As the Schlieffen plan failed, it meant that the Battle of the Somme also failed and the British lost 600,000 troops and Germans lost 450,000 troops. This showed that Britain was lacking in soldiers to fight battles ahead. Also Britain was smaller than Germany and yet in the battle Britain lost more soldiers.
Following this, the Battle of the Marne approached. The German supreme commander Moltke had to pull 100,000 troops to the eastern front to help put. The Germans began to move so fast that their supplies of food and ammunition could not keep up with them. While this was happening, the French had to travel to Paris by taxi or bus, whereas Germany decided to walk the travel. The stalemate began because Germany had predicted wrong and they had a big gamble to make. They had to get to Paris and Defeat France within 6 weeks so they were able to send all their troops to fight against Russia. That is when Germany was wrong because it took Russia only 10 days to mobilise so they only had themselves to blame.
During the war trenches began to be built to help the country defend themselves. They started off very basic and were used as simple shelters while the war was going on. By the time 1915 approached the trenches had developed so much they were now uses as complex defensive systems to help the allies fight battles. The trenches went all the way from the sea in the west to the Alps in the east, which is the main reason it became kno3wn as the western front.
There were also many new productions that occurred while the war was going on. Most of these were different types of weapons to help attack and defend their own countries to help them win the war. Machine guns were a main factor of the war and meant most of the countries battling owned them. They were very effective and they could shoot 8 or more bullets a second. The war became more of an artillery bombardment because many soldiers were getting injured from them and in some cases they could have been killed. The use of artillery caused many more casualties than any other weapon.
During the war the weather did not help and it had a psychological impact on man and morale conditions. The living conditions were bad because they were living outside in the cold and wet winter days so they did not have any decent shelter. When it was time for the soldiers to rest, they did not have any decent shelter and all they had to sleep on was the floor. The floor was wet and it had dead soldiers all over it so it was not a nice smelling area and not at all nice to look at. There were also rats making their way around the dead soldiers, eating anything they could to help keep them alive. The soldiers could have caught diseases like trench foot which is a condition if frost bite and trench fever which is a bacterial infection that causes repeated cycles of high fever. Malaria was also very common and so was Mustard gas poisoning and a lot of them had to put up with illnesses like pneumonia because of the living conditions. But all the soldiers had to put up with them as well as battle for their country.
Overall after reading this essay you should be able to understand while the stalemate occurred on the Western front. It was basically because the Schlieffen plan that Germany though of failed and got them into more trouble. However, it did help them get land, but not in the way they planned to.
