Why did a stalemate develop on the western front?

        Another reason for the progress in the stalemate was the occurrence of ‘The battle of the River Marne’, during the Schlieffen plan the German troops, on the outside of the advance delayed their advance and headed south through fear of isolation from the rest of the attack, this took them toward the River Marne where a huge battle took place resulting in the Germans being pushed back to the rine where they dug in. the battle also produced many casualties and the final part of the failure of the Schlieffen plan.

        The third reason for the development of the deadlock on the western front is hat’s historically known as ’the race to the sea’, this was when both sides dug in trenches but whilst doing so tried going around each others defences (they both tried to outflank each other) the problem with this was that both armies anticipated each others movements and quickly moved across where they would dig in even more trenches, this resulted in a huge line of trenches stretching from the sea all the way across to  the Swiss border.

         The final factor for the stalemate occurring on the western front was the nature of the fighting. Ww1 was an extremely defensive war; troops from both armies were attacking heavily defended trenches, which resulted in very high casualties. Technology in the war was also very defensive, with machine guns, barbed wire and artillery it was difficult for an infantry to advance and capture trenches and then hold it afterward without sustaining very high casualties, planes and tanks were around but still very much in their infancy and were considered unreliable.

        Overall there is no single definite reason for the event of the stalemate on the western front during ww1, in fact there were many different factors that all played a role in causing the dead lock between forces. No one single reason can be deemed more important than the other since they all relied and depended on each other to affect ww1’s infamous western front standstill in 1916.