Stalemate - Trench Warfare

Causes of the Stalemate on the Western Front,   Life in the Trenches,    What happened during an attack, 

Causes of the Stalemate on the Western Front [SWADS]

This video gives an excellent account of Why WWI Turned Into Trench Warfare, supports its points with source evidence, and relates them to the failure of the Schlieffen Plan and the Race to the Sea (recommended).

The video identifies five “insurmountable problems” which created trench warfare:

1. Strategies for open warfare failed

The French Plan 17 and the German Schlieffen Plan – and the subsequent attempts to outflank the enemy in the ‘Race to the Sea’ – failed with unsustainable losses.

2. Weapons’ technologies had made the open battlefield deadly

Artillery could fire 7km, and used new explosives like melinite.

Small arms (e.g. the Enfield rifle) used multi-round clips.

Machine guns (e.g. the Vickers) fired 500 bullets a minute.

3. Armies struggled to co-ordinate infantry and artillery

Artillery technology at the start of the war was not accurate enough to support a moving attack with a rolling barrage, and aerial reconnaissance to identify targets was in its infancy.

4. Difficulties of command and control of the huge armies

The armies were huge - millions of men - and telephone technology wasn’t equal to the task, and wireless messages en clair could be intercepted.

5. Supply problems

During attacks, infantry had to advance on foot, artillery was pulled by horses, and they were moving away from the railhead that supplied food, ammunition and fodder; defenders in established positions could rush men and supplied to any point in the line in hours.

In particular, shell production could not keep up with the number of shells being fired – which limited the possibility of an attack.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic account from BBC Bitesize

Weapons of the Western Front - National Army Museum

YouTube

Trench warfare explained - Imperial War Museum

What It Was Like To Be a Trench Soldier - Weird History

24 Hrs In The Trenches - Battle Guide

Life in a Trench in one word - History Channel

Voices of WWI: Trench Life (plus transcript) - IWM

Voices of WWI: War in Winter (plus transcript) - IWM

Voices of WWI: Trench Raids (plus transcript) - IWM

Life in the Trenches

The best place to start your investigation is probably to study this drawing, which I used to compile on the blackboard(!) with my own pupils after a research homework to find out what they could about trench warfare:

You will need to have a general awareness of the key elements:

1. The basics of the trench system

It is important to realise that the trench system was not just two front lines facing each other, but a system of multiple lines and reserve trenches, joined by communication trenches and supply lines (Source A).

German Trenches were well-built and safer/ Allied trenches were makeshift and deadly.

 

2. Army organization

• Section: perhaps 10 men, led by a non-commissioned officer (a corporal or sergeant)

• Platoon: two or three sections (perhaps 30 men), led by a Lieutenant

• Company: two or more platoons (perhaps 150 soldiers), led by a Major or a Captain

• Battalion: at least three companies (up to perhaps 1,000 soldiers), led by a Lieutenant Colonel

• Brigade: three battalions (up to 4,000 soldiers), led by a Brigadier

• Division: three brigades (perhaps 15,000 soldiers), led by a Major-General

• Corps: two or three divisions, led by a Lieutenant-General

• Army: two or more Corps (perhaps 150,000 soldiers), led by a general. In the First World War, the British Army had 11 ‘Armies’.

 

3. Soldiers’ routines, experience and trench culture

   The ideal (rarely achieved) was 3 days in the trenches, a week in the reserve trench, and 2 weeks’ rest and recuperation (R&R) … which might include games, French prostitutes, ‘chatting’ (looking for lice), and being volunteered to dig more trenches.

   Even on the front line, it was not all shell-fire and going OTT – most of the time was the boredom of doing nothing, waiting for the next attack.

   Modern histories are tending to focus on three issues:

   • How to integrate the bottom-up records of soldiers’ experiences with the top-down records of plans and dispositions.

   • How most men survived the horrors without mental breakdown; it seems that the powerful poems of Sassoon and Owen over-represent the despair, and researchers are placing more emphasis on religion (padres) and contact from home … though patriotism, comradeship and resignation all played a part.

   • The soldiers on the front developed their own, entirely new culture, with its own social and moral codes, language, humour (see Source B) etc. (The 1979 film All Quiet On The Western Front includes a scene where Paul Baumer goes home, but does not feel at home.)

Source A

An idealised illustration of a trench system from the memoirs of an American soldier who fought in France (1917).

Source B

Trench culture: The men found an abandoned printing press and produced their own newsletter, The Wipers Times, full of in-jokes and subversive comments.

What happened during an attack

The opening scene from The 1979 film All Quiet On The Western Front includes a (sanitised) depiction of a WWI attack (recommended).

Attacks ranged from small night-time raids by small groups to collect plans and prisoners, to mass-assaults by tens of thousands, but the sequence you can see in the film-clip was usually roughly the same for most attacks:

1. Artillery bombardment

2. Artillery: a ‘creeping bombardment’ lifts (to cut the enemy off from support)

3. Signal to attack, (e.g. Whistle - though one officer kicked a football out Into No Man's Land)

4. Sometimes mines were exploded under the enemy lines

5. Troops go 'over the top'

6. Race across No Man's Land

7. Defenders open machine gun fire

8. (If you win the race) leap into trench/ fighting with bayonets (later hand grenades)

9. Signal to retire (e.g. red flares)

10. [Defenders counter-attack]

As the war progressed, attack-strategies improved - for instance, whereas at the Somme the men were told to march in straight lines, in later attacks they ran-and-fell in small groups, sheltering in craters etc.  Attacks, however, remained a mass-slaughter through to the end of the war.