Stalemate: Why There Was No Movement On The Wester Essay, Research Paper
Introduction The Western Front during the course of World War I was a virtual stalemate.There are a number of reasons for this lack of movement including tacticalunderachievements, technological improvements, and the hindrances caused by massiveopposing armies in a small, restrictive area. These, however do not include the veryimportant and often overlooked reason: lack of good leadership. Tactical Underachievements As is commonly known, Germany fought on opposite sides of the line from theFrench and English. Both sides had other Allies but we are concerned with the WesternFront which was mainly Germany versus France and England. Both sides developed warplans. Germany had the well-known Schlieffen Plan and the French had their Plan XVII.When the maneuvering had stabilized after the autumn of 1914 the Western Frontbecame well established. Soon to follow would be the entrenching of forces on bothsides. An important piece of the Schlieffen Plan was the establishment of a system ofreserves. The reserves were trained soldiers who did not serve on a full time basis.Although trained, these men would go back to their jobs in society. The reserves wouldtrain periodically throughout the year. These soldiers were essentially used as backups. InW.W.I these men would come up to the front to spell the regular fighting men in a majorcrisis. This system of reserves worked so well for Germany during their unification thatHelmuth Von Moltke (the senior) implemented this system in the Schlieffen Plan. Theother major powers of Europe adopted almost identical systems, with the exception ofEngland. She instead relied on her superior navy for security. The reserve systemprovided commanders the extra men to continue on in battles with heavy casualties. The mobilization rates for each country involved, varied. Germany s wasconsidered the most efficient. The least efficient mobilization rate belonged to Russia.This was due to the massive size of her army and the lack of railroads. It took theRussians a number of months to fully mobilize it s army. The only advantage to this wasthat Russia was still receiving fresh troops long after the Germans entire army had beenengaged in battle. The Schlieffen Plan was designed to attack France first and after defeating theFrench, turn its attention to the Russians. This order of events was planned as so becauseof the knowledge of the slow mobility rate of the Russian army. Germany actuallyoverestimated the ability of the Russians to mobilize. The Germans planned on theRussians taking six weeks to mobilize. However, the Russians were not fully mobilizedwithin this time span. With the German and French mobilization rates being rather closeto the same speed, the Germans gave the French and themselves between one and twoweeks. This gave the Germans roughly two months to execute the Schlieffen Plan. The Germans were aware of their slight numerical advantage over the Allies onthe Western Front. However, they also knew they would have to strategically beat theAllies for this operation to succeed. The Germans also were aware of the number ofsoldiers each side would have fighting, and they knew they must attack France veryaggressively. These great numbers of troops that would be involved would make a battlerestricted to the Franco-German border a virtual impossibility. The Schlieffen Plan calledfor two wings, a right and left. The right wing would be considerably stronger than theleft. This would cause the French to push the left wing back into Germany and at thesame time pulling the French in. The right wing would then storm through Belgium andcapture Paris and the French army, hopefully eliminating them from the war. The French plan didn t do much to set them up for victory. Plan XVII had no realstrategy, it depended on the idea that the French soldier was brave enough and hadenough guts to overcome bullets. The plan was to directly assault the German frontierwith reckless abandon. The idea was, you built up a firing line by advancing in smallrushes of detachments, then by the voloume of your fire you attempted to overcome thepeople who were either advancing against you or were shooting at you (Simkins, 305).This plan was rather zealous, however it did not change until was executed in August of1914. The Schlieffen Plan was changed though. Before it was implemented thecommander in charge of the plan, Schlieffen, was succeeded by the nephew of HelmuthVon Moltke of the same name. Moltke shrunk the size of the right wing. The ratio of 8:1,right wing forces to left wing forces respectively, was changed to 3:1. The weakenedright wing was probably the biggest cause of the failure of the Schlieffen Plan but not theonly. As expected in the opening of the campaign, the French attacked. they were easilyrepelled, not only because of an overzealous plan but also because they were still dressedin bright red-and-blue uniforms. The French soldiers were easily handled by theGermans. Not expecting such success against the French offensive, the German left wingcountered and drove back the French instead of drawing them in. This blunder saved theFrench from walking right into the trap. The strong right wing was having troubles of itsown. The British Expeditionary Force, which was considered the elite infantry of thatday, were holding up the right wing s advance through Belgium. Also, the Germancommander of the furthest right army feared he was not close enough to his companionon his immediate left so he ordered his men to close the gap a little. This in turn causedthe entire German forces to miss Paris altogether and subsequently caused the failure ofthe Schlieffen Plan. This plan was very well thought out, however the execution of it leftmuch to be desired. The French Plan XVII was a great compliment to the SchlieffenPlan. Had the commander of this plan executed it to perfection, would the war haveended much sooner? This is a question that will never be answered. After the failure of the Schlieffen Plan the two sides engaged in a race for thechannel coast. This did nothing to the final outcome except help stabilize the WesternFront. The only thing left to do was to dig in and not give up ground. At this point in time Erich Von Falkenhayn took over as commander of the armedforces in the west. Falkenhayn is probably famous for his bankrupt policy of winning thewar by attrition (Guinn). He believed that France could be beaten by attacking anddefeating one of their major strong points , Verdun. Falkenhayn intended to bleedthem white . This simply meant that if enough men and ammunition were used theycould either breakthrough relatively easy or completely pound the enemy intosubmission. This was the idea of attacking the enemy regardless of loss (Lloyd, 51).This method was tried and obviously didn t work. The Allies tried such tactics as well.They repeatedly attacked over the top. This type of warfare led to a French mutiny in1917. The French soldiers refused to attack in this manner any longer. It makes onewonder why the commanders in this war could not see the futility in such tactics. Toomany lives were sacrificed for the amount of territory gained which is measurable inyards.Technological Improvements This section deals with the advanced nature of technology in weaponry that came aboutin the first World War or shortly before it. It should be mentioned that the technologyitself was not the reason for the immobile nature of the Western Front. However, theinability of the commanders to adapt to this new type of weaponry was. In the 1800 sGermany became a unified country after the Franco-Prussian War. The tactics usedduring this confrontation won the war for Germany. With that war being the most recentin German and French history the commanders went with the mindset of don t fix whatisn t broken. The commanders also paid no attention to the examples of theRusso-Japanese War and the Second Boer War of 1899-1902, that clearly showed a needfor a more advanced way to execute in battle. With a little foresight the European powersmay have been able to avoid a deadlock or at least avoided the countless casualtiessuffered on both sides. The machine gun was a technological improvement for lack of a better word,that easily became a dominant factor on the Western Front. The French and English putlittle stock into the effectiveness of the machine gun. For the English a battalion manytimes only had two. The Allies quickly saw how easily and efficiently a machine guncould mow down an entire attacking battalion charging through No Man s Land. Thiswas the power of a single machine gun emplacement in a stretch of trenchline. TheGermans saw the usefulness of this weapon early on and promptly set up machine guncompanies along side their infantry companies. So it s obvious there were more than oneof these weapons along the miles of trenches. Both sides did not help themselves much in a charge towards the enemy s trench.The Allies more so than the Germans would use old, outdated tactics in an attack. Onehistorian writes, The infantry, which had advanced as on parade, keeping carefully dressed , had been slaughtered by machine gun fire (Guinn, 143). The men would lineup along the trench and rely on their superhuman speed and what the French referred toas cran and elan or more commonly known as guts to reach and overtake the enemy strench. When the first wave was gunned down the second, third, fourth, and sometimesfifth would follow suit. Reinforcing a line already halted by casualties simply resulted ineven greater losses without any corresponding advance (Simkins, 306). The number of weapons increased dramatically per division from 1914 to 1918.The average of machine guns alone went from twenty four per division in 1914 toanywhere from fifty to one hundred per division in 1918. This number alone shows thechange of heart concerning machine guns by the Allies. A second weapon that evolved technologically was artillery. Rapid fire,breech-loaded canons were the new artillery of the day. This was much faster than itsancestors who were loaded through the muzzle. The range of artillery and their efficiencyincreased as well. Commanders of the first World War were again stuck in the old way ofdoing things when it came to artillery. Both sides bought into the idea that artillerycoupled with a gutsy infantry was enough to overwhelm the enemy. As mentioned beforethe French army put more stock into this than any other. This idea was probablyattributed to the Napoleonic doctrine of the same strategy. What wasn t taken intoaccount by these commanders was Napoleon only used this strategy of a center thrustwhen he was numerically superior to his enemy. This is what Napoleon s reputationcame from. However, when Napoleon was outnumbered by his enemy he would usemaneuvers instead of an all out charge. The shells used in the first World War were much more different than those usedin Napoleon s day. The modern shells of the time were designed to explode, some withshrapnel. In Napoleon s day the shells of choice were not actually shells at all. They weresolid balls that would take out a number of troops that may have been stacked togetherlike bowling pins. Troops also would attack each other with bayonets because a musketdid not do much good when charging the enemy. This idea of charging became suicidewith the advent of the machine gun. A new type of weapon altogether was introduced on the Western Front: poisongas . The Germans were the first to use this weapon in the war in 1915. They used itagainst French troops. The French reaction to this unknown chemical weapon was tothrow down their weapons and flee. This caused a hole in the French line. This took theGermans by surprise. The Germans advanced a few miles and then just stopped. Theyfailed to take advantage of this rare opportunity. This raises the question of why did theyuse gas in the first place if they had no intention of it working? Had the Germangenerals been less skeptical of the new weapon, they could have exploited it moresweepingly (Lloyd, 54). When weapons are based on scientific knowledge such as poison gas they ceaseto be secret . The feeling even today is that advancements in science are not consideredthe sole property of one nation but are available for the advancement of everyone. So itgoes with scientific weapons as well. The Germans enjoyed a momentary advantage, butkeeping the last statement in mind the Allies quickly caught up. Soon after the first gasattack by the Germans, the Allies implemented gas warfare into their arsenal as well. Atthis point the poison gas was an advantage to neither side. Troops were now beingsupplied with gas masks which helped to make this weapon less affective. In the end gas
was more of a hindrance than a weapon. The total casualties from gas attacks were onlyabout 15% of the total casualties in the war. The question could be asked, why didn t the advanced technological weapons ofthe day cause a breakthrough
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