where was the western front in ww1

It ended with no decisive victor or strategic outcomes. Stretching 440 miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea, the line of trenches, dug-outs and barbed-wire fences moved very little between 1914-1918, despite attempts on both sides to break through. The First Battle of Champagne in many ways set the precedent (and a poor one) for the shape of offensives in 1915. [23] He recognized the need for a dense artillery bombardment to precede any attack, but was unwilling to limit the advance to a single line of enemy trenches, as Rawlinson wanted. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives 2006, p. 233. When did fighting on the Eastern Front end? As a Dominion of the British Empire, South Africa was obliged to join the fighting upon the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914. Marble, Sanders: British Artillery on the Western Front in the First World War, Farnham 2013, p. 183. The German plan required a rapid, coordinated sweep that envisioned the First and Second German armies advancing rapidly along the French, British, and Belgian left flank. Despite Russias collapse after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, the Germans were still set to lose the war if it continued for much longer. Bruce, Robert B.: A Fraternity of Arms. He was convinced that if the French made another successful push like they had on the Somme, the end of the war might be in sight. Many of the persistent myths and stereotypes of the First World War come from the battle (or are at least attributed to it). D The Battle of Mount Sorrel, 2 - 13 June 1916. The Western Front - Alpha History French troops felt that the battle was a futile waste of lives. Which countries did Germany fight on the Eastern Front? Krause, Jonathan: Western Front , in: 1914-1918-online. The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914-1918, Barnsley 2004, p. 146. [7] The British, for their part, did not remain idle, but could not commit nearly as many troops as their French ally. It was this rapid and constant innovation, rather than stodgy conservatism, that created the bloody stalemate on the Western Front. After 1871, French diplomacy was largely concerned with preventing another crushing defeat at the hands of its strengthened neighbour. The French and German armies grappled for the next ten months in the longest land battle in history: the Battle of Verdun. Nivelle was de facto replaced by Philippe Ptain as early as 29 April 1917, just as the first instances of unrest and mutiny were manifesting themselves. These further economised on manpower and were quite difficult for the Entente powers to break through. The opening scene in the 1979 version of the classic 'All Quiet On The Western Front' pretty accurately depicts much of the waste and slaughter of the fighting on The Western Front as. The repeated failure and excessive costs for the Entente, especially from the French attacks, shaped German strategy for the following year. Cailleteau, Franois: Gagner la Grande Guerre, Paris 2008, p. 102. [46] Nevertheless, Ludendorff had managed by far the most substantial advance made by any force on the Western Front since 1914; Allied generals and politicians had ample reason to be deeply concerned. After the Second Battle of the Marne, the Germans no longer were on the attack and seeking victory, but on the defensive, trying to stave off defeat. If he could force the French to attack with the same ferocity and lack of success as they had in 1915, the French Republic could prove incapable of bearing the burden and be forced to sue for peace. They captured Messines quickly and suffered only moderate casualties. And a lot of it came out of the fact of who was fighting it and especially how big the actual fronts were. This was a strategic offensive that relied on the strength of the tactical defensive. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. The French launched the first attack in Champagne on 16 February 1915. Comparing the Eastern and Western fronts in WWI - Khan Academy The End of the Great War, London 2013, p. 75. Over 295,000 Australians served on the Western Front between March 1916 and November 1918. Greenhalgh, Elizabeth: Foch in Command. In the best case scenario Germany would only be worsening its logistical and strategic problems. Its initial form, roughly sketched out at the Chantilly Conference in 1915, foresaw forty French divisions supported by twenty-five British. There were a few attempts to break through this line before the winter weather set in and exhausted, overstretched units became incapable of action. The Western Front, a 400-plus mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea, was the decisive front during the First World War. Despite Germanys success in the Balkans and on the Eastern Front, it was ultimately its inability to defeat the Allied powers fighting in France and Flanders that determined the wars outcome. This problem was significantly worsened by the arrival of some 2 million American soldiers in France over the course of 1918. The Second Battle of the Marne continued into early August (15 July6 August). The Western Front of World War I was the line of fighting that occurred in the trenches that stretched through parts of Belgium and northern France. Anne Terrible, in: Revue Historique des Armes, 21/1 (1965), p. 5. World War I Schlieffen Plan Recently, Paul Jankowski has argued that Falkenhayns concept of an attritional battle was invented after the fact as an excuse for operational failure. Surrounded by hostile powers, Germany would very likely find itself fighting in a two-front war in the event of a general European conflict. World War I in Photos: The Western Front, Part I. Quickly abandoning his strategy to push the British into the sea, Ludendorff instead began to attack wherever the Allied line seemed weakest. The Battle of Verdun, which began in February 1916, was the longest and the second-deadliest battle of World War I, claiming between 750,000 and 1,000,000 lives. The results were predictable: high casualties and meagre gains. Philippe Ptain, in charge of the Battle of Verdun from 26 February 1916, demanded that a strong offensive be launched elsewhere in order to draw German forces away from his beleaguered troops. Falkenhayn, perhaps less insultingly, was given a field command again, where he conducted successful operations against Romania in 1917 and later commanded troops in Palestine in an attempt to bolster the crumbling Ottoman forces fight against the British invading from Egypt. Why did a stalemate develop on the Western Front? 2. The Battle of Neuve Chappelle (10-13 March 1915) stands out as the only truly independent effort. 1915 saw a staggering number of battles on the Western Front, especially compared to 1916 when the combatants became embroiled in a pair of mammoth efforts within discrete geographical limits (the Somme and Verdun). Cambrai offered the first glimpse of the possibilities tanks offered when employed en masse (previous uses in 1916 and during the Nivelle Offensive had largely been unremarkable for both technical and operational reasons). Hammond, Bryn: Cambrai 1917. Allied Front after the German Offensives of March - July 1918 - - - - - - A The Battle of Ypres, April - May 1915. On 15 July 1918 the Germans proved Foch right by launching a major attack east of Reims that became known as the Second Battle of the Marne. [58] In the end, the grotesque arithmetic of attrition eventually caught up with the Germans: they still had plenty of machine guns, shells, and artillery, but they no longer had the men to fire them. The final notable offensive of the year occurred in Cambrai. The Western Front was much longer than the Eastern Front which made trench warfare impractical. Nationaal Archief German officers in a discussion on the Western Front. Coming to power in September 1914 after the mental collapse of his predecessor, Helmuth von Moltke, (the grand-nephew of the brilliant Prussian strategist of the same name) Erich von Falkenhayn (1861-1922) inherited a difficult strategic position. Find out more about how the BBC is covering the. The salient was very difficult to supply, and stretched the line so that German forces had to hold much more of the line than previously, whilst also still maintaining spare troops to launch attacks. [42] Thus, Cambrai not only offered a glimpse of the future of armoured warfare; it also signalled loud and clear that no wonder weapon was going to win the war. why so many soldiers survived the trenches, how Pack Up Your Troubles became the viral hit. This would ensure that Germany could not defeat its enemies one at a time, but would be forced to split its forces between two distant theatres, thus spreading its forces dangerously thin. The battlefield conditions were barbaric. 1915 March 10-13: Battle of Neuve Chapelle Douglas Haig's First army led the attack on Neuve Chapelle. It was in Champagne (north-eastern France) where the basic tactical methods of the next three years were hammered out. The vast majority of combat troops were white, but many native and black soldiers served in frontline positions. From a German perspective the battle, at least as originally conceived, had but one purpose: to kill as many French soldiers as possible. Von Falkenhayn, General Erich: General Headquarters 1914-1916 and its Critical Decisions, London 1919, pp. [49] His methodical approach, very similar to what the British termed bite-and-hold, was unpopular in 1917 when Nivelles bold promises of swift victory seemed more tantalizing. Similarly, Joffres stated goal of destroying the German and Austro-Hungarian armies was not achieved. The reasons for this are complicated, but are in large part due to the pressures of command at the strategic level. Haigs forces failed to clear the Channel ports, but this was probably an illusory goal to begin with, if the recent experiences from 1916 were anything to go by. He decided that it was the perfect opportunity for a counter-attack to wrestle the initiative away from the Germans and finally give beleaguered Allied forces time to rest and regroup. If his allies or political masters felt he was not doing enough to further their strategic goals he could well find himself on the chopping block. [56] Whereas the Allies had previously picked a single spot to attack and had continued attacking there for months at a time, the Hundred Days saw attacks lasting little more than a couple days before being moved laterally somewhere else down the line. This faade lasted less than a month. 161-2. Instead it would have to be won the hard way: through fighting and defeating the enemy at a rate they could not sustain. The Great War: Western Front is a real-time strategy video game based on the First World War. Commanders on both sides began to develop grand plans to break the line or to outmanoeuvre and outflank the enemy. For the first time in the war, in 1917 Britain acted as the senior partner on the Western Front. an edit I made of all quiet on the western front : r/ww1 - Reddit DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10765. Date accessed: June 28, 2023 Whichever side won there either the Central Powers or the Entente would be able to claim victory for their respective alliance. (The German chief of staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, famously declared that his goal was to bleed France white). This assault did not wipe out or push back the Germans, who sat it out in deep bunkers. Western Front, WW1 - YouTube 1917 was in many ways a desperate year for both the Allies and the Germans. Unlike the Somme, however, where the cautious and capable Rawlinson had tactical command, Third Ypres was commanded by one of Haigs close protges, Hubert Gough (1870-1963).[41]. Haig wanted an ambitious strategic victory and was willing to set distant goals for his troops to meet. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. What was life like in a World War One trench? - BBC Bitesize To an extent, however, this is misleading. Encounter battles favoured the more careful German forces; even when the French won local success, their abysmal command and control meant that successful advances petered out, were unsupported, and were ultimately pushed back by more organized German forces. The so-called Race to the Sea saw both forces make ineffectual attempts to turn the northern flank until they found themselves at the North Sea. The French made a similar effort at the First Battle of Artois (16-18 December 1914). Like Castelnau, who over-promised on the Second Battle of Champagne, Nivelle chose to operate in the south-eastern sector where there were fewer villages to hold up the presumed French advance. Coursework Assignment 1. Allied troops tried to penetrate the German line at Champagne and Loos during the autumn of 1915. [9] Where the gas fell thickest the Allied lines simply melted away. Although the Americans took a long time to enter the field, by wars end they had, on paper, an army of 4 million men: more than 1 million more than Germany had marched to war with in 1914. [52] Even though Fochs predictions were correct, the German attack was still fierce and threatened to break through the intentionally weakened Allied centre (Foch, intentionally or not, recreated the conditions at Marathon and Cannae in preparation for his flank attack). 75% of all men who died in World War 1 were killed by artillery. The war on the Western Front was the decisive theatre in the First World War. For this showdown, the German commander chose Verdun, a small town near a heavily-fortified section of the Franco-German border. [27] Secondary waves faced deadly fire before even reaching the British front line. The French managed an acceptable initial advance and then spent a month relentlessly hammering against a solidified German line to no avail. Rawlinson sought to maximize the chance of success for his largely unbloodied forces. The results were stunning. If the Somme was a tactical success, if it could point to the capture of some notable town, ridge, hillock or village and was not too costly, he could justifiably consider his work to have been successful. Initially it looked as though Operation Michael might work. They expressed what they felt was the obvious lack of value placed on their lives by bleating like sheep being led to the slaughter as they marched into the Verdun salient; a bone-chilling foreshadowing of the widespread mutinies that would wrack the French army in 1917. Gale, Tim: The French Armys Tank Force and Armoured Warfare in the Great War. Les mutineries de 1917, Paris 2005, p. 365. This article looks at the war on the Western Front from 1914-1918, its major events, battles, and strategies. Ultimately, it was hardly the great success Haig had desired. After Ypres, it became clear that the Western Front was not going to be breached or pushed back without considerable effort. The only problem was that the British army, and its leader, Douglas Haig (1861-1928), did not feel ready to attack. Nivelle remained commander-in-chief, but the real power lay with Ptain, who was made his chief of staff. Trench networks could not be broken by hasty offensives, but rather had to be systematically neutralised by concentrated heavy artillery fire. Title: The Western Front On their flank, Canadian troops held on doggedly for days, isolated and repeatedly attacked by German forces. France, Nationalism, and the First World War, London 2002, p. 40. Some consolation could be found in the better casualty ratios the British achieved (British and German losses were more or less even, which was an improvement over their performance on the Somme). The time had come for the Entente forces, which had been rapidly falling back before a seemingly unstoppable German onslaught, to stop and fight. By the end of the day, British forces had suffered 56,882 casualties, including 19,240 dead. The Entente powers vacillated between policies of slow, methodical battles that gradually pushed back the enemy, and grand, general offensives that sought to win major strategic victories over the course of a few days, rather than several months. Instead of shoring up their numerical inferiority by judiciously moving reserves into the battle space, the Germans were now under attack everywhere at once. This battle, the Third Battle of Ypres, would be better known as Passchendaele, named after the ultimate goal of the battle. He made immediate efforts to organise better food and more frequent leave for the troops. Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870-1916, Cambridge 2005; Jankowski, Paul: Verdun. Its quick advance was stopped by the Battle of the Marne. The Western Front was a defensive stalemate from 1914-1918 while the Eastern Front was much more fluid. The Western Front was a meandering 700-kilometre frontline, running from the North Sea coastline to the Swiss border and passing through (at various times) Belgium, north-eastern France and southern Germany. The French, able to resume the attack the next day, eagerly did so. To call the French Mutiny a mutiny or uprising is, however, not accurate. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. The Western Front, a 400-plus mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea, was the decisive front during the First World War. Other Combatants and Other Fronts, 1914-1918, Basingstoke 2014. From the largest naval battle, and the longest battle, to the most painful and infamous battle, and the battle that marked the end of mobile warfare on the Western Front, discover 10 significant battles of the First World War that took place between 1914-1918. Mode (s) Single-player, multiplayer. Animated Map: The Western Front, 1914 - 1918. Western Front (World War I) - Wikipedia Verdun was one of the longest and costliest battles of the Western Front, raging from February to December of 1916. A natural pessimist, taciturn and secretive, he viewed Germanys strategic position with deep consternation. This drift was first noticed by British reconnaissanceaircraft and was quickly communicated up through the command structure. Even more deadly was the Battle of the Somme (July to November 1916). [18] The Battle of the Somme was an opportunity for the rapidly expanding British army, swelled with volunteers raised in part by the efforts of the Secretary of State for War, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850-1916) giving them the appellation Kitcheners Army to finally commit troops to battle on a truly continental scale. Fighting the First World War: Stalemate and attrition Australians on the Western Front 1916 to 1918 - Anzac Portal

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