Through the Schlieffen Plan the Germans expected the war with France to end after 42 days. However, this did not work due to the plan being based on too many assumptions, which were timetabled too rigidly. This meant that when, for example, the Belgians resisted, the Germans had no back up plan and the French had time to counter-attack at the Marne. It also meant that the British had time to send over troops to France in order to help the French soldiers fight in the First Battle of the Marne. The British had also managed to get troops there much more quickly than the Germans had expected. This meant the French, with the help of the British won the First Battle of the Marne, and the German advance was halted.
However, although the French won the First Battle of the Marne they did not have the manpower to force the Germans to retreat back to Germany. This was due to the French having a smaller army than that of Germany and the failure of Plan XVII (the French plan to win the war). The idea of Plan XVII was an all out attack on Germany in the east. However, the French were mown down by the German machine guns, which led to severe French casualties and a weakened French army. Joffe did, however, manage to work out what the Germans had planned to do through the Schlieffen Plan and managed to move his troops to Paris, from the eastern border. When the French troops arrived in Paris, having used every form of transport they could lay their hands on to get there, they were very tired and extremely weakened. This meant they could not be completely victorious over the Germans and therefore started to dig themselves in at the Western Front
The outcome of the First Battle of the Marne led to the ‘Race to the Channel’. This was where the Germans tried to outflank the French and dig their trenches towards the channel ports. However, every time the Germans dug their trenches towards the Channel the French would counter this by doing the same. It became like a game of chess and ended up with both sides having trenches opposite each other, which extended from the Belgian coast in the north to Switzerland in the south.
Once these trenches had been dug it became evident to both sides that in this war defence would be easier than attack. New technology, for example the machine gun, meant it was far much easier to defend your trench, by shooting anyone who tried to attack you, than it was to cross no man’s land in order to attack and capture the enemy’s trenches. Also, good communications ensured that supplying your own trenches was also easier than attacking the enemy’s. As both sides were defending and neither army was really attacking at the Western Front, it hardly changed its position for three years. This was the stalemate on the Western Front.