after suffering fatal casualties at the Battle of the Somme.

The Hindenburg Line had a hill in front of the main trench system, 2000 metres of several strong points, an artillery protection line and supplementary defences. It would be argued that this was an almost impassable. They also developed the concrete blockhouses in Paschendaele because of the state of the mud; they couldn’t build good trenches. They were much quicker to realise this than Britain.

It didn’t take long for both sides to develop many lines of trenches: the front line, the support trench, the reserve trench and the communication trenches. This is a clear change from the early shield against machine gun fire.  In comparison of the two sides, Germany had much better trenches.

Communications is an obvious example of continuity during this time. Despite having fairly modern methods of communication, such as telephones, short wave radio and Morse code: these were unavailable. This was due to the fact that telephone lines created behind enemy lines were often cut by artillery bombardments. In addition, the enemy easily intercepted short wave radios and Morse code.

So they had to resort to ancient methods of communication such as messenger boys to give instructions to the front line. This was also a problem because this made them targets by the enemy. Behind the front line it was easy to communicate but getting information to the front line on both the allies and the enemy was a huge problem.

Throughout the war, every single soldier had a rifle. This was because they were cheap, easy to use and reliable.

Machine guns were important in the First World War because they could kill allot of men very quickly.  They were very useful for Germany because they could just shoot down a line of men, as proved in the Somme. However, they were also adapted well by the Canadians, as they used theirs to be fired up in the air, to get a larger range, and then to fall down onto the enemy.

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The British army supplied only two machine guns per battalion and could only operated by up to eight men. This was a problem because the more men you use setting up a gun, because they are all together in a short area trying to set up a weapon, they would be an easy target for the enemy. Also, if one of the eight men got shot, it would take much longer for it to be put together and therefore longer to take out the enemy.

The Germans however were much better off at the start of the war during ...

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