Year 12 modern history.

Reasons for the stalemate on the western front.

Essay question: Explain why the mobile war perceived at the beginning of august 1914 had become the static warfare on the western front by the end of the year.

The German chief of staff, General Von Schlieffen devised a plan in response to the growing German fear of a war on two fronts. The German population war in fear of having to split its forces in two and fight a war with both France and Russia at the same time, as the entente power and central powers had similar troop numbers. The plan had one simple objective, to take the capital city of France in under 40 days so then it could move the bulk of its troops to the eastern front, to combat the lumbering Russian army. To achieve this goal the German chief of staff instituted a plan called the Schlieffen plan. The schlieffen plan had a few main premises. The first being that Russia would be the easier of the two armies to defeat and should be left until after the French army is defeated. And the second being that Brittan is unlikely to participate in the war. For the schlieffen plan to be a success, it required two critical components, speed and surprise. The Russian army was said to take about 6-8 weeks to fully mobilize. It was in these 6-8 weeks that Germany planned to have a full offensive against France and capture the capital city, and therefore cutting the head off the snake. In 1911, the chief of staff, General Von Schlieffen died, with his last words being, keep the right wing strong. His successors, Moltke and Ludendorff did the exact opposite. Between 1911 and 1914 Moltke and Ludendorff changed the schlieffen plan. These changes meant two things, firstly, German troops would concentrate their attacks on the Belgian town of Liege, this slowed the German advance by 13 days, pushing the Germans further behind their 40 day deadline. And secondly, Moltke took troops out of the main army from the right wing to strengthen the attack near Lorrain this greatly took away from the strong attack from the right wing which was supposed to take Paris. The most critical part of the schlieffen plan. There are many complicated reasons why the Schlieffen plan failed and forced the western front into a stalemate, the few most critical courses of action that threw the western front into the trench chaos was the fact that Belgian was completely overlooked. The Germans thought that Belgian would just roll over and play dead and allow the German troops to make a quick advance through, but this was not the case. The German fort town of Liege withstood 13 days of German shelling before finally being overrun. Another critical error that Germany overlooked was Brittans involvement in the war, The German chiefs of staff expected Britain to steer clear of the war on the western front, this was not the case. Britain committed the entirety of its expeditionary force of 130,000 men. The highly trained marksman proved more than a hassle for Germany as they were able to Mow down the German en masse movement. The war of movement was vitally weakened in late august when Moltke made the fatal decision to remove two army corps from the crucial right flank that was to sack Paris, and send them to the eastern front to battle the surprisingly rapid Russian advances. This left the right wing extremely

weak. As a result, Klucks first army swung south-east of Paris as he had to make a judgment on the physical condition of his troops. At the same time, German forces were crossing the River Marne, the British and French troops rallied to defend their homeland. And during the first battle of Marne the Great German army was ground to a halt over the 7 days of the war and Paris was saved. The Germans, suffering heavy losses in the battle of Marne retreated to the River Aisne, where they found their own bomb craters that the made on their way in. The new commander-in-chief Falkenhayn replaced Moltke and instructed the Germans to take up defensive positions and four days later, had a complex trench systems, complete with Maschinegewehr 08 water cooled machine guns, commonly referred to as MG 08s. As the French and British army armies approached the German entrenchments they too, dug trenches to protect themselves from German gunfire. This was the birth of the static war that enveloped the western front until the end of the war in 1918. Both German and French forces sought to outflank the other side and thus the war of movement stoped altogether and it turned into a race to the sea as both sides were furiously digging trenches as to outflank and get behind the other side. In reality neither side was able to gain the upper hand, and as the Russian offensive was in full force, it became almost impossible for either side to win in strength in numbers alone. The result was a trench system that stretched from Switzerland in the south, all the way to the sea, past Belgium, over 750km in length. As a result of the schlieffen plan failing in 1914, the war of movement quickly came to an end and trenches were dug to protect the soldiers both from the shells and mortar fire as well and the cold winters that occurred during the years of fighting between 1914-1918. The result of trenches being dug was that the war was prolonged and both sides had adequate protection from the other sides advancing troops. The offensive war that Germany launched in 1914 had quickly become a defensive war on both sides and therefore a stalemate developed. Although the trench system was seen as a temporary deployment by the major Generals on both sides, neither side was able to break the stalemate because of the increase in defence technologies from both sides. World war one quickly turned into a stalemate as a result of the failure of the schlieffen plan, after the war of movement was ground to a halt in the battle of Marne and from there on in it became a static war with little movement.