The Development of a Stalemate on the Western Front

The Development of a Stalemate on the Western Front

When the war began in 1914, it was greeted largely with enthusiasm and

excitement. General public opinion was that it would be a quick war;

it was common to hear people saying it would be 'over by Christmas'.

However, when Christmas 1914 arrived, the war was far from over. In

fact, both sides had 'dug in' for winter, and there were no signs of

the quick and easy victory that each party had expected.

There are a number of reasons why stalemate developed on the Western

Front in October 1914, and none of these reasons could stand alone as

the main cause of the stalemate. There were many contributing factors,

overall playing a part in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, which

had intended a quick victory for Germany, and definitely no stalemate.

Firstly, Germany had planned to invade France through neutral Belgium,

with the idea that Belgium would offer no resistance. However, Belgium

wasn't prepared to surrender quietly; the Belgian forces fought

heroically and, while Brussels still fell on the 20th of August, the

resistance offered by Belgium held up the Germans considerably. One of

the things the Belgians did was to flood large areas of their land,

which was very effective in delaying the German advance.

This contributed towards the stalemate in 1914 because the Germans

were working to a tight schedule; they needed to have defeated France

before Russia had mobilised, and they estimated that they had six

weeks in which to do this. Every part of the Schlieffen Plan needed to

run flawlessly in order for them to defeat the French in time to

return and fight Russia; even the slightes...

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...kilometres.

It was a stalemate. Both sides were dug into trenches protected by

machine guns, only metres apart in some places. Germany's Schlieffen

Plan had failed spectacularly. In conclusion, stalemate had a number

of causes; the resistance from Belgium and the involvement of the

British, which delayed Germany's attack; the quick mobilisation of the

Russian forces and the bad German supply lines which weakened

Germany's attack; the French defence of Paris, which diverted

Germany's attack; French losses in Plan XVII, without which France may

have been strong enough to defeat Germany; and the Battle of the

Marne, where both sides failed to defeat the other.

The public had been wrong, and the war was not over by Christmas. Both

sides had suffered great casualties and loss of forces, and trench

warfare had begun.