Introducing new types of weapons broke the stalemate on the western front in world war i.
Life in the Trenches, 1914-1919 World War I was a war of trenches. After the early war of movement in the late summer of 1914, artillery and machine guns forced the armies on the Western Front to dig trenches to protect themselves. Fighting ground to a stalemate. Over the next four years, both sides would launch attacks against the enemy’s trench lines, attacks that resulted in horrific casualties. Inside a trench, all that is visible is just a few feet on either side, ending
at the trench walls in front and back, with a patch of leaden sky visible above. Trenches in WWI were constructed with sandbags, wooden planks, woven sticks, tangled barbed wire or even just stinking mud. Despite the use of wooden plank ‘duckboards’ and sandbags to keep out the water, soldiers on the front lines lived mired in mud. “The mud in Belgium varies in consistency from water to about the thickness of dough ready for the oven,” one British infantry soldier wrote. The
constant damp often led to a condition known as ‘trenchfoot,’ which if left untreated, could require amputation to stave off severe infection or even death. Trenches became trash dumps of the detritus of war: broken ammunition boxes, empty cartridges, torn uniforms, shattered helmets, soiled bandages, shrapnel balls, bone fragments. Trenches were also places of despair, becoming long graves when they collapsed from the weight of the war. ‘No-man’s land,’ was an
ancient term that gained terrible new meaning during WWI. The constant bombardment of modern artillery and rapid firing of machine guns created a nightmarish wasteland between the enemies’ lines, littered with tree stumps and snarls of barbed wire. In battle, soldiers had to charge out of the trenches and across no-man’s land into a hail of bullets and shrapnel and poison gas. They were easy targets and casualties were enormously high. By the end of 1914, after just five months of fighting, the
number of dead and wounded exceeded four million men. The trench systems on the Western Front were roughly 475 miles long, stretching from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps, although not in a continuous line. Though trenches offered some protection, they were still incredibly dangerous, as soldiers easily became trapped or killed because of direct hits from artillery fire.
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What weapons contributed most to the stalemate on the Western Front during World War I?Artillery. Artillery was the most destructive weapon on the Western Front. Guns could rain down high explosive shells, shrapnel and poison gas on the enemy and heavy fire could destroy troop concentrations, wire, and fortified positions.
How did new weapons affect ww1?With no need to re-aim the gun between shots, the rate of fire was greatly increased. Shells were also more effective than ever before. New propellants increased their range, and they were filled with recently developed high explosive, or with multiple shrapnel balls - deadly to troops in the open.
What resulted in a stalemate on the Western Front?A stalemate developed on the Western Front for four main reasons, one being that the Schlieffen plan failed, another reason was that the French were unable to defeat the Germans completely at the Battle of the Marne, another reasons was the “race to the Channel” and the last reason was that defending positions was far ...
What were the new weapons used in ww1?Military technology of the time included important innovations in machine guns, grenades, and artillery, along with essentially new weapons such as submarines, poison gas, warplanes and tanks.
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